iriver E10 6GB

Last year saw a good number of media players launched in India. Things are getting hotter than ever, now that some important players are concentrating on A and B class cities. And iriver is one of them! Mid 2007, we had seen some attractive products from the company. As I have said elsewhere, the product line is fine; lack of visibility is the only thing coming in the way.

The iriver E10 is the latest offering and without letting too much out, I’ll say it’s a brilliant product. Notwithstanding the premium pricing, iriver does seem intent on portraying itself as a serious player.

One of the main reasons why you should go for the E10 is the capacity. Yes, 6GB is a good reason. Features come next, and the E10 is well-conceived. Four function buttons take care of navigation and playback. The main menu button is on the top left, just below the screen, while the power on/off key is on the right corner. Volume keys can be found on the right hand side, while the left has the hold slider button. The 3.5mm earphones jack is situated beside the USB slot at the bottom of the player.

The display is a 1.5-inch screen with dimensions capable of 128 x 128 pixels. Although the display quality is good, I wouldn’t want to be paying extra for features like video playback. Honestly, it’s a waste, for one because it’s too tiny, and for another it’s a pain to get the conversion done right.

The player can play MP3, WMA, ASF, and OGG formats. This makes my day because it plays two of my favorite file formats. It offers JPEG format as the only way to view pictures. You will have to careful though, since the player tends to act up while working with heavy files. The pictures take a long time to load – or at least they did in my player.

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There’s a built-in text reader, which I’d say is another redundant feature. Inclusion of FM radio is a plus point though, and as for the FM recording feature, I’m willing to bestow one whole point simply for this. While some players offer a recording facility, the E10 allows you to choose between three different recording qualities. The FM reception is decent, although train travelers should be wary.

As an afterthought, the E10 has been bundled with an infrared remote control option. There are lists of brands to choose from. Locate the band that works best with your television, and you have a remote control. It works fine, but a bit of money could have be saved by doing away with this feature.

As far as performance goes, I have grown to trust iriver as a brand. The sound quality is quite good. One of my major concerns in this area always is the loudness of the player. Although this one doesn’t provide iPod-like loudness, it can submerge the racket on the road quite effectively. I like the way the player handles bass; but I did notice a lot of artificial overtones.

You will need the bundled software (do upgrade online to a newer version) to transfer music. Although it allows drag and drop, the songs will fail to show up on the music player. You will need to go to Extras > Browse Device and manually feed all the music into the player. There’s every reason to cut half a point here, but seeing how Apple does it all the time and manages to steer clear, I think I will just make a mental note.

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The player costs around Rs 9,500, which is a good price for the storage capacity it provides. If only it were a little cheaper, my rating would have gone up a notch. Having heard that, I’m sure you’ll also like to hear that the battery life is pretty good. In fact I got about 18 hours, which is darn good.