Posted by skarkada on 10/23/07 21:48

I bought iRiver e10 about a week ago and tried many of its features. I
used to have Sansa e260, but was stolen. I was willing to try a
different product this time - that should tell you that I wasn't in
love with Sansa.

Overall build quality of e10 is solid. It is little bigger and heavier
than Sansa, but quite comfy in the shirt pocket. Most functions are
intuitive and the interface is easy to learn and understand.

USB cable is very thick (almost as thick as a mouse cable) and ear
phone wire is also much thicker than that of Sansa. I don't like the
ear phone cable - it sticks out and draws attention due to its
thickness.

Once charged, my computer recognized e10 as an external drive (without
having to install their software) and I was able to transfer some
files into the device just by drag-and-drop. Music files transferred
like this can be played, but with limitations. First, you have to
navigate to that folder to play the music. Second, if you copy
multiple music folders, you can only shuffle among the files in a
particular folder. Note that files transferred directly like this are
not in the device's database. None of this is really negatives. (Sansa
also allows to copy files like this, but some times it destroys the
database and causes numerous problems.)

Then I installed their software. When I connected the device now, it
prompted me to upgrade the firmware. Firmware upgrade was quick and
transparent. Then I transferred some music via the software interface.
Those songs go into the database and provide full functionality such
as shuffle.

Data transfer from computer to device is very fast. Charging is only
via USB and the battery charge lasts very long.

One very good feature of e10 is that the start up is quick - just
takes about a second. Apparently the device only goes into stand-by
mode when turned off so it can come back up quickly. Anyway, I like
that feature very much and hated the startup time on Sansa.

Alarm: Alarm feature of e10 is basically useless. You can set only one
alarm. It can ring once or daily. There is no calendar function, so
you can not set the alarm to go on a specific day. Worst part is that
when the alarm goes off, the sound only comes through the ear phones!
I don't know how that can be useful.

Games: Fantastic! 3 flash games are supplied, one of them being
minesweeper. I could find hundreds of flash games on the Internet and
many of them work fine on this device. I like this feature of e10 very
much.

Radio: Works as expected. 20 presets are supported. Auto scan works
fine. Recording from radio also works fine.

TV Remove control: I haven't used that feature and don't plan to use
it. This feature probably made this device bulkier than Sansa.

One big drawback of e10 is that you can only use one feature at a
time. For example, you can't listen to radio or music and play a game
at the same time. You can see pictures while listening to the music,
but you can't do that while listening to the radio.

I like this device better than Sansa because of the games. Also, e10
is cheaper than other comparable 6GB MP3 players.

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