Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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60 of 60 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Just about as good as it gets if it suits your need, April 28, 2003
This player isn't for everyone 1) It is not 20-gig 2) It isn't cheap. Here are 3 reasons why this player suited my need 1) Battery. Battery last 2 or 3 times the length of HD based players. It is user replaceable. You can find AA anywhere in the world. Rechargeable batteries in most Giga-players will die in 2 or 3 years and most of them can't be replaced. 2) Super light-weight and small: I carry the player in the included armband and hit the trail or track. 3)No motion mechanism : Since I use it for running, no worry about moving parts. All HD will fail eventually. I don't even want to find out how much it would cost to replace a drive in iPOD. 4)FM Radio: I wasn't able to find out anything about 195T's radio feature before I purchase it. Now that I have it, It is good. Pull in better signals than my Sony AM/FM Headphone. Recording feature is a nice bonus. I listen to NPR a lot and it is nice to be able to record something while I run and refer back to it later. 5) Large enough memory: I didn't say large, but it sure is large enough for what I need. I don't know how people can fill up 20gig of space with music. I don't have the time to go through that and don't have the desire to carry my entire CD collection with me everywhere. 512MB is enough music to last me a long time and is enough to carry most audiobooks. Enough about the good points. Here is what I think 195 can improved upon. 1) Battery door feels flimsy. 2) The knob on the 5 direction key make it hard to remove the player from armband. 3) Limited amount of buttons means that all buttons has many functions assigned to them. You definitely need to spend sometime with instruction manual to figure things out. Luckily, it is very clearly written. This is a niche player and it also looks great! It serves my needs perfectly.
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34 of 35 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
4.5 stars, a wonderful mp3 player, June 21, 2003
By A Customer
Pros: Half a gig of memory, FM tuner, FM and voice recording, small size and light weight. It uses a single AA battery and will run for about twice as long as any hard drive player. I'm getting an estimated 12 hours of real world use per battery. Compared to hard drive based units this can't be beat. Since it uses a single AA, you won't have any down time waiting for the unit to charge. The software that comes with this unit is stable, intuitive to use and works as advertised. I use this mostly for audio books recorded at low but adequate bit rates. Usually 24-48 mbps mp3's. Half a gig will hold about 30 hours of audio books. More than enough to take on vacation. Sound quality is as good as my iPod. The controls are not as intuitive as the iPod or Rio500 but if you spend 20 minutes or so with the manual everything will make sense. Navigating through content is a breeze. It's firmware upgradeable to support other formats and add or change features. Battery life is outstanding. Cons: Pricey. Subjectively cheap materials. Metal endcaps and a lanyard ring would have been a nice touch in a product that costs as much as this. I'd guess they used plastic to keep the weight down but I'd gladly sacrifice a quarter ounce for something that has a more 'quality' feel. If you're close to the end of a long audio book and stop the player, it seems to think you're done. It loses the marker and requires you to search for where you left off. Frustrating. A dedicated bookmarking button would have been nice.
Conclusion: this is probably the first go anywhere mp3 player with enough memory and battery life to be truly useful. Battery life far exceeds any hard drive player and doesn't require an electrical outlet. Simply pop in an AA battery and you're good for at least an honest 10-12 hours. Feature packed and mature in design. Hard drive players like the iPod, Karma and Zen are in a different catagory and shouldn't be compared directly with solid state players. If you need gigabytes of storage you'll have to go with a hard drive player. If you're ok with about four hours of high quality music or ~30 hours of high quality audio books, the iFP-195T is probably the best choice at the moment.
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13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
This is an excellent MP3 player, December 27, 2003
I received the iFP-195T for Christmas this year, and I'm am very pleased with the quality and features of this player. This is the first MP3 player I've owned, and have been reluctant to purchase one because of their limited storage capability with high quality MP3 files (128 MB can barely hold 2 albums at 128bit settings). I didn't want an iPod type player due to its size and weight. This player gives me more than enough room to store hours of music at 128 or 160bit quality settings. The features are quite extensive, and I highly recommend that anyone who purchases one of these gets the new firmware upgrade off iRiver's web site, which improves the EQ from a treble/bass option to a 5 band EQ (very nice), and adds other improved features. The sound quality is amazing for something so small and light weight, the menus are very easy to navigate. One reviewer mentioned that it will not play songs in the order of the album, but this is all dependant on how you name your MP3 files, every album that I have transferred plays in the order that it is suppose to. Transfer rate comes in at about 1MB/sec, give or take a few seconds on a 60 minute album. I did have a little trouble getting my XP machine to recognize the player, but a quick visit to iRiver's website walked me through step by step on how to install it, and now it works flawlessly. I have probably used the player (including playing files and transferring files) about 10 hours, and am still on the first battery, so I'm very pleased with battery life. The headphones are high quality and I do not plan on replacing them anytime soon. Basically, this is the first MP3 player I've owned, and I love it. It's an amazing piece of technology, small, lightweight, and loads of memory. If you're looking for a portable MP3 player, I would highly recommend this model. If you would like to know more, please feel free to email me at rattlhed@hotmail.com
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