Digital Home Thoughts: PC Mag Reviews iRiver U10

"Finally, companies that make media players (besides Apple) are thinking different. The iriver U10 represents a leap forward in design—or at least a good attempt at one. It's a flash-based audio player that can also play video on its 2.2-inch LCD screen, albeit with some format restrictions. The real innovation is in the controls: Instead of trying to cram a bunch of navigation buttons next to the screen on the player's faceplate, iriver made the faceplate itself a four-way button that does pretty much all you need. There are a few buttons on the top and side for volume, power, and screen orientation (portrait or landscape), but that's it. You do pay a premium for all this, however: The 1GB version will run you $249.99 list, and the 512MB version is $199.99. The U10 represents a cool hardware concept and has an interesting feature set, but the software/firmware side needs some work, and the price really needs to come down."


Cool as this device is, I remain somewhat aloof towards video on tiny portables. The displays are simply too small and don't offer a compelling viewing experience. Devices with larger displays make more sense, like a Sony PSP or Axim X51v, but on tiny display 2.2" display like the U10? No thanks.

And aside from commuting via public transit systems, I can't see an environment where I would want to watch or need to watch video on my media player. You certainly can't watch video while driving, walking, jogging, working, etc. The only viable solution for video content, in my opinion is live real-time streaming video, like sporting events, breaking news, and the like. But maybe that's just my opinion.