I River U10 By Kent on Apr 21, 2008 - Updated Oct 15, 2011

iRiver U10

Package:

1.iRiver U10

2.Earbuds (which are better than iPods standart earbuds,but not as comfortable as it should be)

3.User manual (Made carefully and written properly and clearly)

4.USB cable.

5.CD (includes program to transfer pictures)

The story begins that i was looking for nice mp3 player. As world screams that iPod still rocks i was almost to go for iPod mini,4 gb. But then i saw that tiny, minimalistic iRiver, which was more than stunning. I read reviews about it ,user opinions were acceptable. It is pricey player- for just 1GB i paid 150 UK pounds (it is two and a half years since i purschased iRiver). iPod mini green,4gb costed less, but iRiver were stunning plus,nobody had it.

Package is nice,everything is packed in separate box.

Player body is made from plastic which is very very very good quality. Player is very robust it felt down lot of times but no problems occured . Display is fingerprint magnet though. 10/10

Display.

2.2" display, full of rich colors (up to 256000) , qvga res.- 320x240. Very good. it doesn't get washed out if there is strong sun shining. 9.5/10

Controls.

Probably the most interesting part. There is pivot button (which turns screen to portrait mode) ,switch on/off button, ant two volume rockers. Main idea is patented iRiver system ,called D-click. That means youhave to push screen sides to go up,down or to access function/get out of function. Very intuitive and people often said that it is very very cool. 10/10

User interface

Friendly. There appears animation which can be boring sometimes if you want to play music "just now!". four animated arrows appears which shows possible walkthrough. It takes about half an hour to feel free while operating with iRiver. There are daily color schemes, which changes background automatically,when next day comes. You can make your favourite picture as a background.Nice. 9.5/10

Music quality

Stunning. It plays clearly,there are sound settings,SRS WOW sound effect,bass booster and so on. Bass are deep and clear. Volume output is on high level,it is defenetely better and louder than iPod Nano,Mini but a bit loses to ipod video 5gen. Anyway, U10 can read popular formats (including Ogg vorbis) and main function-music playing is perfect. 10/10

battery life

Much more better than iPod. Manufacture claims approx. 25 hours music playing and 5 hours of video. that is almost true-I was able to listen music for 24 hours. Excellent. 10/10

Connecting

Windows recognises it as a portable media player,MTP device,so drag and drop method works well,or media player synchronizes it. not the most featured connection,but still simple and normal.8/10

Other functions.

Games. Flash lite 1.1 games. there are few preinstalled games which can kill time ,but don't expect something fabulous. anyway i have even notepad for my iriver and more and more programs and games appears for this cute player.8/10

Picture viewer. Thanks to gorgeous display it shows transfered pictures nicely. Slide show settings can be adjusted. 9.5/10

Video. Well, that is interesting feature,but not fully functional. You see, videos can be played in Mpeg SP4 profile,15frames per second,384kb/s bitrate. that means you can watch clips or even films but iPod video wins here easily. iRiverter is free program to convert videos. it must be downloaded. Converted film (700mb) becomes smaller-about 240mb.i tried to watch few films,it was acceptable,because original file was good quality.but frame lack made it a bit irritating.TV out would be nice feature.all in all 7.5/10

E-book or text viewer

Just creat .txt file,transfer it and iRiver will show it.Russian letters are supported.10/10

Recording

Player can record sound.Quality is very good. If you purshase cradle you will be able to record from external devices (hi-fi, even other mp3 players). 10/10

FM radio

Basic radio,which doesn't include RDS (sadface). quality is normal,but earbuds chors is abit to sensitive. 7/10.

Alarm clock

Favourite song,fm recorded sound or standart tune can be selected. Clear and simple. 10/10

Other purshases.

Cradle with remote control

Costed about 30 UK pounds . it has two speakers which creates stereo. when mounted player looks like old TV. But it is original and nice. There are Line-in and Line-out ports. Speakers are good quality,produces loud output and some bass elements. sadly to say, fm doesn't work in cradle. remote control is OK,but buttons are hard to press. 8.5/10

While people go insane for iPod there appears more and more good products from other manufactures. Sure, iPod is good player but a bit to simple. I am happy I bought iRiver 'cuz' it's better than mini or nano. overall verdict- 9/10 .Thumbs up.