Features * Plays up to 600 hours of digital music* * 20GB of internal storage * Large, vivid color display * Ultra-fast USB 2.0 transfers * Supports secure transfers from Windows Media PlayerTM** * Rechargeable battery lasts up to 16hrs * View JPEG or BMP images * Built-in FM tuner * Integrated voice recorder * Record music from any audio source(no PC required) * Supports MP3, WMA, ASF and OGG music files * Store or transfer files of any type * Enhanced 3D audio Packed With * iRiver earphones * Carrying case * USB 2.0 cable * Audio line-in cable * Installation CD * AC adapter *Up to 600 hours of music using Windows Media format at 64kbps. 1GB equals 1,000,000,000 bytes, not all memory space available for file storage. **Windows Media Player version 10.0 and higher. Accessories may differ from photos. iRiver is a registered trademark of iriver Limited in Korea and/or other countries and is used under license. Microsoft Windows Media and the Windows logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. Mac is a registered trademark of Apple Computer, Inc. All other brand and product names are trademarks of their respective companies or organizations. Manufactured by iRiver.
1 Beats out all competition
This iRiver really blew away my expectations. It really does come packed with features and since everyone has to compare it to the iPod (including myself), I have to say it is a better buy. A friend of mine has the 4th Generation 20GB iPod so we compared our two players in terms of features, etc.
First off, things I like about the iRiver. It looks great. The carbon fiber look is very unique and will catch attention. While it is slightly heavier than the iPod, it makes up for that with extra features. Here's a list of a few things the iRiver has that the iPod does not:
-Color screen
-Radio
-Longer battery life
-Video playback (not sure about this one).
(I've heard from many it can playback videos but when I tried upgrading the firmware myself, it wouldn't work for me.)
My one and only major complaint about the iRiver H320 is the boot-up time, it takes a good 15-20 seconds whereas my friend's iPod powers up in seconds. This can prove rather annoying if you ever need to turn it off for a few minutes, and also there is no standby feature. I'm sure this flaw is made up for in saved battery life, so all-in-all this MP3 player is a superb buy and I recommend it. I, myself actually got the 40GB version free!
Go here:
http://tinyurl.com/8mt4y
Sign up and complete any of the free-trial offers (I recommend Stamps.com, make sure your browser accepts cookies!), refer some friends to do the same and you get a free iRiver! Check out their Member Gallery for dozens of people who have received their gifts. E-mail me with any questions.
2 Awesome Hard Drive/ MP3 Player
The iRiver H320 hard drive/ MP3 player is definitely something great to have. I personally felt that it was better than the iPod because of the color screen, image viewer, FM radio, and recorder. On the H320, I didn't like how there are two places for a USB connection. One connection is called "data," which makes the player show as a hard drive on the computer for regular file storage. The other is entitled "media," which is for synchronization with Windows Media Player 10. I just wonder why they couldn't make one USB connection so that a user wouldn't have to switch to use the H320 as a hard drive or for synchronization. The line in/out feature is good. You can record from and external analog source or even connect another pair of headphones. The player comes with software that updates the database on the player. No drivers are required for its use. Just connect it using the "data" port. I do not know about its compatibility with online music sources-I bought music from walmart.com and doesn't seem to synchronize with the player. Windows Media 10 tells me that I need a security upgrade, but it doesn't download! At first using the player was very confusing. There are only a certain number of buttons that mean multiple things depending on the mode or option that you are in. It takes a little while to learn about what everything means. My H320 takes 15 seconds to load with about half of the 20GB filled. The music organization isn't the best. The player has the options of a file tree like in Windows Explorer to find music, by artist, by album, or by genre. Since I have about 2000 songs I still find that I have to do a lot of scrolling to find what I want. I wish that there were a search by name feature. Making play lists was hard at first. It seems that you can only use Winamp to create play lists, because there is not play list on the go feature. Play lists can only be made out of mp3 files! The FM radio is nice, and has many settings, including the country. The reception is all right, depending on your location. I like the fact that you can record in mp3 from the radio and from other outside sources. There is also a text viewer, but only in the .txt format from Notepad. The EQ/SRS settings are cool. It is user friendly. There are many different settings that you can use for bass, treble, etc. There are also multiple play modes like random, repeat, etc. The LCD is nice and bright, but viewing pictures is another story. Pictures can only be under 1MB in size, and they load slower as the size becomes greater! The recorder is ok for recording speeches, discussions, and music from outside sources such as the radio and external CD players, mp3 players, etc. It is not good for recording live music! The internal microphone can't handle the different frequencies of sound, making the recorded sound become distorted. I guess if you connect a good external mic, it might be perfect. Overall, the player is good. It is a little on the heavy side, and slightly chunky. The case makes it even bulkier. The player itself can be compared to a deck of cards. I wasn't happy with the double USB connection, picture viewer, and recorder, and the music searching. I was impressed with the capacity, color screen, options, and radio. The fact that it had more features and the same size capacity as the Apple iPod made it my choice. There is no scroll wheel, but the button configuration is good. All of the buttons are flat, which requires that you keep pressing or holding the down or up buttons to find what you want. Pressing a button once has a function, while, if you hold the same button down, it brings you to another different option. Anyway, I felt that this definitely was worth my $296.40. I would recommend it for users who want to carry all of their music collection around all of the time. It is good for use that does not require a lot of physical movement, because there are moving parts within the player! -Written by fet4.
3 Disappointing
After having sold my prized Sony MZR910 MD recently to purchase the H320 I was furious to discover that there seems to be pure laziness and/or stupidity on behalf of iRiver in that it does not have gapless playback. This means that if you listen to dance mixes there is an annoying gap between files when there should be a seamless transition from one track to the next.
Apparently this has been broached with iRiver by others but as yet they havent moved to fix this repairable annoyance by issuing the relevant firmware upgrade.
The only things a device needs to be able to do are:
a) Decode music slightly faster than real-time, so that the next track can be buffered up properly while the current one is still playing. (All MP3 players have CPUs capable of doing that these days.)
b) For MP3 files, support the standard LAME-encoder tag which specifies the exact length of each track. (Other formats have always had this tag.)
Only one device I konow of doesnt have this annoying feature and thats the RIO Karma - wish Id known about this before I purchased.
Marco
4 H320 Is Awesome
I have had my H320 for a month. I love this thing. These HDD Media Players have to be one of the most revolutionary products created in the last decade.....and Iriver makes the best ones.
This thing beats the hell out of the ipod. First of all it has a color screen and photo support. It uses windows explorer for file transfers so there is no additional sw needed.
Go to www.misticriver.net, an Iriver enthusiast site/forum. Here you can learn about ways to increase the capabilities including customizing the theme and even playing avi videos!!!!
5 Fantastic MP3 player
I LOVE this thing. It sounds great. It looks great. It performs fantastic. I bought the previous model and took it back after 3 weeks when I heard this one was coming out. The first one was great, this one I like even better.
If you pinned me down, I guess I might complain that occassionally you will hear the same song within a couple of hours under the "shuffle" play mode.
I travel a lot for work so having all of my music and being able to keep pictures of my family on there is really nice. The pics are small, but you can't have everything, especially for something so small. If the pics are a very large size, though, sometimes it akes awhile to pop up.
I'd recommend this to anyone.
