|
iriver X20 Portable Media Player
Testing & Features
Interface One reason why I've come to appreciate iriver PMP products is that they are so easy to set up. I am not a fan of the iTunes "you must install this software to use your player" sort of music device. I want to be able to load music onto my player mere moments after having gleefully freed it from a cardboard sarcophagus. Thankfully my hopes came true as I plugged the X20 into my Windows XP laptop and immediately started browsing the PMP's contents. The X20 shows up as 2 removable storage devices in the My Computer menu (one device for the internal 4GB, one for the additional MicroSD card slot). As my X20 is a demo model, it came with a bit of charge on the battery so I was free to fiddle. The device powered up quickly and I was greeted first with an iriver logo then a menu screen with a rotating ring of 8 icons. The spinning scroll wheel allows you to select the menu item and pressing the center play button selects the icon. As I had already quickly dragged and dropped a few dozen albums onto the player, I was ready to rock. Selecting the CD icon brings up the music. Right away I was confused. The scrolling wheel is the only way to choose main menu icons. But, once in the submenu screen I had to use the scroll wheel, center button and/or the directional pad to select the items I was after. This was even stranger to me after having used iriver's ingeniously simple Clix interface. But I eventually got used to the menu interface and began enjoying my music. The scroll wheel took a little getting used to. Its minimal size helps keep the player's front bezel clean looking, but the wafer-thin ring could use just a bit more texturing to help grab onto your spinning thumb. However, the wheel worked very well and actually takes almost no effort to actuate. I quickly got accustomed to using it, much to my surprise. Music Playback As I mentioned above, the X20 will act as a simple removable drive once plugged into a USB port. But iriver also includes media loading/management software. As much as I tend to dread loading software, I found the "iriver plus 3" software to be simple to use. But, more importantly, it didn't seem to be a massive resource hog!a problem I encountered with both iTunes and the Zune software. A drag and drop style interface lets users add music, pictures and video with relative ease, although videos will need to be encoded with the iriver plus 3 software (which can be a slow process, depending on starting file size). The X20 can also use the MTP (media transfer protocol) setting to sync and load music through Windows Media Player, if you desire. So we've managed to load some music using one of the 3 methods. Selecting the CD icon will bring you to a menu from which you can choose a variety of further submenus. For instance, you can select to play all your music or choose to sort by song, album or artist. Playlisting is available through Windows Media player or the iriver plus 3 software. Playlists are displayed in the music menu as are any saved recordings. Choosing the artists submenu will bring up an alphabetical list of artists. Now, if you were to press the play/pause center button a small window pops up asking if you want to play all of the songs from that artist, add them to the now playing list, play all your songs or add all songs to the now playing list. I'm not quite sure why I would want to choose to add all my songs to the now playing list (a sort of on the go playlist option) or why iriver bothered to include a play all menu at this particular juncture. Alternatively, if you were to use the right hand directional pad button while an artist name is selected, you will be able to see all albums associated with that artist. Press the D-pad to the right again and all the songs from that album are displayed. At this point hitting play is the way to go. I think I could live without the little pop-up window, personally. Once you get some music pumping through the X20 you'll be happy to find that music quality is quite good. That said, I thought the included earphones were of moderate quality but adequate for a set of stock earbuds. Sound quality can be altered via the EQ settings under the settings main menu. Five pre-set EQ setting and one custom setting are offered. Yes! Custom EQ settings! I'm always happy when this often over-looked option is included on a PMP. With the custom settings it is much easier to tailor sound to your particular headset. Kudos to iriver for this little attention to detail. However, having just finished playing with the iPod video and Zune, I'd have to say that their sound quality is a few notches above the X20. Bass response could have been a bit better and eventually I found the limits of the X20. Maxing out the bass EQ band creates a bit of unharmonious overload at moderate to high volumes. Mids and highs were quite adequate for most types of music and I rarely found my music sounding too brassy or muddy. Let's say you want to let a buddy take a listen to your newest underground drum "n' bass re-mix MP3 find. Just pop out the earbuds and the internal stereo speakers come to life. Yes, the X20 has two small internal speakers. They aren't the highest powered set of woofers you've ever heard but for a quiet night working late at the office or correcting your friend's misunderstanding of the lyrics to "Rock the Casbah" they work just fine. Because they are located on the underside of the player, the sound can be a bit muffled unless you turn the player on its face. I would compare the quality to that of internal speakers found on most cell phones.
Page 1: Introduction & First Looks
Page 2: Testing & Features Page 3: Testing & Features, Continued... Page 4: Conclusion 
Related Reviews Portable Media Players July 16, 2009
Portable Media Players September 24, 2008
Portable Media Players July 13, 2008
Add Comment
0 User Comments Add Comment To add a comment without being a member, you may omit the password field, but you must enter your name (or nickname) along with your comment. * Denotes required fields. |
Recent Articles Editorials March 15, 2010
Editorials August 27, 2009
Editorials August 18, 2009
Editorials March 17, 2009
Recent News Good Old Games Mar. 21, 2010 - 12:43 pm
Jason Bradbury Mar. 19, 2010 - 10:52 pm
Rock Paper Shotgun Mar. 19, 2010 - 10:44 pm
joystiq Mar. 19, 2010 - 6:58 pm
Tom's Hardware Mar. 19, 2010 - 4:42 pm
Rock Paper Shotgun Mar. 18, 2010 - 11:58 pm
Fudzilla Mar. 18, 2010 - 11:57 pm
|
|||||||||||||||
