iriver S10 1GB MP3 Player Review

How small? Take a look at it yourself.

The S10 is only half the height of a US quarter.

S10 Really Denotes Small... Creative Zen Plus V in comparison here.

The micro form factor doesn't diminish the usability of the controls however, thanks to the wonderful interface known as D-Click that iriver introduced with the U10. In a nutshell, there are no surface buttons on the topside, leaving plenty of room for the screen. Navigation is accomplished by actually pressing on the four edges of the screen, emitting a satisfyingly tactile click. Clicking up or down scrolls through menus, clicking right moves into a submenu or selects an item, and clicking left goes back. Holding left goes to the main menu, holding right goes into the Now Playing screen or into the advanced menus. There's no need for a user manual here.

The S10 inherits U10 (Clix in USA) D-Click navigation.

The only other controls on the S10 are the power button and volume buttons on the longer sides of the player. Unlike the U10 and clix, there is no hold switch because, surprise!, the S10 is designed to be worn around your neck. After all, if you're considering buying one it's obviously for style not function, so why not show it off to the world? And no, this isn't really an option anyway, as when in my pocket I'd find that the tracks would skip unintentionally just by walking.

Scott wearing the S10...
(The models at I4U are a better choice for model in this photo.)

On the backside just below the headphone port is a small indent for the bundled lanyard headphones to snap into, providing a secure fit you won't have to worry about during a brisk jog. The only downside to this is the S10 will lean slightly since the headphone port isn't centered. There's also a loop hole in the center for attaching to a lanyard if you prefer your own headphones, which I'd most likely recommend over the bundled earbuds anyway.

S10's loophole and headphone jack.

Dangling Vibrancy
The centerpiece of the S10's D-Click system is the 1.15" OLED display, blazingly bright and filled with color. Apart from the improved brightness and longer battery life compared to an LCD display, the OLED boasts an 180° viewing angle, so everyone can see what you're showing off no matter where they're standing. While there are no themes for the S10, the menu icons are well thought out, in gradients of contrasting color on a black background with a subtle reflection that doesn't get old.

Of course, menu icons aren't the only things for show on the S10. Pictures can be transferred to the S10 in bitmap format up to 96x128 for viewing as a slideshow, or for use as a screensaver while the music plays. As is typical with most small displays, darker colors appear blotchy, however what really strikes me as odd is the fact that custom photos, especially those of people appear to have a hint of sepia in them when viewed on the S10's display. It's not noticeable at a distance, although the fact I know about it still annoys me.

In addition to pictures, the S10 can display a digital clock in minimalist (dull gray), day/night, or aqua themes, or a head-turning spectrum visualizer with 9 columns of dancing beads in a rainbow of color. As an afterthought, the display can be rotated 180° for viewing upside down, but not 90° for landscape viewing.

Now because the S10 is a fashion statement, I decided to run two battery tests - one standard test with the backlight set to automatically turn off, and one for it to always be on, at medium brightness. Both tests involved almost a gig's worth of MP3s at mixed bitrates and medium volume set to shuffle, without any manual track skipping. With the backlight off, I was able to attain 7.5 hours of battery life, close enough to iriver's claimed 8 hours. Leaving the backlight on for all to see, this dropped dramatically to 4 hours, 15 minutes. Good enough for a short night on the town, but not long enough to satisfy my craving for a day's worth of bling.

Listening Experience
The S10 supports iriver's typical formats, including MP3, WMA, ASF and OGG Vorbis up to Q10. Unlike many of iriver's other players the S10 does not have a catalog, so sorting through tracks by their ID3 tags is not possible. Rather, tracks must be organized by folders up to 8 levels deep. On the plus side, this means you don't have to worry about being restricted to a single jukebox on the PC, as there's no proprietary catalog requiring support.

Also typical of iriver's other DAPs is the inclusion of SRS WOW sound enhancement on the S10, allowing for some really nifty sounding effects to spruce up otherwise dull tracks. Field width, TruBass, Focus, and Freq. Boost are all present, however 3D sound is noticeably absent. Alternatively, one may use a custom five-band equalizer, or simply turn off audio enhancements for additional battery life.

Unfortunately, the stock lanyard earbuds sound terrible without the assistance of SRS or the equalizer. Although the sound is clean, the midtones are overemphasized to the point it fatigues my ears, and there's a definite lack of bass. They can be brought back up to speed using SRS with TruBass set to 6 or more, but personally I'd rather iriver included a better pair of earbuds. Another complaint, there's no support for album art, something I think would look rather nice on the bright OLED.

More than MP3
While not as powerful as its clix and U10 cousins, the S10 is indeed more advanced than other micro MP3 players on the market when it comes to raw features. First, there's the picture support, which I already discussed. Second, there's an FM radio that gets surprisingly good reception for the small size. It even works globally with region support for Europe, Japan, Korea, and the States.

Third, there's an alarm clock function that can be set to ring an alarm, as well as schedule recordings on a recurring basis. Recordings may be outputted as MP3s in 3 different quality settings of 64kbps, 128kbps, and 256kbps.

Lastly, there's a voice recorder, which also outputs to MP3, but with lower bitrates of 32kbps, 64kbps, and 128kbps since voice recordings generally don't necessitate higher bitrates.

Games, text, contacts and calendars are not on the list of features, and due to the micro size you won't find me shedding a tear for them either.

Music Management
As mentioned earlier, the S10 has no catalog for sifting through songs by ID3, relying totally on folder categorization as MP3 CD players do. iriver states that the S10 allows for a maximum depth of 8 folders, with 500 folders total and a maximum of 900 songs. Since the S10 is essentially a USB Mass Storage (UMS) device not burdened by anything proprietary (for the most part), it's possible to use the S10 on Mac, PC, and Linux systems without having to worry about installing drivers. Just drag and drop your songs as you would onto a flash drive.

Several play modes exist to better control the folder based organization on the S10. In normal mode, the S10 will simply play files alphabetically, automatically moving onto the next folder. Folder mode will restrict play to a specific folder at the bottom of the tree. Unfortunately this mode can't apply to mid-level folders, which would be useful for listening to all songs by a particular artist if organized by X:\Music\Artist\Album, as Artist is not the last directory. Repeat can be used for single songs, all songs, and all songs in a specific folder. Finally, Shuffle and Shuffle + Repeat can be used for all songs and all songs in a particular folder.

Music Transfer
Instead of slowly dragging files to the S10 in Explorer, it's also possible to use a more traditional media player and transfer songs in a streamlined interface. iriver includes their new iriver plus 3 software, and it's almost as lousy as version 2 was. Never mind the fact it couldn't import all of my MP3s the first time without any error message; the number of missing features that are practically standard on every other player are enough of a reason to yawn at it. First and foremost, you can't rip CDs to the widely supported MP3 format, just OGG and WMA. Visualizers, smart playlists, a mini control window or toolbar, and streaming radio are also absent. As for album art, it doesn't get any larger than a buddy icon. For shame. Sadly the only thing this player is useful for in my opinion is updating the S10's firmware should a new version be released.

The only other reason to use iriver plus 3 would be its native support for the proprietary PLA playlist format, as the S10 does not support M3U or PLS playlists. However, there is hope, as doing a quick search in Google for "iriver pla playlist m3u" will turn up a couple programs in Windows and a few Python scripts in Linux that can convert M3U and PLS playlists to the iriver PLA format and back. Another useful trick is simply holding right on the D-Pad on any music item to add it to the "Quick List", an on-the-go playlist.

Users such as myself who prefer using one Jukebox for everything may prefer using Windows Media Player, WinAmp, or iTunes with the iTunes Agent plug-in (SyncTunes for Mac users), all of which can support the S10 as a generic UMS device.

Loading the S10 with 149 songs (approximately 943MB or 1.5 hours worth in mixed bitrates) took 4m:56s from start to finish, averaging around 25.4Mbps. While nothing spectacular, this is about average for a low capacity flash based unit, and fast enough considering it will only take around 10 minutes to fully load a 2GB unit.

USB connector seems so big now.

Recap
iriver has a winner on their hands for the sexiest ultra-compact MP3 player. A vibrant color OLED display with a 180° viewing angle and easy to use D-Click navigation system make for a player that's easy on the eyes and thumbs, while the SRS WOW enhancements liven up the audio on the stock earbuds. Although the battery life could be considered weak against other players, I think the 7.5 hours of life (4.25 with the display always on) should be enough to get you through the day.

Granted, the folder-based organization does hinder the S10 a bit, but at the same time it opens it up for use with other media players and operating systems... something I'm very thankful for since iriver's bundled media player is beyond pitiful. In the end, the S10 makes for a great fashion statement, although users looking for more bang for the buck should be looking at iriver's cheaper and more capable clix player instead.

By Scott Clark, Consumer Technology Editor