iriver H320 mp player
- Reviewer
- Stuart Miles
- Review Date
- 20 September 2004
- Manufacturer
- iRiver
- Price as reviewed
- £330
- Latest price
- compare
Reader review
User: Lee, London
Date Posted: 10 April 2006
Review: Man. that's really damn expensive for average people, you know what I mean. The worse thing is that maybe it’s not available in the UK right now. I hope you people lose the price a little bit.
Rating:
3 people have rated this review helpful
Reader review
User: Kevin, Korea
Date Posted: 8 December 2005
Review: I bought it last year and it’s absolutely brilliant. Plays videos too! Firmware upgrade is very handy. Battery is very long-lasting. But I think the H320 is a bit too big to carry around unless you put it in your bag. It doesn't fit in your pocket, if it does; it's going to bulge out very bad.
Rating:
3 people have rated this review helpful
Reader review
User: Robin Hatton, Oxford, UK
Date Posted: 6 October 2005
Review: I bought this about half a year ago now and I was amazed when I first used it, the colour is very crisp and vibrant. It has a nice weight to it, but easy enough to carry around (maybe by a skin cover instead of the thick leather type). Perfect quality sound, you can turn the volume up really loud! It looks very smart and hi-tech. It has so many features including radio, text file viewer, voice recorder (also records radio), mp3 player, wav player, file browser. A very decent settings menu where you can change a lot of settings for the display, you can also upgrade the firmware. Yesterday I found out about the new firmware upgrade which allows it to play .avi video files, and I was stunned. The audio and video quality is excellent and with the correct conversion software, you can convert huge files to tiny files, without losing much quality (700MB can convert to around 241MB which is useful for saving space). A backup battery pack is available from most online stores like eBay. Adding a further 32 hours to the standard 16 hours which is how long it's internal battery lasts for. I really couldn't ask for a better device for playing MP3's and videos. I'd never sell it now I've seen just how much it can do!
Rating:
2 people have rated this review helpful
Reader review
User: Rob, Wales, UK
Date Posted: 16 September 2005
Review: I am only 14 and I have got the iriver h320 and it's an excellent mp3 player with a 20 GB hard drive. I have also learnt how to put videos on it with real sound so it counts as an mp4 player. I think the sound quality is very good compared to other mp3 players you just need powerful earphones. I would recommend it to anyone.
Rating:
2 people have rated this review helpful
Reader review
User: Andrew Ray, Northamptonshire, UK
Date Posted: 5 July 2005
Review: I was looking for a player which didn't tie me to Microsoft products; which allowed me to use it as a portable hard-drive; which had support for Ogg Vorbis codecs and which had good quality sound. This player fulfils all of those requirements. I listen to much orchestral/chamber music and I must say that the sound quality is exceptional. I do not use any of the sound-mangling equalisation settings - that's not meant to sound rude, I just prefer the unadulterated sound. The supplied ear buds (Sennheiser made and badged for iRiver) are as good as any I have used with portable players (better than my Sony minidisc Fontopias, for example) and are very comfortable. Tommy Jorgenson's list of features strikes me as pretty accurate. I didn't find the button layout counter-intuitive - it's just not intuitive! You need to read the manual, but that is clear and for a device that does so much, I didn't feel insulted at having to consult the book of words. By contrast with other reviewers here, I have found the USB-on-the-Go facility very useful as an adjunct to my digital camera (only 2 MegaPixel) when I'm abroad - saves taking the PC to flush the memory card! Slowish, I grant but effective and better than the camera for locally previewing the pictures. Pity there is no means to output these to a TV from the device. Take care which model you source. The European model seems to be that little more expensive, but you get a better package. (The US one replaces USB O-T-G with a DRM data port.) The case has been revised (for the European model at least) to allow direct access to all the controls and to view the screen while in it. The remainder of notes may only interest users of Linux ... As a Linux user, it gives me all I need, with absolutely no need to resort to MS Windows for any of the functions. I don't use them - a sensible folder structure (composer or artist/work or album/movement or track, prefixed by at least a two-digit track number to keep movements in order) seems to do the job for me (and Grip makes a good job of automating most of that). Given a start point, the player happily works through all the tracks in alphanumeric order in the current directory, following this with the next (alphanumeric) directory at the same level in the tree. So after playing through all my Bach.JS works, it will happily regale me with Bartok! The file system is an extended version of FAT32, which seems to support Linux permissions properly - files transferred from CD come over with 555 perms and genuine user/group associations, which you can change as flexibly as you like (though I have not checked whether it supports SUID, SGID or sticky perms). Using rsync to transfer the files is extremely effective - and does not accidentally scrub files from the device. I took over a month scouring the web for information before choosing this portable player and I am totally satisfied in my decision.
Rating:
2 people have rated this review helpful
Reader review
User: Tommy Jorgensen, Denmark
Date Posted: 8 May 2005
Review: First: This player rocks! It beats iPod in any game, and is an absolute winner! BUT there are a few shortcomings that other players on the market have overcome.<br>* On the go play list creation. You have to make play lists on the PC and transfer them.<br>* There is no random playing. The shuffle function only makes one random sequence and recycles it for a very long time and it's seldom re-shuffled.<br>* No gapless playback<br>* No WAV recording - USB host feature is much too slow to be practical.<br>* Video playback is extremely limited and often has audio sync problems.<br>* Very sensitive to video-format and bit-rate. <br>* Long boot time, 15-30 seconds every time you turn it on.<br>* Cannot resume play lists, you have to manually select the playlist and Fast Forward.<br>* Shuffle (which isn't random) also includes video files, which is annoying.<br>* No book marking of audio books etc.<br>* Counter-intuitive button layout<br>* The supplied carry case covers controls!<br>I'd go for the Archos Gmini400 if I could choose again...
Rating:
1 person has rated this review helpful
Reader review
User: Colin Zeal, Reading
Date Posted: 11 April 2005
Review: This is a great device. The sound quality is fantastic, much better than my old creative jukebox and my Sony minidisc player. The UI is primitive granted, but as I get over 16 hours on one battery charge I don't care. What’s more, I've upgraded the firmware and can now watch video on it too. All this for just over £200 quid - bargain. Of course you could be boring and get an iPod, have to use iTunes and take your charger everywhere.
Rating:
1 person has rated this review helpful
Reader review
User: Jane Frampton, Suffolk
Date Posted: 10 December 2004
Review: Iíve got this phone - its build quality is poor. It felt very, very plasticky and within 2 hours the battery was dead. I recharged it again and again and it lasted just 2 hours. I phoned the manufacturer who said and I quote "We are experiencing certain issues with some devices" I would not recommend this player. The buttons hurt my fingers and I found the sound quality very, very poor.
Rating:
1 person has rated this review helpful
Reader review
User: Steve, Wirral UK
Date Posted: 12 November 2004
Review: This device is great, the only let down was the remote which is a bit boring, but for an extra £20 I bought one with an LCD display and now its awesome.
Rating:
3 people have rated this review helpful
Reader review
User: Bagheera, Luton UK
Date Posted: 3 October 2004
Review: Got mine yesterday. Great bit of kit. Much better than the iPod. Colour display very nice. Lots of good features. Hope iSkin produce a cool case soon.
Rating:
2 people have rated this review helpful
Reader review
User: unknown, n/a
Date Posted: 24 September 2004
Review: I bought one yesterday, boy, this gadget is awesome in terms of sound quality and functionality. I have tested iPod and Creative and the best sounding player is the H320. This is certainly worth the price. You get what you paid for. Trust me. I did my research for more than a month before I bought this product.
Rating:
2 people have rated this review helpful
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