<img src="http://parcom.pronetworks.org/images/iRiver.jpg" align="right"> iRiver T20 512MB digital music player, Too small?
By Tony Smith
September 29, 2005 11:32 GMT
You've got to hand it to iRiver. Faced with Apple's iconic iPod, the company hasn't tried to emulate its rival by devising a single, clear product identity around which to build its range. Instead, it's gone for a scattergun approach: fire off lots of different models and hope some of them stick to consumers.
Enter the T10, T20 and T30. I'll be looking at all three over the next few days, but first it's the turn of the smallest, the T20. Available in 1GB and 512MB versions, I took a look at the latter. It's an archetypal compact MP3 player, all straight lines and tiny, fiddly controls. The black and red front panel plays host to a small blue-backlit LCD of the kind we've seen on Creative's MuVo range and other Flash-based devices.
The back is an iPod-like shiny chrome panel that wraps around the sides, splitting to form the T20's main controls. Like the iPod, it quickly becomes a mess of fingerprints. There's barely any movement to the buttons, which are flush with the edge of the player. I didn't take to them, and I found the player to be too small to be comfortable to use. It might look great hung from a young model's neck, but it didn't pass my 'use on a crowded bus' test.
The top of the device has two 3.5mm-jack sockets, one for earphones, the other for line-in recording. There's a microphone on the front for voice recording, too. I've always felt recording is an excuse to tick a couple of extra boxes on a feature comparison chart, but they're there if you do need them. The line-in even has a sensor to automatically break tracks after a sufficient length of silence.
<img src="http://www.pronetworks.org/forum/images/smiles/source.jpg"> The Register
<img src="http://www.pronetworks.org/forum/images/smiles/view.jpg" border="0"> <a href=http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/09/29/review_iriver_t20/ target=_blank> complete review</a>
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