Rating: 
Summary: Perfect Performance, size, and value
Review: I've owned this product for about a month, and I am fully satisfied with it.This dvd player has good and bad features but ends out up top. I recently had a chance to use this product when I went away to Mexico. First, I have to say that the battery life is outstanding. Even when flying for 4 hours, switching flights (which takes an hour), then flying another 5 hours the battery did not go out. I was also amazed by the way the remote control works. Many of the functions are not needed though. The multiple eq function is a waste to try out and the small option changes don't make much of a difference anyway. But the ID3 tag helps alot. Now, when you listen to your music, you don't have to flip through track 1,2,3.... The name of the band and song title are there. All normal functions are there too like fm radio and the basic bottons play, pause, hold etc.
If you need more battery life you can add the AA battery pack also.
There are some downfalls though. The case that is supplied is not very sturdy and good. The added on AA battery pack is bulky and hangs out of the player. The loading is extremely slow. A few times it took so long to load that I just shut the player off.
All in all this player is amazing with multiple functions a great design and perfect performance. I would recommend it to anyone looking for an mp3 cd player.
Rating: 
Summary: Great features, average performace
Review: Let me say that before I bought this player, I bought only Japanese electronic products, almost always Sony. Well, Sony's first mp3-cd player doesn't have many features, although it looks so cool, even compared to the slimx series. Anyways, when I bought my slimx, the backlight on the remote didn't work. After contacting I-River for 3 days, finally they picked up the phone. I have to ship my remote out now and pay for the postage! What a crock. I emailed amazon.com and they are sending a new player out to me. Amazan has good customer service, but enough about them. Yes, the remote display is small and hard to read, but you only need to read it when you are changing options like equalizer, or how fast you want the drive to spin. When you are listening to music, the text for changing songs is large enough. It should be even better with a working backlight. The firmware upgrade feature is great because it may be able to play different formats in the future, but it is more for having new options, not new formats. If you decide to buy this player, check it out at best buy stores and then buy online if you like it. A lot of people don't like how flimsy the thing looks (plastic and lightweight) but everyone loves the remote. Bottom line, get this player, a good set of headphones, and a case that will protect the player. Also, cut a peice of clear plastic from a dvd case or aol dvd case and tape it to the remote to prevent scratching and be fragile with the player and you will love it.
Rating:
Summary: Very Good
Review: This product is one of the best audio players all round. It is very porvable. Over all this is the best CD player I have ever had!!!
Rating:
Summary: incredible, even after the test of time
Review: i bought this player in july of 2002, and after reading all of the reviews, i decided on getting this player. when i got it, it was incredible, all of the options, the great sound quality, the very small size. this is still the thinnest cd(or mp3) player ive ever seen in person. the firmware upgrades are one of the high points on it, including the most recent 2.20, which has seemed to increase the sound quality. people have complained about the poor battery life, and thats the only qualm i have with it. call me foolish, but i spent the extra [money], and bought the remote for the imp-400 as well. (off the [local website] store) and that made my expierence with this player even more incredible. the one thing i can recommend to do with this player is to toss the [badley made]bt a good pair of headphones. preferebly not sony. i have grado sr-60's and grado sr-80's, and both of them sound incredible with the slimx. they make the now [money amount]it. also, get this player because the price is going down... i got mine at a [great price][money amount]go and buy this player NOW! its the best piece of electronics anyone in my family has ever owned, almost. its incredible even after 6 months, and hopefully for a while to come.
Rating:
Summary: CJK song display, but too often 'No Disk' in the first run
Review: This is a feature-rich portable CD/MP3 player. There have been many reviewers before me, so I am not going to repeat those. The following is my take which hasn't been mentioned.I like the in-line controller very much. On the cover of the board box package, the controller is depicted with Album name in Korean characters and Chinse/Japanese/Korean (CJK) characters. Yes, that's right. It can do that. Well, sort of. I have burnt a CD-R disk with Apple Mac iTnunes. It has about 10 hr worth of mp3 songs converted from my CD collection, many of which have Chinese song/album names, in unicode encoding (in OS X). iRiver SlimX iMP-350 can display them beautifully on the controller display. However, it has trouble to display some common traditional Chinese characters, e.g., KA3 for 'card' and NI3 for 'you'. I guess that it is because the font it uses only contains imcomplete set for traditional Chinese (used in Taiwan), but sufficient for Japanese/Korean usage. I usually get 'No Disk' message when I turn the unit on. The disk is inside, but the unit just cannot see it. From one of the previous reviews, it is probablly because the unit is not warm up yet (in electronic circuitry point of view). I have to attempt several off/on power cycling and/or gentle shaking the unit in the carrying case to begin my music enjoyment. I use it in my car (with generic car kit bought separately), and office where the PC's CD drive is not accessible. I like it very much, in spite of the minor flaws mentioned above. To the reviewer before me, who asks if carrying the unit in your pant while walking will cause excessive skip, I don't know. I don't do that kind of practice. However, I doubt CD/MP3 players of many brands can work well in that circumstance.
Rating:
Summary: A great little gadget!
Review: I routinely record MP3 files from on-line radio streams, but have precious little time to listen to them. I wanted a way to listen to them while I had time driving to/from work.
Pure MP3 players (eg. memory card based) were just too expensive for the amount of storage I wanted, so I opted for a CD based MP3 player, and after reading the reviews here, I plumped for the iMP-350.
I've been using it now for about a month, typically for 1-2 hours per day - and I'm very impressed! Yes, it has some operational idiosyncrousies (buttons having about 10 different modes), and yes, all the cables get tangled sometimes, but I can put up with that because it does a great job at what its supposed to do - namely, play CDROM based MP3's with excellent sound quality. I bought the iRiver car kit too, and that works well, even though the sound quality does suffer a little in the transfer to the fake cassette.
All in all, I'm very pleased with it so far and would recommend it to anyone who's looking for a high quality, cost effective MP3 player.
Rating: 
Summary: I love it, but is it supposed to skip so durn much?
Review: I assumed I was going to become yet another very satisfied customer when I purchased my SlimX iMP-350, just like practically every other person on here, but is it really supposed to be so sensitive? I don't mind the load times with MP3 discs (I like how it loads practically the whole song into the player actually). The unit just SKIPS SO MUCH. I carry it in my pants pocket (which is roomy enough for the unit and not a tight fit at all) vertically, and while walking the unit skips and freezes occasionally, but enough to notice, with MP3 CD's, and skips about every 20 seconds or so and even STOPS with regular CD's. It also takes much longer to load the MP3's when I'm walking with it like this. I almost always had to stop and take it out to level it before it would start playing again. To whomever posts a new review of this product, let me know if this is a common problem, or if my unit was most likey just defective. I didn't waste time and just returned the product, so I don't know for certain, but I absolutely loved the player's features, and if this was just an odd case then I would be more than happy to own it again. Thanks.
Rating:
Summary: More features for a little more dough.
Review: This is probably the most feature-rich mp3 CD player on the market. Not only does it play mp3's, it also plays wma's, asf's, and of course, regular CD's. There is also an FM tuner with preset stations. Free firmware downloads, which refreshingly don't require registration or any nonsense like that, offer the capability of supporting additional file formats, in addition to changes to the user interface. There have already been at least 3 updates since I bought this, so rest assured, they do actually use this feature. While the manual can be somewhat trite, once you understand the basic design mentality behind the interface, you will have no need for it. There is a whole range of things you can adjust, from the way titles are displayed when playing, to how long the backlight stays on with each button press, to equalizer settings. The latest firmware upgrade even lets you play a Nibbles/Snake type game, which is interesting for about all of 5 seconds, but it does show just what kind of things can be done with the upgrade feature. I have not even used the included earbud headphones, so I will not comment on them, but the sound quality of the player is right on the money, assuming, of course, that your files are of good quality to begin with. It comes with flat batteries which can be recharged whenever the unit is plugged in and not in use. In addition, there is an adapter which enables you to use aa batteries externally; unfortunately, this add-on diminishes the portability somewhat if you choose to use it, but there is really no need for it unlesss you are listening for over 8 hours or so. If you want to carry quite a bit of tunes with you on the go, and don't feel like splurging on an iPod (the only hard drive based player that does not seem to have problems skipping when walking for a while), then this is for you. It's easy-to-use menu and almost obsessive level of customizability put this head and shoulders above any other brand. You can tell that the designers were genuinely dedicated to making this a quality product, which is more than I can say for most electronics these days. However, if you don't really care about options so much, you are probably better off with a lower-cost mp3-cd player, such as some of the older ones offered by Rio (though at least one is a battery hog, from what I have read.)
Rating:
Summary: you've heard of summer in a bowl?
Review: well heres summer in a music player... that is as long as you like summer. i bought this item in late 2002 and i'v had it ever since... I hav'nt had a single problem and everything has run flawlessly. I do however have 1 complaint and 1 warning. My complaint is the weak bass, I really think they could have improved on that. However dont let this deeter you from buying this by any means! the warning is that for the first couple of times you use it the battery life wont be as long as advrertised untill after the first few discahrge/recharges... so dont worry, when its new if the battery dosnt last all that long, just bear with it.
Rating: 
Summary: One major flaw kills it all!
Review: No doubt this product is "the best" in the market in terms of feature sets, but it has some serious usability flaws. The foremost being its inability to deal with few mp3s (which plays fine on my DVD/mp3 player) and worst of all the way it deals with it is by shutting itself off! To compound the problem, since I mostly used it in gym without the remote, I had no clue whats going on for a while! It also takes a lot of time in loading and playing the first song, I guess thats how they give 8 minutes ASP, but there should be a better way to deal with this. I personally prefer reliability over features, so I guess I'll sacrifice with the overwhelming feature set this unit has and go for reliable brand names like Sony or something.
But then since this thing is firmware upgradable, its possible that they fix these problems in near future. But who wants to wait!!
I would sum the pros and cons as following:
pros:
1. good looks: Its really slim! However the latest models and a few other models from other companies (e.g. Sony) are even better looking!
2. supports CDR and CDRW: This is very handy. You can burn your own CDs.
3. mp3, wma support: Having the ability to play mp3 means you can have almost all your collections in a few CDs.
4. rechargable batteries: Could be money saver in the long run
5. firmware upgradable: In this ever changing world of formats and stuff, it could be really nice that you don't have to throw this thing away if we have a new standards/format available in future.
6. FM Tuner
7. good anti skip: I shook it a lot to test this and it kept on playing.
8. good sound quality: if you have a good pair of headphones
7. remote control: you can keep your player in your backpack and have the remote clipped on your pocket!
Cons:
1. The headphones (ear buds type) supplied with the unit are not so great.
2. remote is wired: That eventually means that even they are called remote, they you can't be more than a feet away from the player and sometimes it gets in the way.
3. no display on the player: I understand that this is the main reason why this unit is so thin, but sometimes its not handy to carry a wired remote!
4. takes a while to start playing songs
5. shuts itself off when it comes across a mp3 it can't handle (the deal breaker for me)
6. flimsy CD case (velvet one) with no belt clip: Although I agree that its better than nothing.
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