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iriver X20 Portable Media Player
Pictures and Video
The X20's 2.2" screen is both impressive and a bit under-sized all at the same time. The vibrant TFT screen is sharp and has a minimal amount of shadowing. Pictures are displayed nicely with excellent resolution. Movies actually look quite nice, if you can handle the almost too small screen. The 2.2" screen is a bit of a tease. It is almost large enough to watch videos on, but suffers from just a bit of a real estate issue. By comparison it is much better than watching any moving picture show on the Sansa e260's tiny 1.8" screen but when compared to something like a 3" Zune display, one begins to wonder who actually uses the movie features on these smaller players. At any rate, if you wanted to watch a music video, movie trailer or Family Guy episode the X20 is probably fine!just don't expect to be happy viewing that 4 hour director's cut of The Lord of the Rings. FM Radio Yes, the list of features is impressive. iriver has included a real FM tuner and I have to say I'm impressed with its reception. I was able to listen to the same radio stations on the X20 that I normally have to use my home stereo with attached antenna to receive (I live about 15 miles outside of town). Additionally, the X20 allows for FM recording straight to MP3. Just press and hold the play button until you're recording. Press again to stop. Voice Recording And just incase you didn't get enough FM recording, the X20 has a built in microphone, perfect for those impromptu marketing meetings or quantum physics lectures you like to sleep through. Select the Recordings icon from the main menu and hit play. Voice recordings are saved as .wav files while an animated status bar lets you know how many minutes of recording time is available. I found the recording quality to be on par with other devices of this type. I was able to record my wife's voice from about 30 feet away, but it was slightly muffled with a lot of background noise. Voice recording from arm's length is recommended for best sound quality, but if you sit at the front of the class I wouldn't hesitate to use the recorder for saving lectures or meeting notes. Line-in recording is also possible using the line-in jack. Unfortunately no line-in cable is included. Settings and Browse Device The Settings icon is included in the main menu screen. As you may have guessed this is where you will be able to change most device settings from the screen brightness to the quality of voice recordings and repeat/shuffle options. There is even a clock setting and a menu for choosing display orientation. I made reference earlier to the default player display setting. In the default mode the landscape screen is adjusted to fit right handed users. But lefties fear not. The display output can be flipped to allow for left handed controls!the power, menu and play/pause button icons still make sense even when upside-down. Clever. The Browse Device menu is nothing more than a file tree version of the menu interface. I don't see a whole lot of use for this menu apart from finding config files, but it's nice to know it's there. Daily Usage In my short time using the X20 I found it to be an excellent MP3 player. The scroll wheel/D-pad controls were easier to use than I had initially thought. At first I figured the thin scroll wheel would be annoying, but I soon found that the light touch wheel was both easy to actuate and relatively accurate. I found myself flipping past menus every once in a while but the notched feel of the wheel kept most overshoots to a minimum. I even came to like the landscape orientation and was able to use it one-handed with no problems. Overall I think the learning curve for these buttons was less than with my Sansa e260. The center and D-pad buttons also had a sturdy feel lacking in the e260. I did two battery life tests with the X20. The first test consisted of me simply keeping track of roughly how many play time hours I got during everyday use. Over the course of a 5 day work week I managed to get about 14 hours of play time. This included me switching songs, adjusting the volume and hitting pause/play several times throughout the day as well as leaving the player in my bag overnight. My second test was a simple "turn the thing on and let it run" test!that's the technical term. I set the volume to 25 out of a possible 40 max and hit "repeat all". Using this method I was able to get about 18 hours of play time. iriver says that 22 hours of play time are possible with the volume set to 20 while playing 128kbp MP3s with the EQ set to "normal". Most of my MP3s are encoded at a higher variable bit rate and I was using a custom EQ setting, so I think my test is in keeping with their estimates. At any rate, battery life is pretty good. Luckily a simple type A mini USB cable is all that's required to charge the player, no proprietary cables here. And speaking of batteries, iriver has given the X20 a removable Li-ion battery pack. Not that surprising when you consider other companies are doing the same. But, the X20 battery pack easily pops off the back of the player, not unlike a cell phone battery. I've not had to replace a battery pack in any of my previous players, but it is comforting to know I can replace the X20's without needing a jeweler's screwdriver or soldering iron. I haven't gotten to use the X20 as much as some other player's I've reviewed previously, but as of writing this article I've experienced no lock ups at all. It is typical that I get at least one lock up per review but not so with the X20.
Page 1: Introduction & First Looks
Page 2: Testing & Features Page 3: Testing & Features, Continued... Page 4: Conclusion 
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