iRiver U10 Series
Now this is revolutionary. iRiver have neatly side-stepped the whole tiny screen problem afflicting most MP3 players with video capabilities. They’ve made almost the whole of the U10 MP3 player a screen.
They’ve achieved this by including NO BUTTONS on it. Not one. I think you do stuff by jabbing at the screen with your finger, biro, flick-knife or used syringe. It looks like there’s a power switch on the side, which is a bit disappointing. It’d be better if you had to say ‘power on’ in a commanding, Jean-Luc Picard-style baritone. Never mind. No buttons is a good start.
So what are the drawbacks? Well I’m guessing that the battery life for video is embarrassing, because iRiver’s press release only states that it’s “up to 34 hours of playback for MP3 songs”. It’s what they DON’T tell you that’s crucial.
Another problem is that despite being all screen, iRiver have compensated for this, not by making the screen bigger, but by making the U10 smaller. It’s under 7cm long. I don’t know about you, but if I can lose a TV remote that’s twice the size, all the while knowing it’s within the room, I can sure as hell lose an MP3 player that’s the size of half a pencil.
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