|
iriver E100 MP3 Player
Testing
Video The E100's 2.4" screen is in the realm of watchable (but slightly small) LCD screens. Compared to my Sansa E200 series or an iPod nano, the E100 is a joy. Converting and loading videos can be accomplished using the iriver plus 3 software. I chose a 233MB, 624x352 resolution avi of one of my favorite Australian shows, "The Chasers War on Everything". Plus 3 took about 17 minutes to convert the movie to an 80MB 320x240 wma, properly formatted file and transferred it in about 20 seconds. The E100 supports WMV9 SP, MPEG-4 SP and XviD SP files at a resolution of 240x320 up to 30 frames per second. Video quality is impressive for a sub-$100 player. In fact I quite liked watching video on the E100. There was a minimal amount of pixelation and ghosting while watching talk shows and slower paced movies. But faster moving action did cause a few pixels to pop up now and then. And since the videos play in landscape format they don't suffer from the same viewing angle problems the portrait format menus do, so long as you don't tilt a bit to the right. The up, down and left postions are less dark when tilted. Unfortunately the screwy interface still hangs around when watching videos. Pressing the center button makes sense to pause videos. But the FF and REV buttons aren't in the usual right and left location but on the up and down buttons just like audio playback. My trained monkey reflexes could never get used to this layout. Pictures Pictures can be loaded onto the E100 using the plus 3 software or by dragging and dropping though the native file manager. However I found that images wear cleaner and easier to view when I used the software loader versus dragging and dropping. Plus 3 will properly format the images for optimum viewing. And boy, what viewing. Once more I found myself impressed with the E100 screen. My pictures looked almost as vibrant and clear on the 2.4" screen as they did on my laptop. Again, taking into consideration the price of this player, the images were more than satisfactory. Text An odd feature for a PMP. The ability to read text files is a handy little feature but I don't see myself using too often. I suppose you could surf over to Project Gutenberg and download a few classic novels. But the small screen and, more annoyingly, the loss of any sort of document formatting inherent to .txt files makes reading long texts an exercise in eye strain. Though I could see this being useful for small snippets of info, directions to a friend's house, phone numbers, etc. Only .txt files can be read by the player. I tried transferring a .pdf with plus 3 but the software refused to transfer the file type. Dragging and dropping the file worked to get the pdf onto the player, but the document wasn't listed in the text menu directory. Recording The E100 will record both FM radio input as well as voice and line-in. Voice recording with the included internal microphone is decent, but sounds farther than 20 feet are diminished. Not bad for onboard hardware. Attaching an external mic will get you a bit more range. Once again the interface isn't designed perfectly for voice recording sessions and for some reason to delete recordings you need to navigate over to the File Manager menu. I don't understand why you can't delete recordings from the Recordings menu since you can delete music, movies and photos from each of their respective menus. Line-in recording could be useful for ripping a few old LPs or cassette tape songs. I'm guessing the majority of users won't ever use these features, but man, what a boatload of trinkets that are conspicuously absent from the old iPod. FM Radio Another feature that is often left out of some similar players. The E100 plays FM as well as any other small radio receiver. The digital tuning is easy to read but only preset stations are allowed. The player autoscans for stations and saves them as presets. This was a little annoying as I couldn't find my local NPR station and wasn't able to manually search for stations. This might pose a problem for those hoping to use their PMP to tune into the FM band that broadcasts their gym's TV audio. Otherwise it's a simple FM tuner that sounds better than average and is simple to use.
Page 1: Introduction & First Looks
Page 2: Testing - Navigation, Music Playback & Software Page 3: Testing - Video, Pictures, Text, Recording & FM Radio Page 4: Conclusion 
Related Reviews Portable Media Players July 16, 2009
Portable Media Players September 24, 2008
Portable Media Players July 23, 2007
Add Comment
2 User Comments 1 - Posted by
sci_fianime
on August 6, 2008 - 1:32 am Love the review - puts into words the experience I have with my black E100... However, I do find the video viewing angle range very limited, they look washed out once you are slightly off... Otherwise, I am very happy with the feature set which cannot be found in any other player around the same price range.... 2 - Posted by
SixString
on April 23, 2009 - 2:34 am I just got the iRiver and I'm VERY impressed. You *can* manually tune the FM stations, contrary to this review, tho' it's not real intuitive. In FM mode, pressing the Select button toggles between Preset and Manual modes. Thus, you can manually tune and set the presets however you like them.
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 August 27, 2009
Editorials August 18, 2009
Editorials March 3, 2009
Editorials February 12, 2009
Recent News VICE Nov. 20, 2009 - 7:17 pm
Wired Nov. 20, 2009 - 7:07 pm
Engadget Nov. 20, 2009 - 6:58 pm
Telegraph.co.uk Nov. 20, 2009 - 6:48 pm
BBC Nov. 20, 2009 - 6:38 pm
Destructoid Nov. 18, 2009 - 11:55 pm
Wired Nov. 16, 2009 - 11:56 pm
Ultimate Typing Championship Nov. 16, 2009 - 11:42 pm
|
|||||||||||||||
