IRIVER IFP-790T Portable MP3 Player

Rating:
Summary: The good, bad and ugly.
Review: GOOD: It's small, light, has a great arm band for running or workouts (hmm...looks like that's 18 bucks extra now, bought mine somewhere else when it was 200 unfortunately), excellent battery life, the sound is good, it holds 50-60 songs, FM reception is a nice plus, interface is easy to use to import songs.

BAD: FM reception is marginal, the controls are maddingly difficult and not at all intuitive, much too easy to mistakenly put into record mode, icons for certain functions are impossibly small, construction feels cheap and plasticy.

UGLY: Actually it's an attractive unit, albeit it's warts. (See "BAD")

Rating:
Summary: Great Little Unit
Review: I bought this unit to replace my Rio, which failed me after three years of faithful service. I am very impressed with the features, the size, and the sound quality of the iRiver.

The navigation leaves a bit to be desired, however. iRiver has done a remarkable job in providing access to lots of features with only a few buttons, but the little joystick is prone to jumping to the wrong thing. With so many functions on such a small device, I suppose it is a necessary evil, but it can be frustrating when you try to push the stick one way and the unit recognizes it differently.

My only other complaints are minor. You have to use the iRiver software (which is actually pretty darn good) or Windows Media Player to move files to the unit. I would prefer to see the unit as a removable drive, like many flash mp3 players. The earbuds sound great, but they hurt my ears after about 30 minutes. I typically don't like in-the-ear earbuds, so your experience may be different. The arm strap that came with the unit is useless; as it is too small, too bulky and ugly as the day is long. There is no belt clip included. I will probably buy the sport arm strap/belt clip to go with it, but I wish they had included that with the unit.

I have had a fair amount of experience with mp3 players, and I think this one rates near the top of the heap. It's a nice little unit with an amazing number of features and only a few small complaints.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent flash player. Worth getting.
Review: I got this MP3 player for christmas. It was not long before I had the Iriver hooked up to my PC via the USB 2.0 link cable. I quickly installed the file managment software included with the MP3 player and moved a song to the Iriver. Let me stop here and tell you how easy this was. I didn't have to do anything with the Iriver itself but turn it on. The managment software was incredibly easy to use. You simply open the folder containing the subfolder or files you want to use and drag them to a screen that represents what is on your Iriver. Once I had the song on, I plugged my Sony studio moniter headphones into the headphone jack and began to jam. (Vertigo rules!!!) Yes, I am a U2 fan. Back to the story. After the novelty of playing Vertigo over and over again wore off, I checked out the FM tuner. It was pretty scratchy on most stations. I don't really listen to FM radio that much so I can't really give an opinion on this feature though. Eventually, I got tired of not having control of what songs I listened too. I decided to turn off the FM and check out the rest of the IFP 790 interface. To access the main menu, I had to hold down the enter button. This took me a little to figure out but never the less, I did not have to disgrace myself by using the manual. You can do several things on the main menu. You can make small sound adjustments, set the clock and alarm, goof around with recording and radio options I did not really understand. I even found a way to get the Iriver to automatically record a radio station at a certain time. Now that I had my Iriver totally figured out, It was time to load er' up and listen to some tunes. The capacity suprised me. I guess I didn't really know how much 256 megabytes could hold. I was expecting to be able to put 2-3 albums on but it can hold much more than that. Right now I have fifty songs on it and I think I have around a quarter of the space left.

All in all I would give this MP3 player a 4.5 out of five.

Pros

Downloading music was quick and exeptionally easy
small size makes it easy to hold in pocket
the fact that it takes AA batteries and still last about 40 hours on one makes it easy to juice up.
Easy interface with several extra features.
Easy recording.

Cons

Battery cover seemed easy to break.
Does not hold a lot of music, but if you want a lot of storage buy a hard drive player, not a flash player.
there wasn't anything to clip it to my belt loops :( At least it can fit in my pocket

Rating:
Summary: Best Sound Ever!
Review: I have tried so many players,mpio,creative,iaudio,etc before I decided to keep this player. No other mp3 players sound as good as this one. You can check the manual for all the great feature but I would like to mention one more that makes this player a true king among its competitor: You can download the latest firmware(still in beta version) from www.iriver.com and use it as USB portable storage. This will allow simple drag and drop function.




Rating:
Summary: great mp3 player!
Review: I recently purchased this mp3 player, and I am definitely satisfied with my choice. I used to have a 15 gb dell dj, which is the equivalent to an ipod. I didn't need all that storage space, so I sold it. I bought this so that I would have an mp3 player with just enough storage to put some of my favorite songs at the moment on, and carry it around with me so that I did not need to carry a cd player and cds all the time. I have 25 songs on it at the moment, and it still has plenty of space left. It can probably hold over 60. The reason i picked this over the others was because of the fact that it has a 40 hour battery life. Most have only 20! This is because it uses an AA battery, and not an AAA like most mp3 players. I also liked the fact that it had an FM transmitter. Other reviews said it was kind of scratchy, but I think it's pretty good for a little unit like this. I can receive stations better on this than on my stereo! It also is capable of recording FM broadcasts, and has a microphone for voice recording as well, although i don't think i'll use those features much. Everything is easy to figure out, and I didn't even have to consult the manual until i wanted to preset FM stations, but that was easy too, i just didn't know what to hit. The only con is the small control button, but it works just fine. The sound on this unit is excellent as well, and the earbuds that come with it are great too! I usually get tired of them though, and when I plugged in my headphones, it was even better. You can customize the EQ and bass and stuff like that very easily in the menu too. Overall, this is an awesome mp3 player. I haven't had it for long, but I already like it better than my Dell DJ and if you don't need an mp3 player to hold 2,000+ songs and just to hold between 25-60, then this is the one.

Rating:
Summary: Okay if it works...
Review: When I began shopping for a small MP3 player to use during workouts at the gym, I looked at the same things most people would look at: features and price. The iRiver 256 MB Player seemed to meet all of my requirements, so I bought it. Then reality set in. I took it home, installed the music management software on my PC (running Windows XP), and then the nightmare began. Try as I might, I couldn't get the software to function properly. Essentially, it refused to recognize the player when I plugged it into the USB 2 port. I tried everything I could imagine, but no dice. So....I decided it was time to call tech support. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that iRiver's tech support hours are Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. MST. Coincidentally, those are my office hours! Once it appeared that I was never going to get the software to work, OR be able to contact tech support, I packed it up and returned it. I chose a Rio 256 MB player instead, and haven't looked back.