iRiver iMP50 MP3 / CD Player with Car Adapter

The iMP-50 combines renowned iRiver audio quality with the unique engineering of the world's first inverted CD loading system. It plays the CDs you've burned with hundreds of your favorite songs as well as your collection of standard music CDs.

The innovative iMP-50 comes stacked to the gills with features like broad format compatibility, pre-buffering anti-skip protection, firmware upgradeability, a graphic LCD with multi-language display, and packet-write format readability so the player can double as a hard-drive extension (using data CD-RWs).

The player supports music CDs, home-made CD-R and CD-RW with MP3, WMA (Windows Media Audio), multi-session discs (discs burned at different points over time), and Microsoft's Advanced Systems Format (ASF). New formats such as AAC, MP3 Pro, and so on can be supported in the future through a simple firmware upgrade. The iMP-50 also supports Winamp playlists as long as they use the file extension *.m3u (maximum 20 lists).

The player gives you a healthy four minutes anti-skip protection for MP3 and WMA files. By applying iRiver's own special algorithm, the iMP-50 provides better performance against shock than standard anti-skip algorithms. At the same time, iRiver maximizes protection at the beginning of songs through pre-buffering.

The iMP-50's graphic LCD that supports multiple languages, including English, French, Spanish, German, Italian, other alphabet-oriented fonts, Korean, Japanese (Katakana, Hiragana, and Kanji), and others. It supports a total of 36 languages.

With MP3 and WMA files, the iMP-50 can play for 16 hours on two AA alkaline batteries (supplied) or seven hours with audio CD playback. Additional formats such as AAC, MP3 Pro, and so on may be supported in the future through a simple firmware upgrade.

Eight equalizer presets, a custom EQ mode, and separate electronic bass and treble controls are all at your disposal when it comes to tailoring the sound to your taste or compensating for speakers, headphones, or listening environment. A hold switch prevents unintended interruptions in playback and saves batteries by negating playback when the player is stopped. Other features include repeat and shuffle play, resume, bookmarking, sound fade in, intro scan, and track programming.

What's in the Box
CD player, earphones, car cassette adapter, 2 AA batteries, and a user's manual.

1 good buy, but not an all-purpose player
I've been using the iMP-50 off-and-on for about a year. Here are some suggestions:

1. Stick with disposable alkalines. This unit seems to need 3 volts. Fully charged NiMh start with a lower voltage, and you won't get much play-time. You will experience low-voltage symptoms almost immediately, and will end up spending ages waiting for your disks to load. The NiMh cells will lose additional charge between use. Remember, this unit is not built to handle frequent cell-swapping.

2. Use external power for playing standard CDs. Battery-life when playing uncompressed audio is pretty bad, and gets worse if you skip tracks and swap disks.

2. Make sure that the battery door is fully engaged. When new, the door can "click" closed, but still not be latched. Check it visually.

3. You may have problems reading some CD-R audio that work fine on other players. Every CD-R I've bought from performers is unreadable, though copies I've burned myself work ok.

4. Anti-shock seems fine. The default 10 seconds for CDs is good enough for driving on rough roads.

Overall, if you stick with MP3, and use disposable alkalines, the iMP-50 is a handy device.

2 Works for me
Still using v1.00 firmware that shipped with it. Had it for about 9 months now.

Remembers where you are in 10 cds, which what I need for audiobooks. Seems to handle any bit rate. No problems with mine, except that it occasionally locks up when I fast forward too fast several tracks at a time. But has a +20 track feature that I should use instead. Buttons are little hard to figure at first, but after a few days no problem. Does MP3 ID3 tags, display a little small, but ok. Takes a little while at first track, maybe 12 secs, but ok after that. No AC ps, but has car stuff. Ear buds that come with it are ok, but plan on buying something else to suit your ears/taste.

Also got Sony CD Walkman belt case CD Case3, about 10 bucks. iRock Beamit, $30 bucks Rat Shack, sends to any FM radio. Use 4 2000mAH NiMH batts from WalMart. Swap out 2 at a time. A pair
lasts about 5 days at about an 1 1/2 hour a day.

3 not great for car usage
i got this cd player for my half hour commute to work. It's a great price, but the design is inconvienant. to change cd's you have to turn the player over on it's back. the battery cover opens quit frequently and subsequently ends up scratching the hell out of cd's- because the unit continues to spin the cd.

however the battery life is much better than my old cd player that was about 13 years old. the buttons are different sizes- so it's easy to feel out what button you want to push... but it's still a little awkward. it's a great price and the sound is good quality. i just took away 2 stars because it's not very utilitarian for road warriors.

4 A so-so player that works, but...
I bought this thru Amazon & with rebate, it only came out to around $30. The main useage for this unit is at work , hooked to an ac adapter & a set of Monsoon speakers. It seemed to have a lot of options as far as the display & flexibility to handle both mp3 & wma format (although I never use/have any wma)
Build wise, it feels cheap. The door (which is on the bottom, and ends up being much more of a nuisance that I originally thought it would be)moves around on it's hinges. Major hassle to reload discs. Sound quality is fine, but it seems to have major trouble reading discs that play flawlessly in my other players. You can hear that skriiitching noise is it tries to find it's way.
I only used it a few times on batteries, and as reported by many others, 16 hours per set playing mp3 is a dream (or better yet, a myth) I had updated the firmware from the iRiver website, but did not notice any improvements. So in summing up this player...I guess I got what I paid for. A cheap player.

5 I'm ready to buy another mp3 player!
Battery life is terrible! I've never had a another mp3 player before, so maybe others are worse, but I use this for gym workouts of maybe an hour or so, and the batts (good Powerex rechargeables) are OK for maybe two sessions, and after that you takes your chances! One of the reviews here mentioned that mp3 content has something to do with batt life. I archive my collection with 192kbps (anything really irreplaceable is kept as a .wav, but I've only been using mp3's with this player); I'm not a fussy audiophile, but anything below 192 is definitely noticeable, so why bother? Even worse, since you have to keep removing & recharging batts, is their location: you have to open up where the cd is (not all that ergonomically easy, either), pull the cd off its spindle, lay it down somewhere, then open the little batt door and pull 'em out. Hope the cd doesn't get scratched when I lay it down somewhere without having to go find a jewel case for it! Speaking of ergonomics, the control buttons are goofily laid out in semi-circular fashion, not intuitive to me at all. Guess some of you really buy stuff 'cause it looks nice or cute or whatever, so maybe you'll like this arrangement, but I didn't buy the unit to -duh- look at it. Another problem I have with this unit is lack of sound volume. Again, this is my first mp3 player, so I can't compare it with others, but I use Plane Quiet noise-cancelling headphones (I love them!), and sometimes I'll have to rerecord things with additional volume just so I can hear them easily. I think they could have provided more volume power. Oh, and one more thing--it skips sometimes, too.

6 Inaccurate information
The quality of the sound of this CD player is acceptable - The player is advertised as having a sixteen hour battery life, however I have never gotten more than six hours from the best AA batteries I could purchase and I am very disappointed with that. It significantly increases the price of owning and using this player. Also - the slightest shock makes the battery compartment pop open and the music stops.

7 WAY BETTER THAN AN iPOD!
I found this for only $39.99 and it's basically a small iPOD. This can hold about 10 hours of music on one CD, and CD's are interchangable, so you could carry around a case of them! Think about it: 700 MB for $40, or 40 GB for $400 plus accecories. With blank CD's at such cheap costs this is the best deal. I gave it four stars becuase it wont play my iTunes store music.

8 Very Nice Product!
I had a RioVolt SP90 for about 2 years now, still works great too, gave it to my brother, and i was in store to buy a new one.

After going through a ton of reviews for products, i came upon this, and at that excellent price, and all the positive comments here, i decided to choose this one.

Let me tell you, this thing is great! You get alot of options to tinker with, which are all easy to navigate thanks to the very detailed User Manual. It plays everything i've thrown at it so far, as far as Bit Rates are concerned. Nice volume too, my RioVolt didn't get very loud, this thing does though. I also upgraded to the 1.10 version firmware right away.

My only real gripes are the fact that the supplied ear buds suck (i have studio headphones i use anyway, so no big eal there). Also the car adapter doesn't come with the power plug, i wasn't planning on using the player in a car though (i have a Pioneer MP3 player in my car). Another couple minor things was the fact that the folder name doesn't scroll during playback, there's no backlight for the LCD, and you gotta load CD's in the bottom of the player is kinda wierd.

Well, in conclusion, this is WELL worth what there asking, a very nice MP3 player, no doubt. They coulda offered an AC Adapter along with it, but those can be easily purchased at Radio Shack for like $5. The cons are very little when compaired to the pros, i'm not gonna get into grave detail on the features, the supplied reviews covered all those pretty much.

9 Decent quality
It's been almost a month since we own this player.
It'll do everything it advertise it doing. It'll play MP3 CDs, Audio CDs and so on. In its daily use, it didn't skip at all. From the home-made CDs, it seems that it prefers the blue surface over any other colour.
My biggest complaints about this player are:
1) headphones are of medium to good quality (lack of bass frequencies)
2) because of this you actually do not hear the unit distorting sound over a certain level. Use of very good headphones makes distorsion clear (as also playing the unit through a powered amplifier)
3) complete lack of LINE OUT. This would eliminate / attenuate the distorsions above, and would make it easier to hook it up to the car's stereo (via included cassette adapter)
4) misleading run time on batteries. Although I believe their claims to be correct, people would be more interested in knowing playable time with good quality MP3 CDs (like 128kbps or above). Using this format, battery time is about 2 to 3 hours (average) with 4 hours peaks (I use Duracell 1.8 amperes rechargeable batteries). The battery indicator is of almost no use, as it recomputes its bar-level after each disk spin (read after each song). So, all of a sudden you'd have 1-2 bars when previously you had 3-4. Then, complete silence...
5) ergonomics: folks who designed the placement of the buttons probably never used the layout. The close proximity of Rev and Fwd to Play / Stop is confusing, as is the similarity in shape. There's nothing helpful about taking the standard WinAmp buttons layout and arranging it in a circle, except that's probably very cheap to shape. A better idea would have been to separate buttons by function (for instance Rev / Fwd in one place and Play / Stop in another).
For the money, this is an average unit. I would not buy one again, mostly because of the sound quality if anything else. It's not bad, but leaves a lot to be desired. Strangely, in the digital era I guess we are no longer used to think in Hi-Fi terms, and this is definitely not one of those.

10 Overall value for money, not all good though
Pros:
Excellent user menu. Nice customizations. Upgradable.
Excellent battery life.
Nifty features. Check product description for features. Stands up to description.

Cons:
No backlit LCD. Blind at night.
CD loads on reverse side. Can get pretty clumsy to change CDs.
Some MP3 CDs take a long time to load.

11 Not for Jogging
I bought the iRiver iMP50 for jogging. The anti-skip doesn't work well at all. Don't buy it for jogging.

I tried CD-R, CD-RWs, and regular CDs. Despite the anti-skip settings that I tried, it would not play more than about 5 mins without starting to skip. Then it never recovers properly. Even if I held it fairly still, a technique that works great with my 4-year old Panasonic player, it just continues to skip, play a second or two, then skip some more. In order to get it playing again, I had to stop completely and hold it perfectly still, or better yet, turn it off, then back on. Then it will play for another 5 mins (or 2 mins for regular music CDs).

Menu system is confusing. It takes a while to get used to, but if it would just work properly while jogging, I'd put up with that.

12 iMP-50 is a heck of a deal, no matter the complaints!
This puppy deserves a 4.5 really, because there is no such thing as perfect, but then again, for this price, this is a screamer.

What is important:

The sound quality is great, even with 128kbps MP3s, sound like regular CDs, and I am a picky former musician.

Price, well gee, this price for an iRiver is great, Thanks AMAZON, and you shipped it free, but so fast!

The headphone buds sorta suck, but they *are* free, and are easily better than anything in a discount shelf. This player deserves headphones with neodymium magnets to be really appreceated!

So many features! Man alive! There are plenty of others, that cost more, and don't have anywhere near the controls and adjustments available.

Firmware upgrade went easy as pie, you need a computer with a cd burner, but doing the upgrade is as simple as putting the burned disk in the player, hitting play, and leaving it alone until it shuts off after a few seconds.

With upgrade there are 8 EQ presets, and 3 user adjustable presets that can be done with base level and crossover settings, and then the same with the treble end. Pretty nice for a cheap toy (it doesn't deserve the title cheap, really)

Battery life with MP3s ain't too bad, just not nearly as much as they claim so far that I see, but I am still testing these puppies.

I have two of them, and both run great.

Loading the disks in the bottom/back of the drive is wierd, and the cover/back is a little bit flimsy, but within the scope of the price, and I don't really see it as an issue if you take care of it, but I would recommend getting a shoulder holder or something and not using it in the pocket to be safe...

On some of the weaker MP3s the volume will be just adequate, I hoped for a little more margin, but it is very acceptable.

Four line display a big plus, this player has all of the major features of their most expensive models, just not a remote, and no illumination and a few more things.

The free cassette adapter is a real plus, and considering the price, it is acceptable though a little bit sad that there is no car or home power adapter... But this *is* their entry level product, and they did a very respectable job, if you complain, you are asking for too much!

The buttons feel perfect and the placement isn't too bad.

With bass settings higher, it is good, even without the bass boost, though a bass boost button would be nice because each recording responds to the EQ settings a little bit different. I will take the great EQ over bass boost any day, though.

Anti shock not too great with cd, but with MP3-cd, wonderful, and both have 3 settings, off, medium time, long time based upon seconds.

I was able to setup the thing within a few minutes and it was fun in the doing. The manual is really pretty good, just an occasional Grammar error.

Get this puppy as a second player, an entry level player, a nice gift to a friend, a walk around that you won't cry over too much if lost or stolen, though the thief would be getting too good a thing.

This isn't a slim thing, but it is smaller than the photo makes it look like. Totally acceptable.

A very good product for a very low price.

Thanks Amazon and iRiver. I hope that they are good with the warranty, if so, this is a no brainer!

13 Great Player for Audiobooks
This player is the greatest player at the best price for audiobooks. It remembers exacly where you turned it off for the last 10 disks left in the player. Plays from 8Kbit to 196 Kbit MP3s.

Love this player, would have payed a lot more for it.

14 Not bad!
I bought this a week back. It had been working fine ever since! But today one of the head phone piece came off....so I just have one :-( They say it has a warranty; writing to them today. Lets c.Abt the batteries, i must've used it for close to 7 hrs...and haven't replced them as yet - I only played mp3's. As of today I feel the deal is good - cos from best buy for panasonic you pay $60 but it doesnt have the skip facility. Audio quality is good, havent used any toher features as yet..need to read the manual and start on that! More later

15 Suprised
I was shopping for a new mp3 player, but all the hard drive models have had such bad reviews about drive crashes. That left me with buying another flash memory model or a CD/CD-R/CD-RW model. I also needed the device to play WMA files.

For the price I figured I would give the iriver a shot. This thing has lots of great features for the price. Well worth it.

The construction could be a little more sturdy feeling. I don't want to know what is going to happen if I ever drop this thing. Other than that, I have been VERY happy with this product.

16 You get what you pay for!
I've had this player for about a week now and I must say... you get what you pay for! I would have given it no stars if I had that option! Sound quality is not very good! This player would be pretty good if it was free like something you get out of a box of cereal. Don't waste your money on this player! Get something a little bit more expensive! Needless to say I'm very disappointed in this purchase. I ALMOST FORGOT...IRIVER DO NOT HONOR THEIR REBATES!

17 Solid product, nice price.
This product (unlike others I've tried) does not skip when walking with it. True, the bottom feels a littly flimsy, but trust me this player will not open up or come loose. I've carried it around with me, and sometimes I keep it in my bag's front pouch...the headphone cord is just long enough for that.

pros:
-plastic body wont show scratches
-the player is very light, makes it easy to carry!
-the display is very informative...birate, track name, battery life and so many other options I've yet to master
-the size is also compact..too me, smaller then it looks in the picture (comparing it to my sony psych it's smaller and lighter)
-reads mp3 cds flawlessly and is pretty quiet too
-firmware upgradable (and very easy to do, just download from www.iriver.com and burn the 'hex' file onto a blank cd or cdr...this feature is good because as formats change in feature iriver will be on top of it
-comes with ear buds (average, nothing to write home about)
just to clarify, the headphone cord length is supposed to be one long and one short cuz you put the left cording around the back of your head so nothing dangles in front of you...it prevent tangles and is actually really cool..I just can't get the darn ear buds to stay in properly
-comes with car adapter (I have no interest in using this..but FYI does not come with the power charger, just the cassette thing (so you'd have to buy a power adapter or run on AA batteries in the car)
-has 1 year warranty...pretty decent
-comes with 2 AA duracell batteries

cons
-no AC power adapter to run it on at home (FYE sony AC 4.5V adapter works fine with this player, I have one from my sony portable cd player)...at ... it's around $
-no backlight...I know they did this to cut costs, but I would have liked it
-earphones are not too comfy in my ears and sound is nothing more then average (plan to upgrade)...
-LCD scratches easily (mine had small scratches out of the box..but nothing major

For amazon's sale price, this player does the trick. On mp3 cd's you can fit somewhere between 150 to 200 songs depending on the quality/file size...and I don't use wma but you can fit more using that format

Update: Battery life is acceptable. Seems to last between 10-12 hours...I don't think it's really the 16 advertised, but products always overshoot battery life. I am probably going to buy NiMH batteries because of the fact it's cheaper to recharge, then to keep buying batteries. With fairly regular use you'd be changing them at least once a week. Still a solid product. I run it from an AC adapter when I am doing hw at night. No problems like other ppl stated. And the battery indicator is in fact fickle (as one review says). It says the battery is fully charged when I know it isn't and then it indicates suddenly the battery is nearly out. This is the only flaw on the player, if it's even a big issue. Carry a spare set of batteries anyway. This player does not skip when the battery is low (someone else experienced this)...it plays fine until battery drains.

Hope this helps.

18 Good value
Works fine with my 52x-burned CDs.
The bottom cover is a bit flimsy.

Does this player actually support Chinese font display? I just received mine but there's no option in the language menu for Chinese.

Overall this is a pretty decent CD/mp3 player for the money.

19 A bang for the buck
The battery life is awesome(as long as you playback MP3 CDs). The headphones are okay, I only wish that the headphones cable/cord was longer. The setup menu is a bit clumsy and counter-intuitive, but you won't need to use it too often, so that's no biggie. The body is made of hard plastic, and isn't too sleek, but the player is suprisingly small and not too thick(as I expected from a cheapo gadget like this one).
Also, some parts of the manual are written poorly. For some reason, when I copied the playlist files to a separate directory on the CD, the player couldn't find and playback those files.I'd like to clarify that in order to burn the MP3 CD with M3U playlists(the ones generated by WinAmp player), you have to copy both the MP3 music files and the M3U playlist files to the same directory on the CD. Enjoy your purchase everyone.

20 Good Price + Good product = Great Buy
If you don't mind the long intial bootup time and bottom load, it is a very feature rich product.

Pros: Offers everything you need for a portable/car MP3 player except for car power adapter. Intelligent menu and options. For example, when power adapter plugged in, you can set it to output at higher volume. Great for the car cassette adapter and no need to adjust the volume between headphones and car cass. adapter. Great custom settings for equalizer. Great non-backlighted graphic/text LCD 4 line display and programmable play. Large buttons. Multilanguage.

Cons: Unfortunately, does not recharge batteries. Slightly flimsy lid. Shaky power adapter plug. Strange, additional text characters and graphic symbols only available when Korean Language is selected. Features make up for shortcomings.

...

Great sound from a player with 84 dec. S/N ratio. Lot better than the Audiophase MP3 player I bought at Best Buy (came with all accesories: cassette adapt., car power adapt., headphones and it recharges). Poor, lot of hissing in background, sound, no custom menus and no Tag Display from audiophase prompted me to return it. It also took a while to boot up.

iRiver compared to the Audiophase at the price, it is a total steal.

21 NOT SO GREAT
Hi all!!

Its an okay player.Many times it takes so much time to start playing that it gets really frustrating.Also it doesnt recognize disks which have been used for some time.It just stops sometimes
as it gets stuck.

Its got some cool features.But after this experience with CD players i definitely would go for Memory players in future(like Ipod).

Its so irritating to wait as this machine Whirrs for 3/4 mins before it starts playing the CD ,that one of the days i am just going to throw it out.

Thanks
RKS

22 Stay away from this one
I should have followed the recomendations I had read for this one. The unit worked great for two hours then wouldn't read the disks anymore. I had created a WMA disk solely for the unit. It played for about two hours, never left the unit. Wouldn't play or register the disk the next day.
I returned it and am looking for a new one.

23 Quality and Value
I am very pleased with the performance and quality of the iMP-50 --it's a great MP3/CD player for the money. I did a lot of research and found that the iRiver products have a good reputation across their product range. Don't be fooled by the iMP-50's low price because there's little evidence that iRiver cut corners on this player. It is well-designed and loaded with the great features of iRiver's more costly players. The construction has a high-quality appearance and is quite durable. It may not have a flashy metallic finish but it still looks and feels good in the hand.

SOLID FEATURES:
The sound quality of the iMP-50 is excellent and can be tweaked with the equalizer settings and various low/high frequency boost features in the player's menu. I've only used this player with Sony MDR-EX51LP Fontopia earbuds ($30 but worth every nickel) and so the sound is clear and powerful. The earbuds that come with the iMP-50 are average quality. Better to invest in quality headphones/earbuds if you really want to enjoy the sound quality of any MP3/CD player. The earbuds/headphones are the critical link so don't skimp on them if you truly want to enjoy the sound quality.

The player's firmware is also user-upgradeable (I've installed the latest version 1.10 that has additional custom equalizer settings and some other tweaks) and the menu system is easy to master after a few minutes. To take advantage of all the iMP-50 features, spend the time to read the owner's manual. The graphic LCD display has a wealth of information (MP3 tags, file type, sound level meter, battery condition, and others), however, it isn't backlit. The lack of backlighting on the display is the only cost-cutting measure in my view and is not worth thinking about unless you normally operate the player in darkness.

ANY PROBLEM AREAS?
None worth mentioning. It appears that some reviewers on Amazon have given the iMP-50 low ratings because the CDs are loaded from the bottom of the player (to me it's no more difficult than any other player I've seen) and the fact that they couldn't get all of their CDs to play properly. I've tried a wide range of my own MP3 discs and normal CDs and the iMP-50 has had no problems with any of them. Anyone having problems are likely using discs that are worn and scratched and ANY player will have trouble with those. The disc mechanism is identical to those on laptops (that's how they get a thin profile) and should prove as durable as any good portable.

Overall, the iMP-50 appears to have all the features of iRiver's higher line products but at a remarkably affordable price. It was a great purchase.

24 Great base model from Iriver
It was about time the RioVolt PSX100 got a respite from my daily use. I cant say enough of that great player, really way advanced for its time and its still very much working after 3 years. Its actually from the same manufacturer (iriver). With that in mind, I jumped in and got this one.

This model has practically all the configuration settings of its much higher priced Iriver siblings so you can tweak it to your hearts content. I was especially appreciative of the resume options and the total control of playing modes (i myself just have two, none and shuffle all).

Features that that been sacrificed because of low price : backlit screen, bottom-loading, no line-out, no battery charging function.

Suggestions : I wish Iriver sticked to a pad like interface, up/down/left/right, much more intuitive.

25 Great Value!!! Amazing Price!!! Plenty of Functions!!!!!
Pros:
-- Very Big Graphic LCD with much information display. This is not a simple LCD that can only display fixed pattern. It is a high-resolution dot matrix that can display grahics, which provides lots of flexibility.
-- Support multiple languages including Japanese and Korean. To my great surprise, it can even gracefully display Chinese!!! That��s amazing! It must come with a big Memory! I strong recommend this one to Chinese Folks!
-- File systems navigation function make it very easy to locate and organize the files you wish to play, Just like using file explorer in a PC.
-- You can explore the files and use many other functions while playback. The player has stored all song information on the CDR when starting up. So it needn��t read CDR when exploring the files.
-- Battery life, though not very outstanding, is very good. And the 4 level battery indicator is quite accurate and informative. (You can even adjust the threshold of the battery indicator!)
-- Best of all, the firmware is upgradeable, which means it will have more functions and can support new formats in the future.

Cons:
-- Sound quality is fair. Especially, the bass is not too good. But i can��t expect more for this price.
-- Plastic body. Again it is for this price.
-- CD is loaded from the bottom. I understand it is designed in this way in order to reduce the cost. Anyway, it is not very inconvenient.
-- No AC adapter and mediocre earphone. (Find a good earphone elsewhere)
-- Some button settings are not very user-friendly. I sometimes pressed the wrong key.
On the whole, for the price I paid..., I must confess I am very satisfied and should not complain more. Strong recommended!!!!

26 Quite Pleased
I am quite pleased with this device. The configurability is quite good, and the fact it takes packet-written CDs is excellent.

There is one thing I have noticed that is probably what many of the reveiwers are complaining about: Make sure the disc is clean. If the player cannot properly read the CD, it will stop playing and keep trying for a few seconds. If it cannot, it skips to the next song. When this happened to me, I noticed the disc had dust on it, and blowing it off/cleaning it solved the problem. I have only noticed this on a CD-RW, and although CD-Rs are easier to read across the board, it may still happen with them. Just keep them clean and you're fine.

In my opinion, this was a good buy.

27 HORRIBLE !
Stopped playing MP3's right in the middle....just like a PC crashes this thing crashed. The car kit did not come with an adapter...just the cassete and plug to the device.
Even ordered a replacement one...same problems...very very disappointing..

28 Wish I had read reviews before buying
See the reviews below. my 2500mAh NiMHs play for about 75 minutes per charge. Won't read multi-session CDs, and tech support doesn't know why. A/C adapter only works if the player is kept perfectly still, otherwise power is lost. From time to time stops playing for 5 seconds - 2 minutes in the middle of tracks. I have never been this disapointed in a consumer electronics product.

29 great product at the reasonable price
If you consider the mp3cd player at the reasonable price, it will be right for you. When I purchased it, I realized that it was not a high-performance one with expensive price, but after the second thought with functions-price, it will be proper to me.

These are what I like it:
- long-lasting battery (with high-tech for energy energy applied)
- a variety of music format provided
- anti-skip function
- reasonable price (is it worth to buy at $30?)

30 This thing sucks
If your looking for a good product, you are at the right site, BUT NOT THE RIGHT PRODUCT. The instructions are hi tech chinese, it will barely play mp3 cds, and the quality, even with normal cds, is terrible, the headphones are the worst peace of crap i have ever seen, the cable is to short, they have a statick in the background and the base is very low. I am very dissapointed with the product.

31 Buyer Beware
I bought this player for use mainly in my car, so I was not overly concerned about the short battery time. What I did NOT expect, however, was what I got: a player that mysteriously stops playing in the middle of songs, sometimes to resume seconds later, and sometimes not resuming at all. This seems to happen with 2 or 3 songs on every CD, although it's not consistent (my CD player and PC play them fine). Also, it skips when playing in my car unless laid flat. I greatly regret returning the Phillips CD/MP3 player in exchange for this one; the car cassette adapter in that squeaked a bit, and the player didn't support WMA files, but at least the thing played everything as it was supposed to. (By the way, I used the player on a plane recently, and discovered that all the comments about the dismal battery life are true).

32 Great Player Great Features Great Price
Pros:
Supports packet written CDs - Use your CDRW disk like a hard disk

Supports multiple .m3u playlists - control what songs are played and in what order through .m3u text files.

Will resume EXACTLY where you stopped - a must if you listen to radio programs and audio books.

Has bookmarking feature - great for returning to an audio book or radio program point after listening to music.

Firmware upgradable - Unit ships with version 1.0 - I highly recommend upgrading to version 1.3 which is available on the IRIVER international site at the time of this writing.

Supports track queuing - select the next song to be played while listening to the current song.

Easy to program - shows filename while selecting songs to program

Many more features

Cons:
No backlight.

In summary, the IRIVER IMP-50 gives you more features than many MP3 flash and hard drive players at a fraction of the cost and a fraction of media cost - 700 MB CDRWs are way under a $1 a disk. It's features blow all other manufacturers' CD MP3 players away. I highly recommend this or any other IRIVER CD player product.

Linux and other non-windows OS notes.
Supports Linux packet written CDRWs.

You MUST use Joliet extensions when creating your file system for the firmware upgrade disk.

.m3u playlist text files MUST be terminated with CR/LFs (DOS) not just LFs as is the standard in Linux.

.m3u playlist files take the following format:

\directory\im_no_angel.mp3

\directory\my_life.mp3

Note that the DOS \ character MUST be used as the file separator.

For best results, use only 1X-4X speed CDRWs.

RTFM and online documentation.

33 Excellent player, great features, low price!
I recieved this as a Christmas present, and I must say that I am very satisfied. The best thing about this player is all the little features that they thought of to make things more convenient.

PROS:
Great sound quality
Extremely customizable, easy-to-use interface
Anti-skip works very well with MP3 CDs (has skipped only once so far)
Batteries last 7-10 hrs with MP3 CDs
Resume feature remembers where you left off on the last 10 CDs you have put in the player
Plays all different types of MP3 files, including variable bit rate
Reads even cheap-quality media that other players won't read
Firmware upgradable, works very well
Comes with headphones and car stereo tape adapter

CONS:
Battery life significantly less with audio CDs
Anti-skip doesn't work very well with audio CDs
Takes a long time to load after turn-on (sometimes 30+ seconds)
Often cannot load when batteries are low
Doesn't come with AC or car power adapter

However, since I don't use audio CDs (I burned my whole collection as MP3s), I give this device five stars. I use rechargeable NiMH batteries and they work beautifully.

One caution: the batteries go right under where you load the CD, and if you don't shut the door to the compartment tightly, it may pop up and keep your CD from spinning and say NO DISC. I thought the device was broken until I discovered this problem.

34 Great features, bad design.
The player has LOTS of good features. I liked the firmware upgradability. Took less then 10 seconds from a CD-RW. Good file browser.... and a host of other features I wouldn't care about after a few months.

The design of the player is worst. The CD's go in from the bottom. So if the CD retaining mechanism ( the ball bearing that hold the CD in place) get broken (which is very common), the CD wont stay in the player anymore! The hinges for the lid is made of cheap plastic. I bet they would break very soon leaving with no choice but to use it upside down.

For those who want to run it on batteries, the player drains batteries like water. Don't buy it unless you want to run it with an AC adapter.

35 Carry a LOT of Batteries!!
This thing plays ok, but the one I have exhausts a fresh set of name brand batteries by just playing through 1 standard audio cd. I have a Sony that will play a dozen or more. Tech support would not even acknowledge an email. In this fast-evolving market, products have to measure up and so does tech support. I would not recommend this player unless you are going to run it on an a/c adapter or you have a LOT of batteries you want to use up.

36 Awful product. Awful customer service.
Things the product description doesn't tell you:

The disc loads through the BOTTOM of the player. Then you have to flip the player over to access the navigatorial buttons.

Does not come with a car lighter adapter. I purchased one separately, only to find that the port is highly sensitive, and shuts off with the slightest jostle dislodging the connection. I obtained another adapter, and the same thing happened.

Finally, this player sucks the life out of batteries at an unacceptably fast rate. You'll maybe be able to listen to a 70 minute CD twice before it's time to change the batteries.

I contacted customer service to return it, only to be told that I had to return it with its original packaging - which I had disposed of.

I will never again purchase a product from "iRiver". I would rather sit in silence than give another penny to this company.

37 It is the best deal you can find now
I have it for 2 months. It works great and play all kind
of cd and mp3. The battery life is good enough. The
headphone has good sound quality. My only complain is
that the left earbud can't fit my ear well. I can't complain
my ear to God neither my parents, hence I give it a 4-stars.

38 the best i've ever had
Great, awesome player. Great shock protection, does not skip a beat. Cheapest player out there supporting Packet-Written CD-RW, very cool feature!!!

39 The IMP-50 isn't quiet so nifty
To say I'm disappointed and quiet dismayed is an understatement. I was hoping for good things with the "iRiver IMP 50," but this isn't the case now.
It wouldn't initialize when I turned it on. The player read neither regular audio cds or mp3s. It did, however, make a disturbing knocking sound when it tried to read new media and powered off when it couldn't."iRiver" is suppose to be top of the line w/ it's players, but this particular model leaves a lot to be desired. I dunno, maybe I got a lemon. For 10 dollars more, I may consider the "IMP 150" and hope I have better luck w/ that. The reviews on it would seem to concur.

40 Good player, good price
I have had one of these for a few weeks now and I am impressed. I took it on my last trip back east, I can't tell you how cool it was to press play and forget about changing CD's. Everyone around me was always digging through their entire collection looking for one song. I just sat there and listened.
What I like:
- Easy Navigation
- Plays all my MP3 and regualr CD's (Had problems with my last one only reading some MP3 discs).
- Plenty of battery life (AA, so I don't have to worry about bringing a charger with me)

I have one and would recommend it to anyone, especially for the price!

41 Great Value CDMP3 Player
I have heard of iRiver many times but I cannot afford a $200 deluxe MP3 player like these guys make. I found the iMP 50 and at $49 thought it was worth a try. I got the unit - it plays my entire CD collection - MP3, WMA, etc.. plus regular CDs. Its got great volume & bass, plus a nice menu. It also came with an adapter to play my MP3 collection over my car stero. I never knew that was possible ? For $50 its very sweet!!

42 PREMIUM and AFFORDABLE!!!
This probably is the best kept secret in the world of affordable MP3 CD players. Iriver is known for making premium players and this one is both PREMIUM and AFFORDABLE. The sound quality is MUCH better then the competetion and I love the large LCD display. The battery life is also amazing so the cost of ownership is really low. It has car adapter too and it comes in very handy on long road trips, my car does not have an MP3 CD Player and this is a great way to listen to your music collection on the road. Very happy would recommend it without any reservations whatsoever.

43 Pretty Yet.....
I want to keep this review as simple as possible. Besides all the pretty features as stated above says, there are a few things that may keep you away from this product:

1. Takes to long to load music cd's.
2. Annoying mechanical noise.
3. Very short (30 mins) battery life.
4. Poor design. It would break easily.

I recommend one looking for a cd player, look at the Sony Walkman products.

Panasonic SL-SX431C Portable CD Player with Car Kit