iriver S10 (2GB)

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Features
Compared with the majority of ultra-small MP3 players, the S10 is certainly not short on features. By virtue of its screen, it has most of its mini brethren beat. With a display, the S10 can flaunt pictures (Bitmap only), tell time with a digital clock, enable lyric display, and generally make life a lot easier for the listener with a graphics user interface.

	S10 looks tiny even next to the iPod nano.

Unlike the U10, there're no gaming, video or Marcomedia Flash Lite support. This is just as well given the 1.15-inch display. In terms of audio tweaking, there's plenty: Nine preset equalizers, SRS and a five-band user-defined equalizer. It's odd that Bitmap is the only picture format supported. Again, taking into consideration the screen size, there's no thumbnail view, either.

Voice/FM recording and FM radio with 20 presets are included on the S10. Our unit is a UMS device, so it's all drag-and-drop for files. It would seem that including a mini-USB port would be taxing the S10's cargo space: Connectivity to the S10 is performed using a special USB-to-3.5mm adapter instead. We noticed an extra data ring on the 3.5mm plug that probably helps with file transfers. Charging is also conducted through the adapter, so it would be a bad idea to lose it.

	What? No MP3?

The bundled iriver plus 3 is a very pretty content management software. Presentation is clean and spacey with a clear organizational hierarchy for file directories. Do note that there is no on-the-go playlist creation for the S10; the user will need the iriver plus 3 to cobble one up.

Besides CD ripping, the iriver plus 3 can also be used to transfer pictures and eBooks. However, we were uncomfortable with the fact that it supports only CD ripping to either the WMA or OGG Vorbis format. There's no support for the popular MP3 format in sight.

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