iriver H10 5 GB Digital MP3 Player Trace Red

This device basically doesn't work and is poorly thought out. If you don't believe me ask yourself why the first insert you see when you open the box is a bright orange piece of paper saying "STOP! Do not return this product! Call us first..." I don't see IBM needing to put those sorts of inserts into their ThinkPads...because they work. My background is that I have had an iPod for 18-24 months and bought this so that I could use a subscription music service (Rhapsody to Go). This experience has made me appreciate the many features I took for granted in iPod. Generally, the H10 operates like a computer that is being asked to run an application for which it has insufficient memory (if you have ever tried to play the latest computer games on a non-latest PC you'll know what I'm talking about). So essentially this means it acts like it has been hit in the head, being jerky at best and nonresponsive often. For instance, it takes forever to load up a new song on the H10. Whereas on iPod you go from song to song seamlessly, on the H10 between songs you get a whirring and it stops...I guess it's loading it up...and finally, if you're lucky, it will play the song. There is never less than a 30 second break between songs. That's feeble. That stuff needs to be invisible to the user. It would be faster to go from single to single on a real physical jukebox playng vinyl 45's. Also, it doesn't always play the song you expect. Also, the little slider control is frequently nonresponsive. Also, the fast forward, rewind, play controls are hard to distinguish from each other (you have to focus on them, which is hard to do while jogging). When scrolling, you frequently overshoot your target (too sensitive). That's aside form the fact that often it just crashes and won't do anything at all. I guess I should call this number on the "STOP!" insert before I return it but I get the feeling it's going to have to go back. This just does not come up to the level of an acceptable mp3 player. This is a protoype. (By the way I did the firmware upgrade first thing so that won't help.) Now that I realize how great the iPod is relative to the H10, it really makes me appreciate the thinking that went into it. To be honest, would anyone take a job at iRiver if they could get a job at Apple? I don't want to be harsh but probably not. And I think that collective personnel advantage at Apple probably translates into a better product for them in a million ways. One dumb decision was to include several features like photo display and text display that I suspect 98% of users don't care about at all. Basically, people want an mp3 player to play music. Looking at your photo collection on a one in ch screen probably is not a key feature. Instead of devoting time to creating a phto and text service, they should have made sure they had the basic music player working. Duh. [Update: bought a Samsung Yepp and it works well. Very happy now.]

I have had this now for about 4 months and it seems like every day some new issue arises that makes me wonder if I made the right decision in purchasing the H10. 1. The unit freezes up on a regular basis. At least every couple of days. The only way to fix this is to do a hard reboot (remove and replace the battery). This always works, but I wonder if the time will come when it doesn't. 2. There have been times when I had the unit hooked up my computer to transfer music, and after I disconnected the USB cable from the player, I got a message that said "initializing please wait". Well , I waited at least 20 minutes and nothing ever happened. Again I had to do a hard reboot, and when I turned it back on, all my music had been erased. But when I hooked it up to WMP10 it showed all my music, again when it wasn't hooked up, no files showed. To correct this I had to do a firmware upgrade that erased all the files that were supposedly on there. 3. This player is slow in everything. Everything from changing songs to turning the damn thing on and off. 4. What's up with only being able to in-line record anything with a cradle you have to purchase separately? (for 40.00 bucks no less) 5. I know some people think the controls on the side are user intuitive, but I really think they are in a horrible place and can never find them...when I do, I usually press the wrong button. Maybe this issue is just me. 6. Album art is not shown at all, despite what Amazon.com says. Iriver doesn't advertise this feature though. 7. You can't add playlists to this. Not a major drawback, but I listen to music often, so for instance, I'd like to have a playlist of music that I can listen to in the gym. Then I'd like a separate play list to listen to while in bed to fall asleep to. Then maybe a separate playlist to drown out my annoying co-worker who snaps her gum all day and sings (badly) with every song that comes on her radio. Get the picture? A playlist would be a bunch of songs organized on WMP10 and given a name like "Songs to drown out my idiot co-worker". The quick list function is ok, but that's just what it is. A quick list made on the fly. This does have some pluses to it. First it is compatible with a plethora of download sites. Check out [...] All have unbelievably low prices to download music. For me that is the major drawback of the Ipod, only being able to use Itunes. Actually, that is the only plus this unit has over Ipod. Would I buy another Iriver. Most likely, I have a flash memory player that has been excellent and I give HIGH ratings to that. They just need to work out the kinks on their hard drive players. It seems like most of us are having some sort of issues with them.

This is truely an amazing product, i abosolutly love it. I use it every day since i got it and i have all of my friends with ipods in envy. Just about all of my friends who owns an ipod now wants an iriver. The iriver looks awsome to, i love it in trance red. The sound quality is amazing on this, i espicialy like the equalizer on it with 40 presets. The voice recorder is fun to playaround with, espicialy when you can record things on it then pretend to listen to music while your taking a test in school when actualy your listeing to answers instead, just set it to repeat haha, or you can upload a cheat sheet as a txt file on it and "scroll for music" :) works amazing, havnt failed a test since. The photo viewr is fun to playaround with as well. I like how the charger and the usb connector are on the same wire, so you can charge it from an outlet or from your USB port on your PC, unlike the Ipod where you have to buy an extra wire to charge it from an outlet. As for people who said they cant tell the buttons on the side, its not that hard to figure out and memorize. Middle is pause, top is fast foward, bottom is rewind. And as for people who said the songs take 30 seconds to change no it doesnt, it takes 2 or 3, if that, same with the ipod, all mp3 players are going to take a second or two to change songs, the more songs you have on it the longer it will change, it has to scan all 5 gb of data for the one song your looking for, And for people whosaid the touch strip isnt sensitive enough, if you use it for 2 or 3 days it will break in and become more sensitive. Anf for people who said you often skip over your desired song, just tap the botton or the top of the strip and it will scroll one at a time, hold it down and it will scroll by itself so you dont have to keep moving your finger up and down. One of the biggest pluses is the removeable battery. Now you can spend 40$ on a new battery every year instead of sending it in for 3 weeks, getting a used refurbished and most likely non working one that someone else has used and who knows what they did with it or where its been with the most horrible customer service in the world (Apple, iPod) I also like the color screen , it makes it look nicer and gives it a cooler graphical look instead of the boring ipod plain text. The FM Tuner is also a plus, sometimes im just in the mood to listen to the radio instead of my music. FIRST THING TO DO WHEN YOU BUY THIS : HTTP://WWW.IRIVERAMERICA.COM/H10UPDATE GO THERE AND DOWNLOAD THE UPDATE, otherwise youll have to re sync your iriver after you update it, this firmware fixes most of the problems that people were listing such as the play in alphabetical order stuff. Ipod mini lists at 200$ , this lists at 240$, (230$ when i bought it) so for 40$ more you get twice as many features, plus youll have something not many other people have :) which is always a plus, thats one of the main reasons i didnt want an ipod, everyone has one. I hate having something everyone else has. so BUY THIS !!! its amazing and i love it :)

Sometimes we have such high hopes for a product only to be sorely disappointed in the end. I did a good amount of research on MP3 players before settling on the iRiver H10 and it still bit me. The unit itself is really attractive, easy to navigate, has an awesome color display and sinks perfectly with Windows Media Player 10. That's the good. The bad and the ugly side come with reliability. It's just down right terrible! I've had my unit under 6 months and I've already had two issues. First, the clock on the player wouldn't advance which was a total annoyance. If you're like me it's the stupid, little things that bug you the most. I called up their service line, only to get enraged by the amount of time I spent on hold. Without exageration, to get my issue sorted out I spent a good 3 hours on hold and that was only from about 5 calls! Most of the time I would get sick of waiting and just hang up. Eventually I was directed to download their firmware upgrade. Amazingly, that seemed to fix it. Now, we come to problem 2. During playback of audio files, my player now only emits high pitch static. Again, I've been going back and forth with them on the issue. I wrote them two emails for starters which were never responded to. Got one of their service people on the phone, astoundingly in under and hour, and was told to download the next firmware update. No offense, but I am truly sick of downloading upgrades for a device that should function correctly out of the box. Anyway, I did as I was instructed and my unit still plays static. To date, my H10 remains non-functional with no fix in sight. In short, for a product that ran me upwards of $250.00 after it was all said and done, it is without a doubt the worst piece of home/personal electronics I have ever owned. If you enjoy spending a lot of money and getting nothing but a company that has zero customer service and isn't concerned with correcting that problem then buy an iRiver. As much as I despise the Apple organization, I have to say they have really cornered the market on portable disc-based audio.

I've had this MP3 player since it came out and, if anyone is still considering getting it, I must advise otherwise. The MP3 player itself looks and feels great, and the navigational features are very easy to use. The problem is that the player itself is extremely unreliable. I have used 3 versions of this player (expecting each time that the player was simply faulty), and all of them glitch up terribly. I constantly have to take my battery out to reset the player as it will freeze during normal play. It also freezes half of the time that I try to sync with WMP. In addition, sometimes it simply refuses to take deleted songs off of my H10's list of tracks (even though they no longer exist on the player). Finally, iRiver has terrible customer service and they do not even back their own products! As a owner of two iRivers (H10 and the 120), I have seen for a while how they function: they will offer updates for their faulty firmware for about a month, and then they leave that product to produce a new one. It seems like they have a new Mp3 player being introduced every few months. Their customer service is extremely hard to get a hold of, and if you do, they will simply say you need to send it to the factory (occasionally you will get a rep that will actually send you a brand new one for free, though). Be smart, stick to a Creative, the new Toshiba Gigabeat S, or (clench your fists) an iPod.

Well, I did lots of research prior to putting down the $240 dollars for this product and thought I was making a good choice. And I still think I did. Unfortunately, though, I don't think iriver has quite got all the bugs worked out of this stylish little player. The features are great, the sound quality is wonderful, and the compact size fit perfectly into my pocket. But like that of a few others that I have talked to/read about, my player froze constantly, got terrible battery life (about 1 hour), had trouble powering off, and wouldn't properly accept music from Windows Media Player (although this may have been a problem on the computer's side, I don't really know). After two days I returned it to Amazon.com. Personally I don't think that the h10 is a bad player and will probably buy one again in a few months when iriver has a little more time to work out the bugs that are inevitable in new technology. Although expensive, this pretty little player is worth it, as long as you get a well working one (like most everyone else does.)

The specifications for the H10 looked good when I was reading it, but unforunately this mp3 fell short of my expectations. Positives: Color screen Radio Tuner Negatives: The USA version, which is what I bought through Amazon.com, isn't recognized as a "mass usb storage device" in Windows. This means you are forced to used Windows Media Player 10 in order to sync files with the player. When you do try to sync albums to the H10, they do not automatically play in order. The time and date on the player was always a day or two off. This is a silly bug that should've been caught before they released this product. The sad part is the iRiver has released firmware fixes for their International and Asian version of H10, but they completely ignored the USA version. How can iRiver release a product like this and expect it to compete with such products as the Creative Zen Micro or Apple iPod?

This is written from the perspective of a first time MP3 player owner... I've owned several MiniDisc units in the past, some of which made me happier than others. I am somewhat computer savvy and I've never played with an iPod. Basically, I'm pretty darn satisfied... vs. other competitors in its class (not the iPod itself) it wins in several categories. 1. Oh-so-sleek look. It doesn't have the same minimalist/modernist design of the iPod, but that's something I never wanted in the first place. Its appearance seems to suggest it's a distant relative of the PlayStation 2. The battery recharges quite quickly, about 2 hours on average. 2. SIMPLE and easy to figure out interface. Menu system is very logical and it's easy to choose songs to listen to based on artist, album, genre, or playlist. Touch bar has just the right amount of sensitivity and appears to be pretty rugged. Great fit in the hand. 3. Windows XP compatible. Plays most, if not all, common forms of MP3 and WMA files. I haven't tested how well it handles media with Digital Rights Managment, but that's just not in the cards for me. 4. Great sound. Has around 20 preset EQs for all genres of music, including a Custom EQ. Haven't used the headphones but I hear pretty good... I use my own pair of earphones and the sound is many times better than even the MiniDisc units I've had (by Sony!). Alas, there are a few downsides... 1. The silicone case hides the beauty of the player, attracts dirt, and the clip is somewhat awkward. It's good for protection, if you're on the go. 2. Though it has photo capabilities, the size and resolution of the screen don't yield very good results. Text interface also has its quirks, but it does its job. Same could be said about the FM radio... it picks up only the strongest stations in your area, but when it does, sound is good. 3. The player (out of the box) and its computer interface has a few minor problems. Best recommendation is to get the latest firmware upgrade ASAP. It still doesn't solve a few things... sometimes I've gotta Refresh the music database to maintain the order of music listed the same as inputted. Also recommended is to use Yahoo! Music Engine, although no program is really required (ie. drag-and-drop files onto the player in Windows Explorer). It does require a little tinkering to get it set up the way you want it, and therefore requires a bit of computer savvy as well as patience. But once you get used to it, it's a truly high quality and convenient item to have. Also, I found a sale here for about $50 off (I paid $199). Definitely affordable and great quality for the price paid.