iRiver H10 Review

Overall Rating

Radio.
Image and Text viewer.
Colour screen.
Sound quality is amazing.

Ultimate flaw is the playback of albums is alphabetical.

I brought my iRiver H10 as a replacement for my Creative Zen Micro and was expecting 'better than iPod performance'.

The player looks the part, small light weight, sleek metal finish in a small range of colours. The colour screen is the same quality as the first colour screen Nokia phones. This means that it will display jpeg's but only the files it can handle anything more will result in an error message. The screen resolution is OK so don't be expecting digital quality display.

The radio is a big bonus offering a change from your music collection, also you can record direct off the radio meaning the latest songs can be yours as soon as they hit the stations. It has a 'text viewer' meaning you can read on-the-go.

The music side of the player is good, there is an up/down scroll on the front (like the zen micro) the play/skip buttons are side mounted.
The pause between the tracks is a lot longer than regular CD playback, which can be fustrating for some users. There is no way to search for artists of track names besides the scroll, which means that locating a certain track could take some time. The equaliser can be set to a wide range of styles but the best thing about iRiver is the 'SRS WOW' feature which gives hi-fi surround sound in your headfones. This gives your music such a boost that you'll not want to listen to your music from another source.

As for music transfer the iRiver software is exactly like iTunes, so transfer can be auto or manual. The player uses ungradeable software to ensure it remains up to date. For exmaple the player doesn't allow you to name your radio stations, but iRiver ensure that an upgrade will be available soon that can be downloaded to enable your player.

The biggest drawback of the H10 is that it will only play albums back in alphabetical rather that track number order. Iriver again ensure an upgrade will be availible 'soon', but the US users have been waiting for quite a while now...
So it is a gamble if you buy now and wait or want to wait til its sorted then make your purchase (by then the price may have dropped?).

The player is great and the sound quality is better than any other player on the market. But with its massive flaw in alphabetical playback, it holds it back.

Members' Comments onbav's Review

• theneiltownsend on 20th May 2005

  The latest firmware upgrade now allows album order playback, so that objection has gone.