Rating: 
Summary: Great replacement for RIO SP100
Review: I bought this player as a replacement for RioVolt SP100, which finally died on me. I was a little sceptical, as the reviews weren't always great. The first unit I got was DOA, which made me pretty sceptical. But Amazon was great - they replaced the product promptly and even paid for the return shipping. After that my luck changed for the better. The player is excellent. It is actually better than Rio's SP100. The display is much more informative, with bit rate and volume levels, and other things displayed instead of stupid running stick figures that SP100 had at the bottom. The menus have plenty of options to play with. New options are available through the upgraded firmware, but honestly - I never bothered. I am still running with the original 1.03 firmware, and it's working great for me. For listening to the audiobooks, the player has a convinient resume feature that re-starts your audio track at the same exact spot where you stopped it (instead of going to the begginning of the disc or the beginning of the track as some other players do). With updated firmware you are supposed to be able to sort your tracks by name, tag, physical order or recording, etc. The sound quality is good. I am not very picky though, so YMMV. The remote works fine for me. It's not the silly four-way "rocker" where you always push the wrong button. The player works in regular AA batteries. I like that, because I can use rechargable ones or disposables. The unit doesn't charge the batteries, so you need an external charger, but I have several of those, so it wasn't a problem. The only problem I had so far (besides the first DOA unit) is skipping with CD-RW. I guess the updated firmware may fix the problem. But it plays regular CD-Rs great, so I can't complain too much. And as cheap as the CDs are (especially if you are a frugal dude and don't mind doing rebates), CD-RWs aren't that important. Anyway - get yours and enjoy! Four starts are only because of the DOA unit, otherwise this would be a 5-star unit.
Rating: 
Summary: New Firmwares v1.20 and v1.30 improve battery life
Review: I have used this player for more than a year now. It is rock solid, no skipping on my WMA cds. It takes long to load, but definitely not unbearably long.
I use WMA with more than 300 songs (ethnic) in one CD, and I don't have to worry about changing CDs. I use it in my car, with a car adaptor, and an inline remote comes in handy since I can place the player in a console compartment, and use the remote to skip.
The remote takes getting used to, but once you get the hang of it, it is so good! You can do almost anything with it. New firmwares are a must if you want longer battery lives. I use the player in my car for 1 hour trips, and the battery lasts for 2 weeks!!! These are your regular kirkland AA batteries. I haven't tried NiMH yet. Firmware can be downloaded at http://www.iriver.com/support/
choose iMP-150 in the dropdown for product.
Rating: 
Summary: POS
Review: I got this cd player a while back and i thought it was going to be great. But when i got it the remote would not work and the sound was way down when it was in. Another bad thing is the battery life. I got less than 4 hours with the backlight on and without it on i got about 8. The mp3 player is also confusing to use and the player is very fragile. The top part is almost completely off on mine. Some positives are all the options you get in the menu but it doesn't balance out in the end.
Rating: 
Summary: needs a little work
Review: My first complaint about this is probably a single case situation. No AC adaptor that I buy works. I called customer service and they told me they'ld send me one for free. They were very friendly and helpfull about it...trouble is I never got it. I use rechargable batteries now instead. My second complaint is the navigation. Unless you have a playlist set up, you may want to navigate a lot and it's not easy. once you do scroll through the list of what's usually 150 songs, when you find the one you want, often it takes 15-20 seconds to load the song. This doesn't happen if it just plays through them...only if you navigate to them. It appears to be trying to determine how that particular song is coded (mp2, mp3, bitrate, etc), but I don't know why it takes so long unless it's prebuffering the entire song. However, the abilty to play cd's and cdr's with over 160 songs on one disc is so useful. No memory sticks - just record all your cds onto a few cds and take those with you wherever you go. It never skips, has decent battery useage, and a very simple and useful on-wire remote control so you can keep the player out of harms way.
Rating:
Summary: battery..!!
Review: is it only my bad luck? it almost lasts 5 hours with 2100 MiA rechargeables..! could any one help me?
Rating:
Summary: Best bang for the buck - period.
Review: I needed to replace my old Memorex mp3 cd player and I shopped for several months before deciding on the iRiver Chromex. I was tempted by all the hard drive mp3 players out there and even considered trying to find one at an online auction. Hard drive mp3 players are hot & super cool - and very expensive. I finally realized that they cost too much for what they provide and started looking at cd mp3 players again. The one company that really stuck out was iRiver, and my first choice was one of their SlimX models. After some thought, I went with this lower cost model because I listen to it in the car and don't need to have something small to carry around. For the money, you will not find a better mp3 player out there. There are a lot of cd mp3 out there that cost about the same and this is easily the best due to the wealth of features. The ones that are the most important to me are the wealth of playback options, the firmware updatability and the battery usage. The playback options are the main thing for any mp3 player. The big one with the Chromex is playlist support - it can read .m3u files from the root of the cd. This is a rare option, and a very useful one as you can essentially make mixes based on the mp3s on the cd without being limited to folders. The Chromex can also play/shuffle/repeat all files or all files within a folder. There are more playback options, like 'track intro' etc but they aren't as relevant as the ones I mentioned. Firmware updatability is great - this means that it won't become obsolete as quickly. mp3s are already an old standard, and with surround sound becoming common thanks to DVDs, stereo mp3s will become old soon. Being able to update the firmware means being able to play the latest formats. With the Chromex, that's as easy as downloading a file, burning it to a cd and playing it. Battery usage is solid - my 1800 NiMH batteries last about 8 hours, which pretty much takes me through a week's worth of commuting. So why should you buy the Chromex over a sexy hard drive mp3 player? + CHEAP. $56 vs $300-400.
+ Just play your archived CDs. I realized that getting an iPod would mean another hard drive to organize and take care of. I listen to so much music that 1) I could never fit it all on a 20gb hd, and 2) there is nothing that I always listen to and uploading and deleting files to a hard drive would just suck up more time.
+ Best features amongst all CD mp3 players
Rating: 
Summary: Customer Service are JERKS
Review: I bought this player based on past reviews. But the version of it that came with an external power supply was not available, so I wound up having to buy power supply somewhere else. NO MATTER WHAT POWER SUPPLY (other than batteries) I USED, IT WOULD NOT RUN OFF EXTERNAL POWER. When I called customer service, they said tough luck. You have to buy power supply from them, or they don't give a rip. Don't buy from this company unless you are willing to buy all your accessories from them as well.
Rating:
Summary: Great Item!
Review: I've had this for about a year now, and have been very pleased with it. Initially, it worked wonderfully, but after a while, forwarding songs usually meant a delay longer than the song itself, and any sort of wiggling cause it to pause in it's playing. As well, I'd be lucky to get 2 or 3 hours of play out of a set of batteries (I use rechargables, though, so that may have been part of the problem). However, after getting the firmware off their site, play returned to original condition, there was no more skipping or pausing, and forwarding became something of mere moments. As well, battery life increased to 5 or 6 hours. The only problem I still have is with the headphones; sometimes sound doesn't come out evenly, and I have to play with the connection to the remote. Just yesterday, it fell out of my bag as I was leaving, hit the floor, and now won't turn on. :( so I guess it's kinda delicate, too. It was wonderful while it lasted, and I have hope of fixing it (yeah right) or buying a new one. Great product for the price.
Rating:
Summary: Great product for the price
Review: I had purchased this about a year ago. This served me very well on several long road trips. I always leave it in my car and carry MP3/WMA CDs I made at home. I also have a philips expanium which is so lousy compared to this product. The expanium doesn't resume from the last played point, it always starts from the first song. Just imagine how painful that can be. I considered purchasing a rio sp 150 as a gift, but after reading the reviews on it, I decided against. I haven't had a problem with this product so far. I hadn't tried to upgrade the firmware.
Rating:
Summary: great player
Review: Very good quality MP3 CD player. Outstanding peformance and sound. If you have a CD burner you can be a complete moron and still upgrade the firmware. Much better idea than the higher iRiver products, the IMP 350 only has a lcd on the remote so what do you do when you lose the remote? This is a much better option if you are on a budget.
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