iriver T60 4 GB MP3 Player (Black) Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)I recently bought a Creative MuVo 100 MP3 player on deep discount due to it being powered by a single AAA battery. I liked a lot of things about it but then I decided to see if I could find a AAA battery powered player that had more disk space and that's when I found the T60. I won't knock the MuVo 100 since it's a great player in it's own way, but I much prefer the T60 after having owned it for a week now.

Pros:

- Very compact size; I am enamored of the triangular shape, very sleek.

- Powered by a single AAA battery, available everywhere.

- Good battery life (I own several iPods and they always seem to need a
charge and that means having the cable handy and an outlet).

- FM receiver/record features; and you can store channels.

- Built in mike (record lectures, take memos, etc.)

- Color screen (the MuVo's is grayscale by comparison)

- Drag and drop file management - no need for Windows Media Player or any other proprietary software; music files can be in folders or not and the player's software will find them; you can also navigate such folders within the player.

- Support a variety of audio formats: MP3, WMA, ASF and OGG Q10.

- Solid state disc, not a microdrive; granted iPod now has an 8Gb flash player and bigger ones are coming but they have built-in batteries and once they no longer charge all you've got is a pretty paperweight.

- Good feature set including: EQ, delete command, alarm, data storage, bmp viewer, various listening modes E.G. A-B, playlists, date & time, etc.

- Great sound, just like all iRiver owners say.

Cons:

- Toggle control is poorly conceived; as others have said, you often do one thing when you mean another; it's this player's biggest problem, not a deal breaker but they really should have spent more time designing this; you do get used to it but that's no excuse for poor design.

- Flimsy battery door; not a huge con but it's an important part of the unit and I could see it getting cracked and not fitting securely and then you either try to get another one from iRiver or use ugly tape to keep the battery in; could have been designed better; however they did do a good job of hiding it in the sense that it sort of blends in with the player's fluted texture which is cool.

- No microSD slot; you could say I'm nitpicking here but I don't think such a thing would have added much to this player's size and, with the right firmware, could have let owners upgrade to a total of 8Gb of space; too bad - would have been a great selling point.

- USB cable door is a bit flimsy; located on the side of the player, this door is similar to the ones on a lot of digital cameras in that is is just a small piece of plastic held on by a thin handle allowing you to sort of swing it out of the way of the USB cable jack that plugs in; I think it would have been much better to have located this plug on the end of the player opposite the one where the headphone jack goes in; you need to be careful with this door and have at least one longer fingernail to open it.

- Not powered by the USB cable; yup, transferring data to the player uses the battery; can't understand why they didn't just power it off the USB cable since you have to have it hooked up to transfer data; not a huge issue but another poor design decision methinks.

Keep in mind, I've owned a number of portable music players before buying this one including several from Creative, one from RCA, and I do still own two 60Gb iPods. I do love my iPods for the huge disc space they provide but I really felt there was room in my "collection" (and in this market) for a good player that uses regular batteries. Certainly the future for electronics that use non-user-replacable lithium-ion batteries is assured but that doesn't mean I have to like that state of affairs. Sandisk got it almost right with their e280 series players and their replacable batteries (though it seems they changed their minds for the new line which don't let you replace them - wtf?) but they're still proprietary with swapping out requiring removing a tiny philips screw etc. From what I've been able to gather, the iRiver T60 is essentially the best for it's capacity and type of battery; Sandisk does still make a 4Gb AAA powered player but it has a grayscale screen and the reviews for it are not so great.

NOTE: I only decided to write this positive review after getting around a serious problem I had with this player. Now, I'm not sure where the problem actually lies but I am willing to give iRiver the benefit of a doubt here. What happened was I was having trouble transferring songs to the player. It kept shutting off in the middle of the transfer which would cause Windows to "dismount" the player/drive letter. I checked the battery gauge on the player and it still showed two out of three bars. I tried a different Windows XP computer and, if anything, the problem got worse. I tried a different USB port, copying files a different way, no joy. I did finally notice that the error message was "battery low". I thought about this a bit; the indicator said two bars and the player, once disconnected, worked just fine. So I took the Polaroid brand AAA battery out and put a brand new Sony AAA battery in and voila! That was the whole problem, the player was for some reason getting a low battery reading from a still viable battery when connected to the PC. The Sony brand battery had none of these problems and I tranferred 4Gb of music over the course of half an hour with no hiccups. So, the moral is, don't use Polaroid batteries (or probably any other cheap brand) with this player. Instead stick to good known name brands (oh and yes, I do have the latest firmware installed so it wasn't "an old firmware" type issue). Also, I have not tried this player with rechargeables but I assume there won't be similar problems (just somewhat shorter battery life).

UPDATE ON BATTERY PROBLEM ABOVE:

It's been a few more weeks now and I've done several more updates/loads to my iRiver T60 player and I think I've finally nailed down the problem with updating it. Since it doesn't use USB power during transfers AND since the screen stays on the whole time it is connected (and recognized by Windows) if you start with anything but a full or nearly full battery (it seems to need to show three bars on the T60 screen), then the player will flash the "battery low" error upon connection and shut down. I find this, as well as not using USB power, quite odd as I can modify the settings in the player to turn the screen off during playback etc. after 5 seconds, 10 seconds etc. but NOT apparently during transfers. So here's what I plan to do to solve this. I will keep a dedicated set of rechargable AAA batteries around near the PC that I will use to do transfers. Now, that's not as annoying as it might seem. I was planning to use some rechargables with this player anyway and I typically do transfers in my office where there are extra wall plugs. Still, a rather poor design flaw I must say. Perhaps a firmware update will fix it somehow? iRiver, you listening?

-s1m0n

Click Here to see more reviews about: iriver T60 4 GB MP3 Player (Black)

Product Description:
The ultra-portable T60 delivers exceptional sound quality in a uniquely durable and sporty design. The T60 includes everything contemporary customers expect from an MP3 player, including such extras as a 65,000-color LCD screen and a built-in digital FM radio. Users can load BMP picture files onto the T60 to share with friends on the T60's robust screen. In addition to supporting MP3, WMA, ASF, and OGG Q10 music files, the T10 is PlaysForSure verified to support subscription-based music download services, giving you instant, affordable access to millions of songs right out of the box. When it's time to transfer files onto the T10, USB 2.0 connectivity and Windows Media Player 10 compatibility make file transferring a snap. The T60 also supports a mass storage mode.
Other design features include a voice recorder--which is a great feature to record important class lectures or business meetings--an alarm clock, an integrated sport clip, and an easy-to-use jog dial user interface. With 4 GB of internal Flash memory, the T10 supports up to 136 hours of audio playback. Powered by one AAA battery, the T10 is capable of producing 19 hours of audio playback. Compatible with Windows and Mac operating systems, the T10 measures 2.57 by 1.08 by 0.87 inches, weighs just .85 ounce, and comes backed by a 1-year limited manufacturer's warranty.
What's in the Box
Digital audio player, iRiver earphones, USB 2.0 interface cable, printed manual, installation CD, and AAA battery.

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iriver T60 2 GB MP3 Player (Black) Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)When I was looking for a portable music player (pmp), I had several criteria in mind that made finding a decent player extremely difficult:

1) Most importantly, it needed to have high sound quality.Mostly what I mean by this is high quality signal processing and a high (>/= 90db) signal to noise ratio.I say this from experience, not as a snob: I tried a Phillips and the sound on acoustic guitar recordings produced noticeable distortion and artifacts around each picked note.On another player w/higher specs, the same exact file was clean.So the specs (if they are accurate) DO really matter if you care at all about sound quality. I'm a plug 'n' play person, and never use any EQ settings (parametric, presets, fancy "SRS WOW" or any of that).It should sound the way the musicians wanted it to sound without any fiddling with those things.

I listen to all sorts of music: underground rap, indypop, folk, acoustic, bluegrass, progressive metal, jazz, classical, etc.So far they all sound good on this.

2) I changed from Windows to Ubuntu Linux (it's free! and also amazingly good!) on my laptop, and wanted something that supported the open (free) Ogg Vorbis format, which is vastly superior to both VBR mp3 and wma in sound quality.And I wanted to support open vs closed standards.Unfortunately, Ogg (and its lossless counterpart FLAC) don't yet have as much hardware support as the closed wma and mp3 formats.

3) I wanted a flash-drive, not a portable mass storage library.I rip my cds to FLAC, encode to Ogg Q6 (~192kbps), and archive the FLAC albums on an external hard drive in case I need to re-encode something.Besides, pmp's with hard drives have too many moving parts and wouldn't last long with the way I abuse hardware.

4) Needed to run off of a standard AAA or AA battery for future-proofing and convenience:standard batteries are everywhere, and can simply be replaced with another fully charged one when they are drained, rather than having to find a wall plug and waiting for a recharge.Plus, when they die, you can be assured that more are easy to buy, rather than hunting for a rare, expensive proprietary battery pack that might be discontinued.I use 4 AAA NiMH rechargeables, and between them I get plenty of battery life in a package that's still not very bulky or heavy when compared to a CD player.And it's super-cheap.

5) Decent microphone to record voice notes, memos, song ideas, and conversations.

6) I learn a lot of songs by ear, so it's really nice to have an AB function that is easily accessible.A lot of casual listeners consider it a bell and whistle ("who would want to listen to part of a song over and over?")Well, anyone who wants to truly learn the song (music and/or lyrics) inside and out.

Other than that, I can honestly say I don't care much about other "features" such as color screens and graphics, FM radio, etc.

Verdict:

1) Amazing sound quality without any fiddling.I haven't even touched any of the EQ and effects settings it has, and probably never will.Some audible hiss, but I have yet to find any player from anywhere at any price that didn't have some, and during playback (which is crystal clear -- no distortion!!) it isn't noticeable.The volume on this sucker goes very loud -- with noise cancelling earbuds (try the $30 ones from Creative -- amazing sound for the $$!) I don't have the volume above 7 - 8 most of the time.When I plug into an external system, I crank it up to 20.

2) iRiver says it supports Ogg Vorbis up to Q10 (highest quality).I haven't tested that, but it plays Q6 well enough. Playback isn't gapless, however, which is annoying on some albums.It also plays mp3s well, and they sound decent.

3) It's flash.I considered the 4 gb model, and sometimes which I would've gotten it instead.But in the end I think 20-30 albums at high quality is enough.

4) It runs well off rechargeable AAA's.I haven't yet measured the actual battery life it gets.Some annoying points that others may have mentioned:a) It drains battery during USB transfers, which is completely unnecessary. b) There is a "battery selection" option to toggle between alkaline and rechargeable so you get an accurate readout.However, the toggle is reversed, and you need to set it to alkaline to get an accurate rechargeable readout, and vice-versa.Weird.

5) Microphone recordings are very clear and of high quality.It does a good job of picking up voice and acoustic instruments, and has a well-tempered balance betweenclose and distant sound sources.It records to mp3 format, which saves space and allows you to choose 3 different quality settings.Good enough for my purposes.

6) The player has a button *dedicated* to AB functions.Like this player was made for musicians.How cool is that?Other players hide it under a couple layers of menus, which can get annoying.Some other musician friendly features:"study mode" lets you use the track forward/back buttons to jump to 3, 10, 30, etc second intervals within a song, making rewind easy without risking a jump back to the beginning.Dedicated ff/rw buttons would be better, but this is nice.There is also a "playback speed" function, but it doesn't work on my player.Too bad, so sad.

Other notes:

a) The joystick is slightly annoying.I don't generally have a problem with it, but you have to use both hands in order to do what you want to do with it.Wish it were just push buttons, though.
b) Like I said above, it drains power during USB transfers.WTF?

At least a couple of these issues could be fixed by a firmware update, but the current version is 1.03 and was released in May 2007. iRiver responds to e-mails for support, but sometimes doesn't answer the question I asked.

As I don't care about the funky shape or other issues like that, four changes would make this the perfect pmp in my opinion:
1) Get rid of the joystick
2) Redesign to run off USB power.Relocate USB plug or get rid of need for a USB cord and have the player plug directly in to the computer like any other flash storage drive.
3) Update the firmware to resolve the stupid software issues:Nonfunctional playback speed option, reversed alkaline - rechargeable setting.
4) (not as important) a dedicated, gain-adjusted line-out jack.But there's only so much surface area on a Toblerone...

Click Here to see more reviews about: iriver T60 2 GB MP3 Player (Black)

Product Description:
Built in Flash memory for skip-free playback - Prism Style MP3 player based on iriver ifp100 series - Jog Button Navigation System - CSTN 65,000 color LCD with colorful GUI - Plays up to 19 hours with a AAA-size battery - Supports music file such as MP3, WMA, ASF and OGG Q10 - FM radio and FM recording reservation - Voice Recording - Image viewer** - Alarm with real-time clock - USB 2.0, Ultra Fast Data Transfer - Firmware Upgradable

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Blue Omnitech MP3 Player - 2GB-2 GO Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)[Something went horribly wrong, and this review somehow ended up under a different MP3 player, not the Omnitech blue 2GB player.I do NOT own a pink MP3 player, just blue and orange ones.]

Good Things (in no particular order):
1) It sounds fine, but I never used the supplied ear buds.(NEVER judge a portable music device by the quality of the bundled ear buds or phones.Save them for when the good ones get lost or broken or to give to friends that always break them.)
2) Power saving settings can be defeated so it could run indefinitely if you supplied external power.Useful if you wanted to build it into something like a clock radio or play background music or sound effects.
3) It remembers the position in a tune if you shut it down in the middle of a song.This is great if you listen to very long tracks, like audio books, DJ mixes, or concert recordings.
4) Fast fast-forward, if you want to get 60 minutes into a long mix.
5) It'll play CD quality (lossless) WAV files.
6) Two earphone jacks if you want to share music.
7) Replaceable AAA battery, so there's no waiting around for it to recharge - just keep a spare battery with you.
8) No special software required to load music on it; just plug it into a USB port and it appears as a flash drive.
9) The plastic case has a sort of rubbery feel and there's a blue backlight on the display.
10) Maybe it goes without saying now, but it plays VBR MP3 files at high bitrates, and displays ID3 tags.
11) It can be used as a voice recorder using a built-in microphone.
12) It displays Japanese characters in tags.
13) 2GB holds a heck of a lot of music, even at 320K.

Meh Things:
1) There's "equalizer" settings for rock, pop, jazz, bass, under the settings menu when music is playing.Difficult to change quickly if one song needs a boost and the next one doesn't, unlike my ancient RCA Lyra that had a separate button for this function.
2) The language can be changed to English, French, Dutch, Swedish, German, Spanish, Italian and Portuguese.That's the language it uses in the menus; it can't translate talking books from Dutch to Italian or anything that.
3) The manual doesn't mention that you can lock (and unlock) the controls by simultaneously pressing the M and > buttons.It takes careful timing to unlock it without putting it into STOP and losing your position.

Bad Things:
1) It may freeze permanently.Mine did this, and other people have had it happen.This may be triggered by not leaving enough free space on the flash drive.Know the warranty period, and save the receipt. [update: It is possible to copy firmware from a good player to a bricked one.This requires programs like "Firmware Hammer" and "M566xISP.zip".If you still have a good player, it would be sensible to hunt down M566xISP and save a copy of pm.bin as a backup.]
2) It doesn't always save the position after a battery failure, at least not when using NiMH cells for power.
3) The display is small and hard to read.Not good for people with low vision.
4) It's hard to get the battery out of the compartment; loop a strip of ribbon, or thin plastic (cut from a plastic shopping bag) around it.I tore part of the casing off a NiMH battery prying it out.
6) Only one colour of backlighting.Blue LED was cool in the '90s, but in the new millennium I demand a choice.
7) No socket for expanding storage with SDHC cards.

Click Here to see more reviews about: Blue Omnitech MP3 Player - 2GB-2 GO

Product Description:
2 Gb , MP3 Player up to 1000 Song by Omnitech, #15200-US/CC

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