- Play MP3, WMA, ASF, and WAV formats
- Includes built-in FM Tuner, voice recorder, and optical In/Out
- MP3 Encoding
- Backlit remote control with 4-line display
- 20 GB of internal storage
I decided to look at brands other than the Ipod because most of my files are WMA's and i did not feel like converting all of them. I did a LOT of research and got it down to two players; the Rio Karma and the iRiver iHP-120. I went with the iRiver because it had many features that i was looking for that the Rio did not.
I have had it now for about a month now and let me just put it like this: the Ipod is not the only heavy hitter anymore. If someone were to offer me either right now...free....i would take the iRiver. Here is why:
What the Ipod has over the iRiver-
-Cool design
-User friendly interface (scroll wheel)
-Firewire (although iriver does have USB2)
What the iRiver has over the Ipod-
-4-line LCD remote so that you can see what is happening
-16 Hour Lithium-poly. battery (Ipod has a 6 hour)
-WMA compatable (for windows users)
-no software needed (shows up as an external hard drive. just drag and drop onto or from ANY computer without drivers. This includes non-music files)
-recording from any source (has optical in/out and comes with an internal AND external mic.
-music is laid out the way you want it to be because you put it on there how you want it
-FM radio tuner built in
Bottom line is that it lookes great, sounds great, has a great remote and lots of features that you dont see on most players.
This is not a review to say that Apple is no good. I am just saying that too many people seem to go into the search with blinders on and not see what else is out there. In my opinion.....the iRiver iHP-120 is, becuase of all the reasons i listed, the better player for me and i am very glad that i got it instead of the Ipod. If you are a PC user you NEED to check it out before you buy.
Hope i helped.
Buy iriver H120 20GB MP3 Jukebox Now
I recently bought the iRiver iHP-120 (H120), at Best Buy. I had a 10% off coupon, so bought it for $300. At the same time my roommate had bought a 15 GB Ipod. So, I had ample chance to play with both the players. I must tell you that I love the iRiver player. This has got lot more features, quality for lesser price.Things I liked :
1) The quality of the music is amazing.
2) It plays all the formats that I generally use.
3) The radio is very clear.
4) Feels robust.
5) Small (almost the same size as iPod).
6) Comes with all the accessories. ( My roomate had to buy leathercase and USB cable)
7) Can be used as an external harddisk. No drivers needed. No software needs to be installed. Just plug n play.
8) The recording feature. Though I havent used this feature yet, online reviews tell me that, the quality of recording is just awesome.
9) Awesome battery life.
Things I did not like:
1) The leathercase has a belt clip, through which you have to pass a belt, to keep it on your waist. In the gym , I wear gym shorts and I dont wear a belt. so, I have to hold it in my hand and run. I would have liked a clip-on type belt clip.
2) The ear-phones that come with the set are not the best.
3) The LED is kind of dim (comapred to the iPod).
iPod Vs iRiver
1) iRiver comes with radio, recording and accessories. The iPod does not.
2) In iRiver I dont have to install any software and arranage all my songs. I can just drag and drop all the folders in the player. I like this arrangement compared to the ID3 tags. In iPod you have to arrange all your songs using ID3 tags. My roomate spent the whole Memorial Day weekend arranging his songs :-)
3) Ipod can not be used as an external hard-drive. iRiver can be used as an external hard-drive, no drivers need to be installed. Just drag n drop.
4) The quality of music is about the same in both the players (best quality).
5) iRiver's battery life is double compared to iPod( 16 hrs to 8hrs)
6) The iPod looks cooler and I loved the button placement, sensitivity of the buttons of the iPod.
7) The iPod's ear buds are too cool.
Bottom line : If you want more bang for your buck, and looks dont matter that much, go with the iRiver.
Read Best Reviews of iriver H120 20GB MP3 Jukebox Here
I've been using this player and it's great! Although there are many choices out there iriver did a great job the second time around (iHP 100 was the first cut). Some of the features I like are**Remote a must have since it's really inconvenient having to take out the main unit in order to change settings like the volume or songs
**No drivers or software needed to copy over songs it can be a big headache when you have to install software just to move files over when all you want to do is a copy. One of the reasons why I didn't go w/ Creative is due to their bloatware. Since it looks like an external (toshiba) hard drive when you plug it in it's can be used for external storage. There's 20GB and I wasn't able to fill it up with songs that *I like*. I've used up only 5GB so far. The extra space is great for use as a portable hard drive. If your computer supports USB-HDD you can boot from it too.
**Upgradeable Firmware OS The nice thing about this is that no MP3 player is perfect the 1st, 2nd, or 3rd time around. having this upgradeable firmware allows them to add/fix features. I've already submitted a few nice to haves to iriver (although I haven't received any response) such as on the fly playlists, deleting from the player directly, statistics like running time, clock feature, smaller fonts, etc. I hope they'll be able to put this into the next firmware upgrade. They're currently on version 1.17
**Many formats This can play almost every format (mp3,wma,asf,wav) available and even ogg!
**Many extras It comes with a nice leather carrying case to protect the iHP that has the holes for the buttons (although you won't use them often since everything is accessible from the remote), a very decent set of earphones, usb 2.0 cable, line-in cable, external microphone and a 2 inch headphone extension cord since the plug on the remote is recessed in a bit. It's nice that you plug your headphones into the remote as opposed to the main unit because this accomodates short headphone cords like my sony fontopia earbuds
**Solid design & construction When you first put this in your hand you know they didn't skimp on the materials. Everything feels solid (not that cheap and light plastic is a bad thing) and made from metal. Even the glass on the remote is extra thick so you don't have to worry about pressing too hard on the lcd and breaking it.
**Optical out and In I used to store MP3s on my hard drive but now I store it on the iHP. When I put it on my desk to charge I plug this into the Klipsch 5.1 system via the optical outputs and the sound is crisp and there's no distortion because it's digital. The optical outs also doubles as analog in/outputs. The leather case covers up these openings to keep them clean.
**Many configuration options (and many more to come) that can be accessed from the main unit and from the remote! You can configure the equalizer to use SRS,WOW, TruBass and even can't the presets. Even the scroll speed is configurable.
**Sounds good The sound is also very loud and crisp w/ more than enough bass. It even has a feature that will fade in the song so that you don't get a sudden loud start in the song. I've placed a request to them so hopefully in the next version they might have some sort of normalization between all songs.
**FM/AM Tuner The tuner on this unit gets great reception. Because I live in NYC I have a lot of stations. I have enough presets from all of the stations I want. You can also configure different backlight options when it's connected to an adapter and when it's connected by battery, sleep time, fade-in,
**Many repeat options Repeat or random shuffle by 1 song, 1 directory, all directories
**Crisp LCD display on main unit and remote The fonts and display are very sharp.
**Good battery life I get over 10+ hours so far on a single charge. I haven't listened to them any longer that so it might of gone longer. After 10+ hours I still got 1 out of 4 bars left.
**Search by genre, artists, album, song title This feature is really nice when you have songs scattered throughout different folders. I can say I want to hear all songs from even if they're in different directories. This features requires you to build a ScanDB from the computer but it's easy. You'll just need to right click from the computer the iHP drive that shows up and select generate DB. This is the only feature that requires a driver installation. Note: your songs need an ID3 tag for this to work
**Song queuing you can queue a song while another one is playing. This is a minor feature but extremely useful.
**USB 2.0 This is really important when you're transferring over hundreds of songs. Using USB 1.1 (12Mbps) it would take over several minutes to transfer ten 5 MB songs while it takes USB 2.0 (480Mbps) 10-20 seconds.
**Displays non-english ID3 tags This can display chinese ID3 tags.
**Playlist support It can use up to 200+ playlists (.m3u) so you can create a playlist of your favorite songs from winamp and use it on the iHP.
Some cons although minor
** Can't play music while plugged into the USB port. This might not be too bad since you can play it off w/ winamp when it's plugged in.
** Using the search by genre/artist slows the boot up time by 5 -10 seconds. If you don't need this feature you can turn it off.
**No docking station not a big deal since remote can stand upright by itself on the table.
** 20 GB drive I'm sure there's a way to replace the drive with a bigger one but this size is more than sufficient
** More expensive than most other 20GB players.
You can see all the time and effort they've put into this mp3 player. Although some of the features are minor it is the time they've put into details that make this a great player. If you want the "BMW of mp3 players" you gotta pay "BMW prices". Overall, the feature set and quality (sound and hardware-wise)are perfect. Most of the minor issues and features can be fixed with future firmware upgrades. You can't go wrong w/ this! :)
Want iriver H120 20GB MP3 Jukebox Discount?
Like virtually all of you, I considered this & the 20 GB iPod. Those iPod commercials look so cool & it's so hard to see something about iRiver. But I first decided on the iRiver iHP 120 because the battery life is awesome. Li-polymer is MUCH better than Li-ion (iPod). It comes with all these cables and attachments you wouldn't expect. I was afraid I'd have to buy additional accessories, but there's nothing else I'd want, except maybe a cradle (which they don't make). BTW, the case is awesome; there's nothing I'd change about it. The sound quality is awesome, especially if you adjust the settings to your liking and upgrade your headphones. (My personal recommendation & favorites: Grado SR-80. Awesome bass. Not cheap headphones, but an outstanding value for audiophiles & I love the retro look. Read about them. You'll be amazed how much better your music sounds with good headphones/speakers.) It's tough to try out the unit since it's not carried in many stores, so let me mention the only things that I don't like about it. Read someone else's review for the positive aspects; there are SO many.1) It's database-tagging system only recognizes .mp3 format files (I like using WMA), but since it's firmware and database software upgradeable, I'm "hoping" iRiver will come up with a newer version that will address this. Regardless, I like leaving my music on random shuffle, so it's not a huge problem for me.
2) iPod has cute little side features & games. iRiver is for music only & file transferring (but it does these two main things better than the iPod does). iRiver's "drag & drop" functionality is awesome.
3) iPod's slide-wheel interface is cooler than iRiver's joystick.
4) It doesn't play protected audio files downloaded from pay services like MusicMatch. Of course, you could use the iRiver's in-line ripping to output your protected file from your computer's music card to the iRiver to rip directly (which it does). This will (SHH!!) bypass the protection on your music by doing this, but I don't know what changes in music quality this may result in. I only listen to music from my CD collection that I ripped legally; you should too. I'm pretty sure you can even use an optical line to do ripping of protected music files, though I haven't tried yet.
5) It ain't cheap. Then again, iPod = iRiver + 10% cost battery life extra-detailed audio features.
Anyway, I've got tons of positives, but I thought I'd give you the major negatives on it, because those are so hard to figure out until you try the unit yourself. It doesn't get the publicity the iPod does, but it keeps a really picky electro/audiophile like me happy.This is by far the best jukebox player/portable hard drive out there. I got it last week, and i'm very impressed with features, quality of contstruction, and fantastic sound. The first thing you notice and really appreciate is that all you need to do is open the box, plug it into your computer, and it's recognized as an external drive immediately. No need to mess with complicated software to updoad-download stuff. Also, doesnt' have the propietary thing that Ipods have that you can only upload stuff into three designated computers. So, just using your Windows Explorer you do all the uploading-downloading-deleting tasks with great ease.
It works very well as a portable hard drive, so I don't need to burn disks with data anymore, to carry stuff from work to home. I just put whatever files I need in my IHP, whether it's just a text file, or a huge amount of digital images and videos, the 20 Gig is a lot of space.
Talking about space, I put about 70 CDs in there, and only used 1.5 GIG as of now, so no worry about running out of space anytime soon.
You can use this device to record from external sources, and you have an internal and external microphone option. This is great to record all those great songs that we still have on cassette tapes, and convert them to MP3s.
I was very impressed with the sound quality of the internal microphone. You can use this as a mini recorder to record memos to yourself, meetings, classes, etc, and the sound is excelent.
For listening to music, sound quality is excellent too, and you can adjust the equalizer to your liking, for a really great listening experience.
The radio tuner is nice, and for stations that you get good reception, works well. I like classical music, and recorded a full concert from my classical music station, and on playback, it sounds very decent.
After doing a lot of reading and research about which device to get, I decided on this one, and I'm happy I did.
Overall, an excellent product.
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