Great sound, great looks, easy to use. Lousy power usage.

Very pleased with this. I was looking for something with good sound quality, I found many of its competitors (particularly Sony) tinny and I wanted something capable of doing justice to some dynamically challenging classical music as well as Rock & Jazz. The sound quality is excellent and as I say I'm delighted with the result.

The FM radio has adequate but not great reception (doesn't deal too well with motion but fine if you are moderately still - great for sitting at a computer, not so good for sitting in a bus / train. Sound quality when you have reception is fine.

My biggest quibble, and a strong reason for not giving it five stars is the power usage. The battery life, on the supplied rechargable sticks only, is poor - probably about three hours. Much worse though is that when the charge starts to fail (2 bars out of 3) it frequently fails to play MP3 files on a RW CD - the CD spins but doesn't advance or produce any sound. This can makes the MP3 function useless if you're not near a power supply to sort it out. The problem doesn't occur with standard music CDs and the radio will also work.

Firmware updates are very easy (if you have an internet connection and a CD writer) and the menu system, though extensive, is reasonably intuitive once you've worked out the general function of the three jog switches.

Support

It does what is states on the review.

Very practical MP3 holder, works well in a gym environment.

Also washes well and appearence does not degrade.

Iriver H10 Beats Ipod Any Day

I'm proud of my Iriver H10. It BEATS THE PANTS off similar capacity ipods/ sony/ creative mp3 players!*
I've owned it for almost 10 months now. A lot of people post premature reviews, and with mp3 players this isn't ideal as a relatively high % of them will go wrong sooner rather than later (including makes such as Ipod and Creative!).

This is one of the main reasons I choose the Iriver - it comes with a 2yr warranty. This clearly shows Iriver have some confidence in the quality of their product, and 10 months in my player has seen a lot of use (and some misuse) and is still functioning perfectly.

I've heard some negative remarks about the interface on the Iriver. Poppycock! The touchpad is lovely, and navigating around is intuitive and simple. The controls are pretty well located for changing tracks or volume by feel alone.

*"How is this better than an Ipod nano 8gb?" I hear you ask, foolishly. Well, even ignoring the obvious price difference, the Iriver has more features, an extended warranty, and it can be UMS!!

In fact the Iriver can be UMS (universal media storage) or MTP (media transfer protocol), by switching the firmware. Now this is admittedly not an easy thing to do, however all the help you need is available at www.misticriver.net , and after a bit of playing around it's well worth the effort. Most importantly, when the player is UMS it will be recognised as an external hard drive when you plug it into a computer. You can then drag and drop your music and any other files you choose onto the player!
Alternatively, you can stick with the default setup and use a program like windows media player to transfer your music collection for you.

There are a few niggles here and there: Main problem is battery life - between 6-9hrs is pretty poor, but then charging is quick (also comes with ac adapter). The quicklist feature is useless, and after a few days the H10 `forgets' and takes a while to boot up. But these are unimportant. Besides, it even comes with a brilliant protective case with belt clip (which u would otherwise have to pay for)!

I paid £120 for mine, and even today that's still a fair asking price. At the price these are going second hand it's practically a no-brainer, particularly if you want a UMS player.