iRiver H320 20 GB Digital Music Player with Color Display

Rating:
Summary: beware!
Review: Guys , Just like the other reviews have mentioned the player is pretty cool . But if you have purchased music , be careful . You should be able to connect the player to the media port ( a special port for copying purchased music ) .

For connecting to the media port you should be running Windows XP not Windows 2000 or earlier versions .

I had lot of purchased music and running windows 2000 . The Customer service in iriver told me I will not able able to connect with this OS. So if you are like me this is not ideal for you .

Also there are other posts which says you will be able to play videos . That is not in the north american model . You will have to download the software for other region ( europe or korea ) and in that case the warranty will not be supported . There are a million places it is mentioned not to do that . Will you take a chance with warranty so that your player can play mpeg . Not me

Hope it helps


Rating:
Summary: Better than I could have imagined
Review: I am going to consider this the best purchase that I have made over the last 12 months. Every feature exceeded my expectations.

1) Battery Life. I charge it before work, can work my 13 hour shift and come home with 2 "bars" of battery left. My IPOD would have been dead by 3pm.

2) Napster to Go. I cannot think of a better way to spend 15 dollars a month to download any music I want into the player. I had no trouble transferring the music..i wish the transfer rate were faster, but that only matters the first time you really load it.

3) FM Radio. I have a great Grundig radio in my office. I get better reception and more stations with this player.

4) I can record with the touch of a button, which is great for class, meetings at work or recording the radio

5) NO drivers, just plug it in and go

6) They have very reasonably priced accessories at IRiver. I bought a backup power supply for 7.99


They really got it right with this device. Just make sure to set the time and date, so your Napster to go works! that was my only mistake.

Rating:
Summary: Nifty PseudoPod: capable and cost-effective, but clumsy
Review: I bought a 20-gig iPod awhile back. Loved the design aesthetics and ease of use, but didn't like the copyright-slavish limitations it came with. It ended up as a Christmas present for my Apple-crazy stepson. I missed having 20 gigs of music with me in such a portable format, but I have a real aversion to owning equipment that refuses to let me do what I want with it. I kept the iPod for about two months; I've had the iRiver H320 for about that long.

Oddly enough, I bought the H320 as a result of my search for another kind of device. I was looking for a voice recorder that would encode directly into MP3 with high fidelity for more than two hours at a time, and transfer those files to computer easily via firewire or usb 2. Because such recordings can be helpful in my work, I was willing to shell out about $175 for a recorder with those capabilities.

Well, the H320 has them -- up to five hours at 128 k/s via either the internal microphone (surprisingly good) or an available external (five bucks from the mfr's website; it looks cheap and doesn't have a good clip for securing to tie or clothing, but it recorded so well and was so inexpensive that I bought several more after testing the first one). I was able to buy the H320 for $300, so in effect all the features listed below ran me $125 over what I was willing to spend for a voice recorder (though I should point out that I still think it's a deal at $300).

The H320 plays those 20 gigs of music with fine sound. There sometimes seems to be a bit more background hiss than with the iPod, but I have very good low-volume hearing and even I usually have to strain to hear the hiss on either device.

The H320's appearance is presentable enough, and it's roughly the shape of, and not much larger than, a pack of cigarettes.
The controls are not intuitive and not particularly convenient to learn or to use; this is the feature where iPod rules.

But one of the reasons it takes awhile to learn this beast is all the things it can do for you. For example, there's an FM tuner that you can listen to while recording the FM signal directly into MP3 with admirable fidelity. You can take a "line out" signal from any audio source, plug it in via the included standard patch cable, and encode the incoming signal directly into MP3 at up to 192 k/s. And, of course, you can use it as a usb 2 external hard drive.

Also, it has a color LCD display with about a two inch diagonal on which you can display .jpg and .bmp images (not .gif, dunno why) with surprising fidelity. I'm sure that the new iPod photo models do it better (and I imagine they'll let you use other features while viewing images, which the H320 won't). But this feature was essentially gravy, and you can store a LOT of images in a tiny fraction of a 20 gig drive.

My habits are such that I haven't had occasion to test max battery life; I just plug it at my bedstand at night and let it juice up. I have not yet attempted to use the firmware-update feature, and unless and until I get a freeze-up, I probably won't.

In short, I think the guys who designed this beast started with a 20 gig hard drive and jammed into it every feature they could think of (that they could make work without jacking up the price much), and rushed it onto the market. All in all, despite some kinks and quirks, I think they did a fine job.

You can download both an abbreviated manual and a full one from the mfr's website; I'd recommend your doing so before buying.

Rating:
Summary: H320 Observations from 1st Time Jukebox Owner
Review: I'm not going to go into a lot of detail on some of these since so many reviews have.

Positives
1) Feature set is great for such a small device and love the "open" standards support since most of my music comes from purchased CDs.

2) Sound is good enough although I don't have a good baseline to go off of.

Negatives
1) Start up time (3000 songs loaded) is horrible. It's about a 45 second start-up even just to listen to the radio. They need to fix that in a firmware or future release.

2) When recording via line-in or other port, there is no graphic to tell you how loud it is. For example, am I cutting out at 0db? There is no visible way to check the waveform amplitude on recordings. A firmware fix should be able to correct that.

3) They need some help with buttons. Many people have mentioned this but it is very true. I futzed around with the device a while back trying to switch the recording source and through a process of elimination figure out which button to press.

4) The "Shuffle Mode" for all songs in the playlist is not all that much of a shuffle mode. Apparently, it sets a predetermined order and so the only way to randomize it is to enter in on a different song. It does not seed the random list on device startup or even between stop and starts. Kinda frustrating on that one for those of us who like to hear random music from a playlist.

Rating:
Summary: Very Disappointed
Review: I've been tracking through review after review in search of a good juke box...the H320 seemed like a good answer. From first boot up I had nothing but trouble. After having lock up upon lockup, and having the inability to play transfered files, I put it back in the box and it's headed back to the store tomorrow. I've been gritting my teeth at the though of buying an iPod like everyone else, but I think I may give in after what I've been reading about everything else.

Rating:
Summary: iRiver H320
Review: Mine 1st unit was defective and I am awaiting the second. Just wanted to post how awful the IRIver technical customer service rep was on the phone. Immediately very rude and short with me as if helping customers wasn't part of his job description. My threshold for returning the unit now is very low.

Rating:
Summary: Bleh
Review: Obviously the people who gave this five stars have never used an Ipod or iTunes. The software for this devcie is clunky at best. The controls are terrible. The screen is murky and the entire device is cheap and plasticky feeling and looking. Is this really the best iRiver can do?

Rating:
Summary: Features + Price = Best choice!
Review: This iRiver really blew me 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://www.gears4free.com/main.php?ref=582

Sign up and complete any of the free-trial offers (I personally recommend Blockbuster, eFax, or RealRhapsody), refer some friends to do the same and you get a free iRiver! Sign up and check out their forums for proof/pictures of people who have also received their stuff! E-mail me with any questions.

Rating:
Summary: MoodLogic software is quirky
Review: This is my first experience with MP3 players The instructions are fair however I had problems with the music management software MoodLogic. My XP based computer crashes with this software installed. I have to reboot my computer in "Safe" mode then uninstall the MoodLogic software. This is unacceptable!!! Is there another software available where I can manage my MP3 files better? Please tell.

Second with the MoodLogic software installed only about half of my music was copied to the H320. File names gave the indication that the accompaying music was available however when that track or file was selected it was empty.
Even when I had the H320 disconnected from my computer my system would crash. Once again, unacceptable.

Now for the H320....I like it. I give it five stars however the accompanying software brings the overall rating of this wonderful system to my rating of three stars.

Down loading music directly from Windows is easy however you are only able to view your downloaded music by the groups name not genre, type of music etc. Having better music management would make this MP3 player tops.

I downloaded JPG files and it's nice being able to look at the photo's. The hardware itself is great but the accompanying software stinks. Unless there are better compatible music software with the H320 I would avoid buying it.
Hope this review helps.

Sound quality is first rate with different headphones. Upgrade the accompanying headings will be worth the investment.