iRiver H340 40 GB > Reviews (12)

I bought the H340 around 3 months ago primarily because my flashmp3 player wasnt sufficient to carry the songs i wanted to. I thought i might as well splash out on a hard disk mp3 player and was faced with the dilema of choosing from an apple iPod or a competitor.

so the choices were at that time mainly iPod, iriver or creative Zen. There were others around but these are the only decent ones.

the main reasons i went for the iriver was that it seemed the better deal. It had better specs than the other two and was cheaper too.

But there are lots of things other than that and i will try to get through these below.

the iriver is slightly bigger and thicker that the iPod 40GB model and a little bit heavier too. It has a large colour screen that is capable of displaying 260K colours. Below the screen is the main menu button (in blue) surrounded by the buttons for skip tracks, volume and another 4 buttons. On the side are the microphone and the hold button.

Obviously compared to the iPod, its looks are quite toned down. Nevertheless, the iriver makes up for it by amazing specs otherwise.

The H340 supports all common audio formats including .ogg. Other players do not have this unless you hack them. .Ogg is a best format at the moment and has the best audio quality for size.

With the upgraded firmware, you can also play video files and movies! You only have to convert the original with the software provided and then drag-and-drop into the player. I've filled up around 10Gbs with divx films (14 films) and have 30Gb for music and files.

The other thing that separates the H340 from iPod or Zen is the colour screen. To get the colour screen you would otherwise have to buy iPod Photo and even then it does not have video playback.

You can also back up your photos from your digital camera directly without a computer. There is a USB slot at the bottom for this so you can store lots of photos and view them instead of forking out to buy a larger memory card for the camera.

This review is getting quite long so I'll just get through the points.

The sound quality is excellent. When comparing with the iPod and Zen, iriver had the clearest and most distinct sound. You get sennheiser earphones with the iriver which is always a good thing. Plus if you are really fussy with sound quality you can play .ogg files! There are 5 preset equalisers and also a user controlled equaliser.

The screen is very vibrant and the software in the player is very colourful and looks good. Videos play very smoothly and accurately and photos look very good in it too.

Recording is also available via microphone or cable. I've tried both of these out and the recording quality is very good.

There are both USB1 and USB2 interfaces on the unit and also two headphone sockets (kinda useful when watching a film with a friend on train etc). There is also a socket for a remote if you choose to buy one.

There are the customary repeat, shuffle play in order settings and fade in etc.

Other plus points include a very good FM radio and battery life of 16 hours (around 10 if i mix with video)

the buttons do need a bit of getting used to but after a few hours, you will appreciate them: it's a lot quicker and you dont have to fiddle around as much with the iriver than with the iPod.

I would recommend the iriver H340 if you care more about sound quality, value for money and function than about looks and trend. Everyone seems to think the iPod is the best but for functionality, it doesnt come close to the H340. (Admittedly, the iPod does look really nice and i really like that click wheel!)

Anyway, sorry for taking so long...i'm sure i've missed some stuff out but hope this is useful

oh...I've dropped this so many times but it's still working! Solid as a brick!