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iRiver Clix 2GB Multimedia Player
Navigation
Getting started with the menu navigation is very straightforward. Start pressing the edges of the player and the triangle arrows guide you to where you need to go. The entire face of the player tilts in four directions to act as navigational buttons. And unlike every other player I've tested, navigation is overly simple and easy to understand. I turned the device on and literally within seconds had mastered the menu navigation. While other players don't take more than a few minutes to fully understand, the simplicity of the Clix is first rate. I definitely like this navigation style as opposed to the scroll wheels that take a while to get familiar with. At first I thought that the tilting face navigation felt a bit loose and wobbly, but after 2 weeks of tinkering I've found the interface to be responsive, resulting in a satisfying "click." And for those times when you don't want to accidentally navigate through your player menus, a sliding lock out button ensures that unwanted bumps and taps won't shuffle your playlist prematurely. The lock button actually physically stops the face from tilting while the volume buttons still function. When I first opened the Clix player my immediate thought was "this thing is going to be impossible to operate with one hand." The display is oriented in a landscape format; handy for watching videos, but difficult to reach the volume buttons. Luckily from within the display settings users can switch the menus between both landscape and portrait mode. In portrait mode it is much easier to reach the volume while still reading the display. However the buttons are laid out in such a way as to be biased towards right handed users, sorry lefties!again. However, persistent left-handers will probably be able to get the hang of using their finger tips to operate the buttons where us righties have it a bit easier using our thumbs.                 Downloading Music Of course, getting music onto the player is often what separates a good player from a bad one. I'm no fan of proprietary software. Fortunately, the iRiver Clix has two ways to load up songs. Users can create playlists or drag and drop tunes onto the player using Windows Media Player 10 and above. Or you can opt to use a Windows Explorer file tree interface and drop songs into the "iRiver Clix/music" file folder. After plugging the device into a free USB slot on a machine running Windows XP or XP-based operating systems (sorry Windows Luddites and Mac users), the Clix player will appear as an additional hard drive under "My Computer." The included CD claims to be a requirement for loading music onto the player. After inserting the CD-ROM, I was prompted to install Windows Media Player 11 along with iRiver's online music guide, URGE. I saw no reason to install the software as the Clix player worked just fine with my previous version of Media Player 10 (although iRiver does say that some features of Media Player 11 are not available on version 10). I certainly don't intent to, but if you are interested in purchasing and downloading media using the URGE system, by all means, go for it.
Page 1: Introduction
Page 2: First Looks Page 3: Testing - Navigation, Downloading Music Page 4: Testing - Music Page 5: Testing - Pictures, Video Page 6: Testing - Games, Voice Recording, FM Receiver Page 7: Conclusion 
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Add Comment
1 User Comment 1 - Posted by
Brooster
on May 25, 2007 - 6:58 am The Clix sounds great - unlike the iriver X20 it has Ultra-bright, 2.2” color display but it doesn't have the mini-SD expansion slot - so, as i don't really want to watch a lot of video on 2.2", i'll be going for the X20 instead
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