Iriver X20 4GB

Sound Quality Excellent
Ease of Use Simple - too simple, needs a little more choices on the menu.
Look & Design - looks like an average phone!, not very classy.
Range of Features Excellent but.......
Value for Money - depends on where and how you buy it really.

Advantages: record fm radio, play videos, micro sd expnasion port.

Disadvantages: will not handle Apple aac files which rules out 95% of my library. Expect to re-rip your cd's or convert aac to something the Iriver likes.

Recommend to potential buyers: yes but......

Full review
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I also chose the Iriver X20 with 2GB internal memory and then chose to review it in the 4GB category. BUT as I have a 2GB micro SD card in the Iriver's slot it IS a 4GB X20 so there!

Yes the colour screen is pretty crisp and reasonably large 34x46 mm versus 30 x 40 for the latest Ipod Nano. But you still need good eyesite to view the videos more than casually. Personally I can view about 2 vids then I go crosseyed. So videos are a "novelty" extra on a screen of this size to me. I might add here that the bundled software turned a 95MB windows movie into a 26MB movie with no loss of quality (at the smaller size) which is impressive. This same software I am now using to initially reduce any windows movie for my Ipod before final format conversion to "Applespeak".

As usual with any "mp3" player, the bundled earphones are rubbish, ok not rubbish just very average, but so are the Ipod default earpieces. Do yourself a favour the day you buy the Iriver, Ipod, whatever, buy yourself some quality headphones, like Sennheiser, the difference is amazing. I do not understand why the earphones that come with the various brands are so average !

I found the circular dial to control the on screen menu difficult to use initially, then I used my THUMB and it all fell into place. However the Ipod Nano circular control remains the industry standard for ease of use.

I like to adjust my music album by album with a graphic equaliser, and the Iriver falls down a little here, the equaliser is there, but it is just not flexible enough. In fact quite a few of the frequency bands available for adjusting made NO difference to the music, and the bands which did make a difference were so sensitive to minor changes that it was quite difficult to get the right sound. And also difficult to get the menu to REMEMBER the custom settings.

I like the fm radio, but cannot imaging recording songs from it even though the feature exists.

I tried the microphone out for recording dictation and found the volume quite low even though I spoke almost on the microphone hole.

I think the music playing volume from the Iriver is greater than the Ipod. This is a plus for me.

I could not see any album art displayed, just a standard logo, same for each song, I went looking for album art in the menus but found nothing. Oh well.

The menu choices when firing up the Irivers music playing capacity leave a little to be desired, the top "default " line on the music menu is "play all" which I find a quite unhelpfull, I have to choose a different menu choice every time, which means the "default" menu option does not work for me.

As an Ipod owner, my main music software is Itunes. And I chose the default encoding in Itunes when ripping my cd library to the pc, which means 95% of my pc library is AAC format. Iriver - software and player do not even see this format. So if you point the Iriver software at your Itunes library, the only songs which show up are the Windows based file types. To fill my Iriver with songs I had to dig the cd's out of the back room and re-rip them using the Iriver software. I might add that ripping music with this Iriver software is a pleasure, better than Itunes actually (I do not like Itunes very much, there are only a few redeeming features but that's another story). This Apple V Windows format blindspot is a pain and I hope it ends soon.

The Iriver X20 is ok, I like the bundled software better than most of Itunes , the units replay volume is better, the video quality is fine, the radio is clear stereo, the micro sd slot means the amount of music you can play is unlimited - just swap the card for another, however, as my pc and my car are both Ipod friendly and as the Ipod beats this Iriver model for looks, design, features and flexibility, I think the Iriver will be gathering some dust between uses. It is ok, but if you can afford an Ipod, go for it.
p.s. Wish my Nano had an expansion slot like the Iriver.