The H10 - What a Beauty! (Iriver H10 5 GB)

Member Name: NMJP

Product:	Iriver H10 5 GB
Date:	26/07/05 (363 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Size, capacity, design, features - sound quality!

Disadvantages: Screen size, included accessories

Summary:

I waited for my H10 to be imported with what I think was one of the first batches into the UK. It was worth the wait!

I spent several months wrestling with all the options, sizes, makes, models, specs etc and finally shortlisted 3 or 4 players. The Iriver H10, the Creative Zen Micro, the Apple iPod Mini and the Mpio HD300. I finally settled on the Iriver - why? Read on and find out.

Likes:

- Sound quality

- It's small and lightweight

- It has all the features I needed

- The photo viewer

- Reasonably priced

- Regular firmware updates

- It's not an Apple!

- It's not an Apple! (oops said it twice - must mean it)

Dislikes:

- The colour screen, although novel at the time, is rather small. Reasonable quality though.

- The in-built text viewer can only show text in one font size so is almost useless for any serious 'reading'. I use it for lists of things that are useful to have on you. (I don't have a PDA or feature rich mobile phone - yet)

- Limited accessories included

- The supplied headphones. Suppose to be good quality but I found they di not stay in my ears. I bought 'in ear' replacements.

- The music management software (Iriver Plus) - not good but you can always wait for upgrades to improve it or use that other one - you know the one that 'comes' with MS-Windows - MS Windows Media Player.

Specification:

I'm not going to list the whole spec' here but the important things are:

- 4GB hard disk (not filled mine yet)
- FM radio (it works well)
- Colour screen (ok but could have been bigger)
- Text viewer (ok but could have been better)
- Photo Viewer (ok but the screen is rather small)
- Pre-set equaliser settings (some good pre-sets)
- 1 customer equaliser setting (would be better with more)
- Acts like USB hard disk (no special software needed)
- Line-in recording (I've recorded some tracks off old tapes [not likely to play anything not digital anyway] - the recordings are amazing [I used a fairly good Hi-Fi tape deck to play the tapes though]

Accessories (I've bought):

- Docking cradle (you'll need this if you want to charge a spare battery and connect a line-in [looks after your player on your desk as well of course])
- Spare battery
- In-line remote control (still waiting for this though)
- A leather carry pouch (don't want the beautiful things getting damaged now do we)

Summary: Good design, good sound quality, some things could be better

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