What is this?
Another portable manufacturer has jumped on the multifunction portable bandwagon. iRiver has introduced the U10, which supports MP3s, WMAs, ASF, OGG, JPG, TXT, Flash Lite 1.1 and MPEG-4 SP video at 320x240 (QVGA). It also features an FM tuner with recording and alarm functions. An equalizer with 10 presets is included.
iriver U10 1GB ReviewNovember 16th, 2005
Pros: Multi-function extravaganza; tiny, excellent interface and controls; superb battery life.
Cons: Limited to 512MB or 1GB; expensive; video limited to 15fps in a single format.
Verdicts: Ultra-cool and ultra-capable, but the limited storage capacity makes it hard to justify the price.
Words cannot express how nifty the iriver U10 is. Between playing your music, videos, photo albums, and games this ultra-portable flash based player stands its ground no matter the occasion. Oh wait, I guess words CAN describe the U10 (512MB reviewed), because we managed to write an entire review about it! Read on...
U10 Design Sleek, stylish, simple, and small, these are all words befitting of iRiver's latest ultra-portable media player, the iriver U10. At 2.7" x 1.8" x 0.6" and weighing only 2.5 ounces, it's simply astonishing how tiny the U10 really is. The footprint is smaller than a business card!
The iriver U10's design is very modern and sleek, with an all white body topped off with a black faceplate surrounding a 320x240 QVGA color screen. Unlike other MP3 players, no room on the face was reserved for navigation controls, making the sole point of interest the screen itself. Instead, navigation is accomplished by grasping the bordered edges of the screen and literally clicking it in one of four directions, as if it were a directional pad on a video game console. iriver calls this the D-Click system, and it's very smart.
If they were to opt for an actual touch screen instead, you'd have to think twice before stuffing it in your pocket, and you'd lose the tactile feeling when skipping tracks. What little controls there are on the sides - power, volume, rotate, and the hold switch - are mostly flat to cast an aesthetically smooth appearance. Put these together, and you get a control set that is a far cry easier than what the H10 had to offer.
Using the U10
The interface of the iriver U10 is fairly straightforward. Once powered on, a menu will appear with various functions of the player in vertical list. Press up or down on the D-Click pad to scroll through them, and then click right to select descend into that menu or select a feature. Clicking left will go back a menu, while holding left will go to the main menu. Similarly, holding right will descend into the Now Playing screen for music.
Arrows on all four sides of the screen light up to show in which directions navigation is possible, a feature that can optionally be turned off. In the top left hand of the corner is a small clock next to the alarm indicator, and on the right are play-mode indicators and a small representation of the battery life remaining.
The background for the menus changes by default for every day of the week, rotating through different colored gradients. Optionally, this can also be set to a single gradient regardless of the day, or set to a 320x240 photo loaded onto the iriver U10.
By default, the orientation of the U10 is landscape and is best controlled by two hands, although by pressing the rotate button on the side, the screen will switch into portrait mode (240x320) for a more ergonomic one-handed layout. This works for nearly every feature of the iriver U10 with the exception of videos and games.
Media en masse Underneath the simplicity of the interface and design of the U10 lie a number of multimedia features, making it one of the most capable players on the market. As a music jukebox, the iriver U10 provides support for MP3, OGG, and WMA files - including DRM-10 protected ones purchased from online services such as Napster. Unfortunately, there's no support for unprotected AAC files, and OGG tracks need to be navigated to separately from the rest of the music via the browse menu.
The usual MP3 and WMA files however can be organized into playlists and then synchronized through Windows Media Player 10 to the U10 like most other devices out there. Additionally, songs may be added into a "Quick List" for on-the-go organization, rated, or enhanced with on 13 equalizer options including SRS WOW and user-defined (five bands). There's no support for displaying album artwork, although this may be addressed in a firmware update.
Not sure what to play next? Let someone else decide, and tune into the FM radio. Up to twenty presets can be specified, and if you're in an area that's not swamped with stations you can optionally autoscan the waves for strong signals and map them to presets. It's not possible to use an Equalizer preset on a live broadcast, although you could record a song from the radio and apply an EQ after it's been recorded. FM recordings are encoded as MP3s with a 128kbps bitrate at 44.1KHz, stereo.
Alternatively, you can also take notes and record bootlegs of concerts with the built-in pinhole mic, recording at a more compressed 64kbps. What's more, if you actually shell out for the U10 docking station you can record from a Line-In jack to rip from CDs and tapes. These recordings, along with your regular set of music and a variety of "beeps" can then be used for the built-in alarm clock.
More media en masse And that's just the beginning. The iriver U10 can also display TXT files, and autoscroll through them at a configurable pace. Okay, so maybe straining your eyes to read an entire novel on a 2.5" LCD isn't the best idea, but it'd be suitable for to-do lists and news briefs, no doubt.
Of course, what good is a color screen if it can't keep you entertained for a good five minutes? That's right; I'm talking about games, iriver having included no less than six of them from a few developers on the U10. You can't listen to music while playing them, but that's okay because they all have their own little sound effects.
Launch Fighters A neat remake of Space Invaders.
Log Jam Keep the fat lumberjack from falling off a log!
Barn Baron Fly around collecting medals then land without crashing.
Puzzle Creates a 4x3 sliding puzzle of any picture stored on the iriver U10.
Sudoku I wish I knew...
Tracking An addicting remake of Simon.
It's possible that additional games will eventually come out from the U10 too, as all the games are based on the open Macromedia Flash Lite platform, with a CDK supposedly available (meaning I couldn't find it) at iriver's website.
Even MORE media en masse Take lots of photos? The iriver U10 can also play back picturelists created in iriver picture plus. These will automatically be rotated and scaled to make the most of the color display. Pictures can be selected and scanned through manually, or viewed as a slide show with an optional cross-dissolve transition effect. Images displayed looked vibrant and colorful, although darker shades of black seemed patchy and pixelated, a trait common on many smaller LCDs today.
What really makes the iriver U10 stand out however is its ability to play video. Well, sorta. The U10 is only capable of playing MPEG-4 Simple Profile video at 320x240, and while the manual documents real well the specifications of video needed and how to transfer it onto the U10, they don't say a word about how to transcode video to meet those specifications. Sorry, but unless you actually like taking helpdesk calls, you probably don't want to be buying these as gifts for your average Joe Sixpack. But rather than leave you in the dark, here's a quick walk-through for transcoding video suitable for playback on the U10.
Download and install iriverter (http://iriverter.sourceforge.net/)
Launch the program
Set the default device to Archos Gmini under Options > Device
Set the video bitrate to 384, and the audio bitrate to 128 under Options > Bitrate
Set the video size to 320x240
Set the framerate to 15.000 Kbps
Click the Single Video button and specify the video to be converted, and its output name.
Convert!
It takes about 22 minutes to encode a full-length movie (Tremors 4) on my Athlon 64 3800+ computer, and the resulting movie takes up about 376MB of space - about 3.7MB per minute. That's pretty good, but when you remember that the iriver U10 only comes in either 512MB or a 1GB configuration, that’s a fairly large chunk of space that could be used for playing MP3s.
Also, in case you didn't notice in the walk-through, video is limited to 15 frames per second. In contrast, Hollywood film runs at 24fps and television at 30fps. Still, the resulting video is great for animation and most television shows, but it stinks for action sequences. It should also be noted here that I managed to get my iriver U10 to crash while fast forwarding through an episode of Robot Chicken, which then crashed again every time I tried to resume playback. The only way to resolve this was by pushing a paperclip into the reset pin-hole and then clearing all settings. I was unable to reproduce the problem, so it's probably not that big of a deal.
Performance
To give you a feel of the speed (or lack of rather) for transferring items to the iriver U10, I took the 376MB (Tremors 4, 101 minutes) video I encoded for the U10 and uploaded it via Windows Explorer. The transfer took two minutes and thirty one seconds to complete, which equates to 19.97Mbps. Because smaller files always transfer slower than large ones, I repeated the test by copying over three albums (30 Seconds to Mars, Mezmerize, and Who Made Who) encoded as MP3 with mixed bitrates. Put together, that's 32 songs totaling 171MB. The transfer took one minute twenty six seconds to complete via Windows Media Player, averaging 15.86Mbps. Just as a comparison, USB 1.1 is 12Mbps so obviously speed isn't a great selling point for the U10.
Battery life on the U10 however is excellent. While you can't swap out packs like the iriver H10 or Creative Zen Micro, but the 28-hour battery life (I got 30:16 actually) is more than enough to get you through two days of use before charging and is great for travel. When playing back video, I was able to get 5:01 of battery life - very nice.
Recap In the end, I was left with good impressions of the iriver U10. iriver did a superb job designing the interface, the features are abundant, music sounds great, and being able to play games or watch Adult Swim cartoons during class breaks - well it doesn't get much better than that. The only thing that gets me about the U10 is its lack of storage capacity. Considering this is meant to hold video, it'd be more reasonable if iriver could bump the storage capacity to 2GB and drop the price a little to better position itself against the competition. The iriver U10 is recommended, but not the 512MB version.
- Scott Clark - Consumer Technology Editor
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User Review(s)
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