iriver S10: The coolest and the tiniest

Edvarcl Heng | Sep 13, 2006

We loved the U10 to bits and gushed about the E10. iriver's D-Click interface always gets us flustered… in a good way. Stunningly tiny, it's just 1.9g heavier than the new shuffle. And unlike a lot of tiny MP3 players that fluff on the physical controls with Lilliputian buttons, the D-Click system will make navigating plain sailing. But unlike the U10 and E10, there will be no flash or video support on the S10. What iriver seems to be doing here is to export the U10 form factor onto its popular N-series of pendant MP3 players. Good move there. But who will take on the mantle of the new mini fashion queen? The shuffle or the S10? Only time will tell. Watch this space.

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dfichtner

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dfichtner says...
I purchased an I-River S10 while here in Korea. I have had it for about a week. Here are my observations: The sound is excellent. The headphones are nothing special (I bought some Sony EX-51's, which don't clip hold, but sound great for around $30. You have a lot of control over the bass, field width, there is an EQ, etc. You have a fair amount of functionality here. I also demo'ed the I-River S7, which is about the same size, but doesn't have a screen. Sound seemed identical (through stock headphones), although the S7 has an external button to change between some preset audio settings (less functionality, but great sound). I sometimes wish there were a preset button on my S10, as clicking and hunting through menus on the S10 can get annoying. There is a problem with the clock. It keeps time UNTIL you start going into settings menus and adjusting things. Then, for some reason, the clock falls a few minutes behind. The problem compounds itself over time, and a few days later, you'll find your clock is off by 10 or 20 minutes. This is probably a firmware issue they haven't figured out yet. The clock is fine if you make no settings adjustments to the unit, but you'll find yourself changing settings all of the time. The S10 (and S7) both play loud and clear at various volume levels (until maybe above the 85 to 90% level, where some distortion is present). No problems here, and there is plenty of good sound. My biggest beef with the S10 is that it took me 15 minutes to figure out how to set the screen so that I could watch the "dancing lights" without the screen going black. And I still fiddle with it for 3 to 5 minutes every time I attempt to change this. The menus are very confusing in this regard, and there are different settings in different locations controlling what happens to the screen saver and the LCD backlight. They are two different entities in two different places. Sometimes, you are required to push and hold the right side of the screen to save a setting, but you're not necessarily prompted to do so. The same can be said for finding some menu items, which you wouldn't know were there otherwise. And yeah, the reviews about the software are correct. Use it to update the firmware from time-to-time, but otherwise forget about it. It's easier to simply drag and drop the files via Windows.

Jan 10, 2007 15:52

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plink

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plink says...
For iRiver, I'll prefer simply using drag and drop. I don't like the softwave which provided by iRiver. Have you checked out the new iRiver S7?This player can 3 different skin stickers. Check this out! www.warehouse123.com... I think it may be a shuffle killer.

Jan 16, 2007 14:16

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