iRiver H320 Review

Overall Rating

+ Superb sound quality
+ Looks pretty flash
+ Very good colour screen
+ Picture, radio and text
+ God knows how many more extra features
+ It's not an ipod

- A bit expensive, apparently (£200)
- Leather case makes it look big and unnecessarily chunky
- Battery life pretty poor
- Remote should be sold with the player itself
- Free headphones are rubbish

I bought the iRiver H320 in June so I could take my music on holiday with me. It isn't actually that big, in fact it's smaller than an ipod, but, the leather carry case makes it huge, and makes the buttons harder to press. It does offer amazing protection though.

The screen is amazing, it's monitor-quality LCD, with backlight. and it turns off after about 20 seconds, so there's no battery drain either. despite being such a small screen, it shows pictures in fantasticly high resolutions, but can't zoom in, annoyingly.

If you go into the options menu, you've got more buttons to press and things to twiddle than in a jumbo jet. It's amazing,and you can change anything on the player. haven't experimented much with the radio yet, so I can't really comment on that (but it does definitely work).

I bought it from my local Dixon's store for £200. People say this is expenive, but it's £20 more on Amazon, and unfortuantely iriver doesn't have an RRP.

The only really bad thing I can say about this 'player is the battery life. It is claimed that a battery will last 16 hours, but I wouldn't believe it. using skills of conservation, I can make a battery last about a week, or longer. sounds Ok you say, but that isn't listening to it that much. The battery icon in the corner is also very misleading. as soon as one of the little batteries has gone, it's about half empty. and the 2nd and 3rd little batteries seem to disappear in about 5 minutes. Hmmm. looking at pictures is the biggest battery-killer by far. NB: remember to drain the battery empty before recharging, otherwise the battery gets destroyed.

What you get with the player isn't too good either. the instruction manual is very uninformative, and claims you get a remote with it. Which you don't and they cost £15 to. The free headphones are rubbish also, so I use ipod headphones I got from apple's website free too.

Despite minor drawbacks, I thoroughly recommend this player, so just because of how amazingly amazing it is, but also becasue you look different to all your friend's with their identical ipods. You will not be disappointed...