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Interface & Features
As
with all MP3/PMP reviews, I feature a section just on screenshots of the
interface and its features. Pics were taken with a quality camera in
macro mode mounted on a tripod.
For a flash-based player, the GUI is quite
robust and does offer plenty of features. The Main Menu consists of
the following submenus: Music, FM Radio, Recording, Pictures, Video,
Text, Flash Games, Alarm Clock, Browse and Settings. Let's take a
closer look at each...
Music
Let me start by saying that when I first
powered up the U10, I did not think it was designed to support ID3 Tags
based on the pre-loaded content. However, after loading a variety of
properly tagged files, I was pleasantly surprised to find it does offer full
tag support! You can easily browse your music files by Artists,
Albums, Genres or Titles. On a minor note, I was pleasantly surprised
by the pre-loaded content. They had a song on their that I have
personally been trying to find a while now.
There is also a Playlist Menu and I was quite
happy to find that the U10 does indeed support on-the-fly playlists.
They call it "Quick List", and it does function quite well. In addition, you have the ability to rate your
music and playback based on rating as well. Overall, for a flash player,
this is certainly more than enough in terms of playback features.
FM Radio
The
FM Radio menu will allow you to easily seek through bands and preset your
desired stations. You can also record directly from FM and manage all
your available presets.
Recording
The Recording Menu is pretty straightforward.
You can use it to record either voice or even from a line-in source,
provided you purchase the optional cradle. I'll provide samples of
each in the performance section.
Pictures
Now, I'm not much for picture viewing on these
small players, but I will say that pictures look very good on it's quality
2.2" screen. In fact, it is the best I've seen from an ultra-portable
player. Also, unlike the Cowon iAudio 6 I recently reviewed,
pictures load fast with no lag and the transition effects are great.
Video
Video files are viewed by file name.
However, it is easy to find what you're looking for, thanks to the large
display and fairly quick auto scroll. The player supports only MPEG4 video and it must
be encoded a certain way in order to play properly. I'll cover this as
well as check out its playback performance later in this review.
Text
Text file viewing is quite pleasant on the U10. In fact, the player
does a very good job at displaying text the exact way you have it on the
text file you transfer over. There is even an auto scroll feature
which will scroll the text very slowly, enough to keep up with most of your
tunes. Text is displayed in black and white, which makes it much
easier to read. Overall, I was quite impressed with how well it
handles all transfered text files and lyrics.
Flash Games
One very unique feature the U10 is capable of
is its support for flash games and even flash movies. This makes it a
great companion for those long doctor visits or just a good way to kill time
when it is really needed. The U10 comes pre-loaded with a few games
already, but you can download a number of additional games and movies from
their website or from a variety of other websites on the internet.
Most games are quite basic but some are indeed worthy of playing.
Alarm Clock
If you purchase the optional cradle I will show you in this review, the U10 will double as an
alarm clock and can very well replace your existing one! I will show
you in detail just how well-designed the cradle really is and all other
features it will unleash.
Settings
For a flash-based player, the Settings Menu
does offer plenty of options. It consists of four menus as follows:
Sound, Record, Timer & Extra.
The sound menu has a user EQ as well as your
SRS settings which basically allows you to adjust the bass output.
While not exactly useful, there is also a Fade-In menu to allow your tracks
to play this way.
The recording menu will basically allow you to
the both the voice and line-in volume levels as well as the quality of your
FM recordings.
The timer menu will allow you to adjust the
power-off, sleep and backlight timers. You can set the date and time
from this menu as well.
Finally, the Extras Menu will allow you to set
you preferred language, adjust scroll speed, enable lyric display and set
your FM Tuner region. Also note that the U10 has a neat background
feature that basically changes its display colors based on what day of the
week it is. You can keep this on auto or choose your desired color.
You can even set a picture as your background as well.
Portrait or Landscape...you decide.
One final neat feature I would like to
demonstrate is its unique ability to easily switch from landscape to
portrait. Portrait view can display much more information and can be
quite handy for reading long text files or lyrics. If you have seen
some of the new ads on their Clix player, you'll notice they tend to display
it in portrait view to give most potential buyers the idea that it is a
different product. However, both the U10 and Clix do sport a button to
easily switch between the two. That's just IRiver's marketing strategy
to attract or should I say, fool a majority of consumers into thinking it is
an all together different product that is unlike their previous models.
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