iRiver SlimX iMP-350 CD/MP3 Player with Ultraslim Design

Rating:
Summary: Fragile player....coupled with POOR customer service
Review: After having this player now for 6 months, I have had enough time to fully evaluate the player and Iriver's customer service.

First the good news. The player is cool looking and plays most discs without a problem. I have yet to have the player skip, although I have not put it through any rough treatment to test it.

Now the bad news:
- This player is fragile. Despite the metal top casing, the player is lightweight and is not built to last. If you don't keep the player in its fleece bag, the metal will scratch (and take away from the cool look).
- The headphones, while not bad for manufacture provided ones, leave a lot to be desired. Why can't these manufacturers follow Apple's example and provide a decent earbud? If you do get this player I would recommend getting a better set of earphones. Beware though to get an efficient pair, as the player will not be able to drive an inefficient pair to higher volumes.
- The remote itself is the most fragile of the player. Within a week, even with taking great care not to do so, the remote screen was scratched. The plastic screen is not very scratch resistant at all! Which is a shame as it is what you will be looking at as there is no screen on the player itself. Like the player, the remote is also rather flimsy in its construction. It is a lightweight plastic. It would have been nice to have the remote protected with the same metal casing as they top of the player. The original remote has wires coming out of both ends. While I though this would not be an issue, it has come to be a bother when attempting to look at the remote. I guess there is a reason that they changed the design of later remotes. Finally, after only 6 months of extremely light use (may be used once a week at most), the backlight on the remote stopped working. This is a real problem as the screen is hard to see without this feature.
- Customer Service: I contacted iRiver customer via their website concerning the remote backlight. It took them over 2 weeks to get back to me. And then they had nothing to say than sorry your remote is out of the 90 day warranty, you will have to purchase a new one.

All in all, I give the player 2 stars as the player performs its function of playing audio disks, but overall I would not purchase this player again (especially at its inflated price). If you do decide to get this player, BEWARE of the fragility of this player and expect poor customer service.

Rating:
Summary: IMP350 and IMP550 Reviewed over 3 yrs.- Access. cost $$$
Review: The IRiver CD/MP3 players are awesome. The sound is
excellent, they play homemade CD's and MP3's no problem.
The IMP350 has control buttons on the unit but the IMP550 does
not have these control buttons on the unit and relies solely on
the remote. Note: Amazon does not carry the accessories,
and to buy them from IRiver they are Expensive. The
unit itself is warranted for 1 year, HOWEVER, the accessories
including the controller and earbuds are only a 90 DAY warranty.
The IMP350 was a very competent machine with silver earbuds
that fall apart. The IMP550 came with different plastic grey earbuds that seemed like a cheaper quick fix. The newer IMP550 does not work with the old controller or the old AC adapter for the IMP350 so do not try to intermix these components or a
malfunction may occur. The accessories for the IMP550 are more expensive than the IMP350.
The IMP550 has a separate and different controller and earbuds. Purchasing the accessories are a bundle from IRiver. The IMP550
purchased new comes with a car kit the IMP350 does not. After, after 10 months the IMP550 earbuds fell apart, and the controller is malfunctioning and does not light. The warranty is only 90 days on these accessories so it will cost $54. to replace the earbuds and controller. Kind of expensive. Be-aware of the accessory warranty. It is ONLY 90 days.
Overall, I was very happy with both of them but they are definitely high maintenance little machines and the rechargeable batteries are $19. when they need to be replaced. At this rate
$54 to replace accessories and $19 for batteries (=$73.00 total)
I can purchase a brand new CD player of a different brand. My point is that after the 90 day warranty and the batteries run
out you may end up buying a new CD player. EXPENSIVE.
we live in a throw away society.

Rating:
Summary: Nice and Good but also flawed
Review: I've had mine for about 2 years. Very solid. I've treated it like crap and it hasn't really lost any steam. The sound quality is pretty good and the real metal shell is really classy. One problem is that because its so thin it can't take AA batteries in the actual unit. If you want to have the unit be battery powered you have to attach it to some sort of weird tube that holds the batteries. Makes for very clunky transportation. Another problem is that when you plug the power adapter in and you've been using batteries up to the point the unit goes dead. You have to start it up all over again to switch power sources. Would have been nice if it just switched seemlessly. Also it can take up to twenty seconds to start up. Sort of ridiculous. Much much longer to start up than say a typical regular CD player. What else? Umm, the weird cord remotes left/right push toggle level switches are very awkward. Not the most fun to use. Uses rechargable batteries that are a strange shape. They're flat and thus if I ever had to replace them it would be a nightmare. Uses a nonstandard power adapter, replacing is difficult. Charging the unit takes about 8 hours!!! Be prepared to leave it plugged in all night. Also, it doesn't just start charging the second you plug it in. You have to hit play, wait ten seconds, then hold stop. Then you get a menu asking you if you want to begin charging. Very very annoying if you want to just plug it in and have it charge the way you would for other chargable devices such as a cell phone or cordless drill.

Other than that, although I have gotten used to the cool appearance of the unit I consistently catch myself noticing how much sleaker and classier my CD player is compared to those of my friends. Definitely what you are paying for.

I paid 150 for mine and i have to say for the price it was maybe not worth it. I did listen for two years so I have definitely gotten my money's worth, but I still think I would probably have gotten similar performance from something that cost a fraction of the price.

Rating:
Summary: Remote problems+No rebate
Review: Remote - When i bought the player the remote's backlight wasn't working.I returned it(Amazon we're really great)and got a new one that didn't have this problem.4 months later the backlight simply died and i have to buy a new remote for $25.
Rebate - After i got the second player i took off all the labels needed for the rebate,did everything the paper(rebate instructions) included said,but 8 weeks later(when i should've got a cheque) they said that i didn't include the proper papers(i took off all the labels from the box!everything they asked..) and that i will not be getting my rebate.
Here is my advice:Don't buy from iRiver,and even if you do-don't buy something with a rebate from iRiver- you'll work too hard to get what you deserve.
P.S.- Besides the reliability problems and rebate problems the player is good,that's why i gave them 2 stars and not 1.

Rating:
Summary: Expensive? Kind of. Worth it? Definitely.
Review: I bought this CD player a year ago when my old Sony started randomly shutting down and skipping at every tiny scratch. At the time, the only thing that really drew me to this player was the thin size. A year later, I can tell you that this is a high-quality player that deserves consideration.

As I'm sure you've read in other reviews, it has wonderful sound, the remote is very handy, you should use headphones and a case other than what comes with it, and of course, it's a lot skinnier than most CD players. Here's some stuff you might not know:

-The quality from player to player seems to be slightly inconsistant. I absolutely loved mine. It played even my CD that was so scratched up you could hardly have damaged it worse if you'd had at it with a paperclip or something. I never had any problems with it whatsoever. It even survived numerous falls without missing a beat, no pun intended. However, my friend bought the same player a few months after I did. His had a faulty lid and had to be sent back under warrantee, no biggie. But when I finally did my player in (tragic story really) and he lent me his, I was quite surprised at the difference. His occasionally would randomly in the middle of a song skip to the next one. It couldn't play the scratched CD that mine had had no trouble with. And some CDs it had trouble reading, even a brand-new one with no blemishes of any kind. As far as I know, nothing had ever happened to his player to make it do this and he claims it had always been like that. I don't know which caliber of performance is more typical of this player, but if you have faith that you'll get one like mine was, go for it, you won't be disappointed in any capacity.

-As you may have read, iRiver's customer support is terrible. I emailed them after mine broke to ask them if they do repairs not covered by warrantee. After 2 weeks, I got no response. The only way to get a response is either to call (I've not read anything good about that either) or to register your product online and use the account you create to send them a question. On top of the difficulty of contact, it turns out that iRiver doees not do repairs and does not keep spare parts, so I'm not sure it's possible at all to get anything not under warrantee fixed. It would be fair to put this as a disclaimer on their products. I'm sure it would just do wonders for sales...

Anyway, if you are looking for a player that is sleek, puts out great sound, and will make a good many people jealous, this is a good choice. Just be wary of potential quality lapses and below-mediocre support from the company.

Rating:
Summary: very international user-friendly CD/MP3 player i ever had!!
Review: I have to admit, although I am currently seeking for a specific (more future-looking) sony ATRAC CD player (which I hear they are soooo cool), I have spent these last 6 months with this iRiver 350 mp3/cd player playing my music and praising it to the fullest. I couild never expect myself to even create a good cd with over 200 songs in it, letting me be able to burn all of my albums and other downloaded music i burned to a regular cd-r to cover up about 80 minutes of it, causing me to have a bunch of cds laying around, or overstocking my cd case with almost 100 cds, and how do you expect me to take all of them with me? Impossible!! I can't take them everyday, you know...well, thank GOD (or whomever or whatever you believe in) that I read about these MP3 players, and what caught my eye was that they had CD players that can play MP3 files (yeah i know I am not so advanced unlike the rest of you, when I just found this out...and i am sure i'm not alone on this one), and that iRiver have these. So, I bought one, and began transferring all my albums and cd-r burned music to a new cd as MP3...like. about 10 albums equalled to 1 cd, and even better that I don't have to put the WHOLE ALBUM...i can just put those songs I like the most, which saved me a HELL OF A LOT OF CDS...and so i finished burning and all and ended up with only 6 cds to carry around, and left the whole library home to rest!! Pretty cool, I think.

The little r.c. that came with it came in handy until recently it messed up on me...i can only hear some music, but the voices sound like echoes. So now i can only listen to the music without the remote, which is a total bummer...that's the only bad thing about this player. However, it's not really that bad to buy a replacement over the iRiver website...i think it's about $35 and you can use the iMP-450 remote for the iMP-350 player also. Otherwise, when I had it, I can actually read certain music's names in other languages, since it has a multi-language option, and, since I love japanese music so much, and can read the language, I can find out what the music says rahter than looking at all this default symbols and such...and about the fm player, I enjoy it somewhat...but it sucks when I can't get my favorite radio station due to the reception,you know.

anyway...i know i am boring all of you with my story, but i can't help it but stating how happy i have been with this player. I honestly recommend this player for those who love to fool around with your music and create a few MP3 albums and never have to worry about taking a whole box load and leave them in your car all day.

Rating:
Summary: No Disc again
Review: 8 months I've had this, I had to RMA the 1st one because it came broken, giving no disc errors. Now this one dies with no disc errors also. 6 months ago I would have given this 5 stars, but now with it breaking again along with many other people ending up with dead players just like me, I'll never buy iRiver again.

Rating:
Summary: worst tech support
Review: i am, well was a fan of iriver products. i bought this imp350 player a year back i.e. 2003, and now it stops playing mp3 files but only plays fm. the darn player wont even load the cd. i contact support and they tell me they wont replace or even service the player after the 1 year wrrnty period. now that sucks, im stuck with a player that cost me $140 and now it plays FM.
in other words, if u want quality and reliability, go for sony or any other mp3 player