By Edvarcl Heng
19/09/2005
URL: http://asia.cnet.com/reviews/musicplay/0,39050463,39095240p,00.htm

Already well-known for the quality of its products, Reigncom's iRiver brand of flash-based MP3 players have always been priced at the premium end of the market. Yet Apple's aggressive foray into the flash MP3 player market with the iPod nano at its vanguard may just erode iRiver's share of the market. Read on as we test drive the Korean company's latest response to the iPod threat.

Design
Forget both the Creative Zen Micro's Touch Scroll and iRiver H10's touch strip; the Click Wheel may be the design epitome for an MP3 player interface, but the U10's Direct-Click (D-Click) system comes a close second in our opinion. For us, tactile feedback is an important attribute for most electronic products: Just imagine typing on a keyboard that is as flat and as hard as a basalt plateau and see how far you go.

	Clicking that pad.

Previous efforts to mimic the Click Wheel's intuitiveness without running into a spat with Apple's legal eagles, like Sony's G-Sensor and Toshiba's Plus Touch controller, failed to capture the consumer imagination quite as well as the iPod's own. Yet this reviewer's first experience with the iRiver U10 felt almost akin to the first time he held an iPod mini--uber simplicity at last.

Using the display as the basis of control is an innovative move on iRiver's part. Rather than a touch screen as suspected earlier by some pundits, the U10 instead marrys the quad-directional rocker switch (inherent in its earlier flash-based units) with a QVGA screen to create an illusion of a floating screen. With four clickable sides, the U10 follows an organic layout using arrows and onscreen instructions to indicate the area to be depressed.

	Is the Zen out of touch?.

As a general rule of thumb, right clicks will lead the user deeper into the menu while left ones bring one up a menu layer. Up and down clicks also serve to navigate within the menu layer and holding down the right side will produce a sub-menu relevant to the particular function in current operation, e.g. equalizer settings during MP3 playback. Do note that with so much finger pressing, the plastic screen of the U10 is bound to be a magnet for fingerprint smudges.

Other than the D-Click, controls are kept to a minimal with two volume buttons, a power on/off, hold switch and a display orientation key for those insistent on a portrait perspective.

	Slick and slim.

Measuring 69 x 47 x 16mm and weighing 70g, the U10 also stands apart from previous iRiver designs in that it has a relatively generous 2.2-inch screen which is a far cry from the 1.5 incher in iRiver's flagship Microdrive player, the H10, which couldn't even play video. Movies on the U10 are brilliantly rendered and proved to be one of the sharpest we have seen for such a screen size caliber.

Done up in a tasteful black and white, the U10 comes with a small carrier pouch that has a small display wiper attached. Do note that the wiper comes in real handy for clearing up those aforementioned fingerprint smudges.

Features
Putting that QVGA screen to good use, the U10 comes adorned with a colorful menu that is reminiscent of the Sony PSP. And like its Japanese cousin, the wallpaper of the U10 changes in accordance with the day of week though users have the option to disable it and use a custom background of their own.

	Red hot date on a Sunday?

Video playback certainly should have been a strong suit for the U10, given its 320 x 240-pixel display, but this is unfortunately where the U10 falters. iRiver specifies that the device will playback only AVI files using an MPEG-4 SP profile. Yet with this firmware limitation, iRiver fails to provide a video conversion software for users to convert their own existing video collections. This is an uncalled-for oversight that even most manufacturers from mainland China have addressed.

Despite the U10's video failings, its support for the Macromedia Flash Player profile (Flash Lite 1.1), which was originally targeted at mobile phones, brings an added multimedia edge to the player. This is highlighted in the games included in the device, which though ranging from a simplistic memory game to a sliding puzzle, makes engaging use of the D-Click system. The fact that a software developer kit is also available on the Macromedia site bodes well for users looking to download additional homebrewed games onto their U10.

	Japanese babes all hot up about the U10.

We tried pumping in flash animation clips (.swf) of Happy Tree Friends into our test unit which turned out perfectly fine except that we had to reboot the player after it reached the end of the clip since there was no way to return to the main menu.

The U10 also comes with the standard MP3 player feature set comprising voice/FM recording, FM radio, 12 equalizer settings including SRS WOW, picture viewer and a text reader. Take note that the U10 allowed us to view pictures and read text while the music was playing, this same duality in functions did not extend to the FM radio.

The iRiver software is the letdown in this case as it is not as intuitive as other music management software available in the market. We found that it lengthens transfer time by a fair bit. However, if the arrangement of your MP3s according to their ID3 tags is a priority, then you will have to stick to the iRiver software.

Easy slot in mechanism for the U10's telly cradle.

The redeeming factor for the U10 is that it offers flexibility by allowing both navigation through ID3 tags and tree directory browsing. So tracks downloaded from another computer can be playable immediately, though it will not be viewable under ID3 tag categories.

The U10 also comes with one of the most interesting cradle designs we have seen so far. Though priced at a relatively steep S$119, the cradle is a television-shaped device which comes with a pair of in-built stereo speakers and an infrared remote. The cradle also adds both line-in and line-out functionality to the U10. Another quirky feature is that the cradle allows the player to be turned into a real digital alarm clock with a snooze button. It is amusing to see that iRiver has bundled additional alarm tones like the sound of a lark and a chirping cicada besides the options of using MP3s and FM radio. The downside is that there is no way to sample the alarm tones before we set the alarm itself.

Performance

	CNET Asia's top tunes.

As a flash player, the U10 impresses with a sterling 28 hours of battery life in our drain tests, though the transfer rate is a sluggish 1.98MB per second using a drag-and-drop interface, while via the iRiver plus 2 software, it is an even slower 1.42MB per second.

On the sonic stakes, the U10 is an even performer with a faithful rendition of Diana Krall's I Don't a Ghost of a Chance with You. We detected a slight sibilance in the vocals and bassy undertones are not as adequately articulated on Massive Attack's Angel.