Monday, May 12, 2008

Iriver E100, The Review












Here it is, the iRiver E100 review. No need to hide it any longer, the E100 is an excellent product. Very well built and, at a price of 129€ for the 8GB version, it's as good as it gets.


Content
:
Open the box of your brand new E100 and you'll find the usual suspects: player, a USB cable, audio headset, quick start guide, and installation CD. The USB cable can be used to recharge the player and also to transfer files from your computer to the E100 (pictures, videos, music...). The installation CD carries a couple of software including iRiverPlus3, also the drivers and the user's manual.

Design
:
Hate it or Love it, the design of the E100 is pretty slick and simple, nice at first touch. On its top lies the microSD port, the bottom is where the USB port was placed as well as the jack (in line). The E100 is available in three versions 2GB, 4GB, and 8GB five colors (white, black, pink, light blue and chocolate). At only 59 grams and 11.3mm of thickness, it can be easily transported.

Interface:
The E100's graphical interface is nice and clean, browsing is ultra easy from icon to icon thanks to the D-Click system which, unfortunately, tends to take a little bit of time to react.

Audio:
As you can expect with an iRiver product, most audio codecs are supported. MP3, WMA, OGG, ASF, FLAC, all with excellent audio quality no matter which you use (headset or built in speakers). Part of this success comes from the use of the SRS WOW HD technology.

Video:
The E100 can play MPEG4/WMV9/XVID and, despite a rather small screen (2.4"), the experience is pretty good in both visual quality and smoothness. iRiverPlus3 software can be used to encode videos.

Photo:
Photo display is also very enjoyable, fast and easy thanks to the D-Click system. The E100 also gives the user the ability to create slideshows and add music to them.

Other functions:
The E100 can do more than what we've seen so far, some extras include FM Radio (play/record and timer recording), voice recorder (through an integrated microphone), a recording function from an external source, plus .txt file compatibility.

Autonomy:
iRiver previously stated that video autonomy was 5 hours and audio 17 hours but, in their latest update, video autonomy remained unchanged while audio went up to 25 hours.

Plus:
+ Excellent audio quality
+ D-Click system
+ MicroSD port
+ MTP/UMS (the player is detected as an external drive)
+ Price to quality ratio
+ All around player (Audio, Vidoo, Photo, Text, FM radio, voice recorder)
+ Design

Minus:
- No Bluetooth
- Battery Life in Video mode
- D-Click sometimes lacks reactivity



source akihabaranews.com

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