Affordable MP3 player, but with several flaws.

Author's Rating:

Pros: Great sound clarity.
FM radio with FM recording capability.
Decent battery life.
Looks pretty cool.
Nice looking display.

Cons: Too many to list.  See Review Body above for details.

The Bottom Line: 
This unit has potential, but I can't recommend it until they address the many serious performance flaws.

Author's Review
I purchased this a little over a month ago to replace a Transcend 2GB MP3 unit that I had seriously outgrown.  Having heard many good things about past iRiver products, I thought this would be a slam dunk when it was on sale.

Let's start with the Pro's:

*It sounds great and has extra options to make your MP3's really pop.

*8GB holds lots of music.

*It looks cool.

*Display is nice and crisp.

*The price was right.

Here are the cons:
With the current 1.04 firmware, this unit has some serious drawbacks.

* Charging is required through a computer USB port.  EVERY time you disconnect, it goes into "Generating Database.  Please Wait..." mode which takes minutes even when nothing was changed.

* When loaded up with 1,300 songs, it takes 42 seconds to get to a list of music.  On the last page of their documentation, they recommend to alleviate this issue that you keep your music collection below 1,000 songs.  What?!?  What's the sense in having 8GB of space if the unit is too slow to use it?

* The songs are in no sensible order.  It's certainly not alphabetical, and it doesn't seem to be in the order loaded onto the device, either.  This makes it very difficult to find a particular song out of 1,300.

* When loaded up, the response time of the unit is terrible.  I mean just awful to the point of being almost unusable.  It often takes a minute or more to go from one mode to another.

* Their support has been totally non-existent so far.  I haven't received a single response from them since my first e-mail a month ago.

*While the screen looks cool, pressing on the bezel to make selections really requires some pressure to get the unit to respond.  I often feel like I'm about to break the thing just trying to select a menu option.  Plus the screen is a fingerprint magnet and requires constant cleaning.

* The included software needs some help.  Album art is practically a science in getting to work.  It could (and should) be much easier for the user.  I ended up using MediaMonkey and some other programs to get my album art embedded in the MP3 to get it to show up.  My wife's iPod was totally automatic in this regard.


I really hope iRiver wakes up and makes a firmware revision to address these issues.  Until then, I wouldn't recommend this unit to anyone that wants to use it primarily as an MP3 player.