iriver X20

iriver has been known to make some very dashy looking players. While iriver has some excellent products, they are being offered at a premium. The X20 8 GB is one of the latest players launched in the market. Let’s see if it’s worth it.

Design
One of the most common reactions this player has garnered from people is that it looks like a compact mobile phone. Which is true, for it does look like one; in fact it also has a detachable battery that comes off, just like your regular mobile device. In fact, we compared it with phones like the Samsung E840, and they appear to share the same dimensions. At 40x32x9.6 mm and 15g, the player is still lighter than the lightest phone available in the market. And while it shares its form factor with mobile phones, the X20 also manages to bulge like one.

In my opinion, the player proves to be a better music player than a video player, although with its current pricing in the market, I doubt if the company shares my belief. The 2.2-inch QVGA color TFT-LCD is one of the main contributors to the bulky look of the player. Although, in many respects you may argue that the screen should have had a vertical display, just like mobile phones do, this one goes with a horizontal one. You will need to hold the player horizontally with the dial in your right hand. To facilitate lefties the player allows flipping the screen to be worked using the left hand.

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The X20 comes with a dial in an imperfect imitation of the iPod, yet with a desperate attempt to differ from it as best as possible. The dial is basically a thin circular band with four upraised ridges placed in fair distance from each other. This is more to reduce surface tension than to offer convenience. For the truth is that, you will find it quite difficult to use the dial with your thumb tip. And since this is the only way one can browse through the menu, I caught myself swearing under my breath very so often.

The dial surrounds the four way D-pad, and the play/stop button. I found no immediate need to improve on these. Above the dial you will find the menu button, and below the power button. On top you will find the hold slider, and the external memory slot right at the bottom. The right side houses the USB slot, the earphone jack and the line-in jack.

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Performance
The X20 supports MP3, WMA and OGG Q10 for music, and comes with a variety of settings to enhance your experience. The menu is fairly easy to understand, although navigating can be a bitch!! Again, this is only because of the dial.

As is the case with all the iRiver products, the X20 works really well as a music player. The sound quality is pretty clear. The output is quite roomy, and has well synced frequencies. This stays true even on a flat EQ setting. My only complaint here is that the treble is redundantly boosted. But it’s nothing you can’t work on by adjusting the EQ manually. What I like the most is that the EQ offers a noticeable yet subtle control over the frequencies.

The bass lacks thump though. At higher volumes, boosted bass results in jarring the output. I thought this was the problem with the earphones, as I’ve seen in many available players in the market. We tried the X20 with the Sennheiser PXC 450, and the jarring was still there. The earphones provided with the player as quite good to begin with. After a rather extended session of bitching about bad quality earphones being dished out with MP3 players, the X20 earphones are truly a relief.

While playing songs, the player doesn’t allow you to back in to the song folders. You can go as far as the album or the song you are currently listening to. You will need to access the main menu and retrace your path to switch albums.

The X20 does a pretty bad job of playing videos though. To begin with, you will need WMP11 to synchronize and convert video files. This isn’t bad at all. But WMP11 kept failing at converting any of the movie clips we tried. The player only supports MPEG 4 (simple profile) and WMV. But the catch here is that all videos need to be less than 30 fps, 512 kbps. If this isn’t bad enough, we even tried converting some files to less than 30 fps, and the player still failed to read any.

Also there is no possible way to get rid of the error message while trying to play a non-compatible video file. The player just hangs. You will need to take the battery out and put it back in. To avoid this you will need to synchronize the files using WMP11.

The recording feature of the X20 is quite good. You can either use the voice-in or the line-in to record. What I like here, is that the media gets stored as .MP3, and what I hate is that instead of smart selecting the medium you will need to manually select Voice-in or line-in from settings.

The FM reception of the player is pretty good too. It took about 12 seconds to scan and save the available stations. The reception was quite clear even indoors and also while traveling in the trains. You also have the option to record FM.
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Conclusion

The player gave me about 5 hours of playtime, as against the 9 hours touted by the user manual. And this is only music. With video the playtime will go down even further. The player costs Rs. 15,000, and there I can’t see why? The music player, although quite good, still isn’t the best available in the market. We have already established that the player fails to be video player. For all it has to offer, it seems a little over priced.