Ever since the damp got to my minidisc player in the Philippines, and it became erratic and unreliable, I have been thinking of getting a new portable music player of some description. I have now done so, having got myself a shiny new iRiver H120, which arrived this morning. So far I’m fairly pleased. It sounds good (which is, of course, the most important thing), looks good (not that that’s terribly important), is fairly lightweight (lighter than my old minidisc player, anyway, plus I don’t have to carry a huge stack of minidiscs around with me), and not too fiddly to use.
I was rather worried when files I transferred across in Linux came out corrupted (though it worked fine with Windows), but upgrading to the latest Firmware fixed that, and now it works wonderfully in either OS, without my needing to install any new software at all (it just appears as a USB mass storage device). This was actually one reason I chose it over the other options in the first place.
Now that it’s working as it should my only real criticism is that the chromy bits are very good at showing up fingerprints.
Axel, does it come with a spare battery (or can one be bought / used) or do you need 220V immediately when the battery is dead?
I want something else than I have now, but replacement of batteries as a go along is necessary.
The battery’s buit-in, so changing it isn’t really an option.
On the plus side, the battery lifetime is pretty good. The stated time is 16 hours, and while that’s obviously only under ideal conditions, it’s still fairly good.
Glad to see the little guy works under linux too- that’s a pretty big selling point for me.
I’ve been eyeing this guy for a short time now, and was curious how the FM radio works- additionally, can you record from the airwaves onto the iRiver?
Well, I don’t listen to the radio much, so I haven’t really tried it a great deal, but it seems to work alright. Reception is fairly good. Unfortunately, I don’t think you can record from the radio, though.