Customer Reviews

iriver E100 4 GB Multimedia Player (White)

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

Let me start this review by saying that I'm an above average user who has used a plethora of media players out there, so my reference point maybe a little different from yours.

This is a little device (See posted photo in user images) similar to the size of a credit card. It comes in many colors, so choice of color should not be a problem. I bought the black one, which is made in a matte plastic, which I am very satisfied with. Leaves fingerprints on the black surface, but doesn't really standout as the unit is not polished to a high gloss. The player is also extremely light, much lighter than any of the competitors (iPod Nano, Sandisk Sansa). This lightness maybe preferred by many users, but I find it too light (Forgetting its with you, and almost loaded it into the washing machine; also feels a bit cheap because of its weight).

I primarily bought this device for its built in speaker, to listen to audio books. Unfortunately, the speaker has quite poor volume (Nothing compared to the competing Samsung S5 or K5). But the iriver is a genius with file formats, and plays many formats, surprisingly plays 700mb, video files encoded with xvid (video) and mp3 (audio) quite smoothly. In addition to this it play Windows Media Audio / Video, Avi's (Xvid Compressed), Mp3's, BMP's, JPG's, PNG's, Text and more. It also has a full range FM tuner that allows 20 presets, which is a great feature. One of the best features the E100 has is the fact that it can record FM, Voice, and Line in Directly to its internal memory, and saves it in WMA format. Using a headset I recorded a 1 hour audio lecture of unmatched quality, and later edited on the PC for the sections I wanted out.

There are many reviews that oppose the navigational buttons on the E100 (Left and right buttons control settings and back to main menu functions, while up and down control the track / video / photo forward or backward). Though this is unorthodox the navigational "D" menu took me a day to master, and can be controlled quite easily after this initial learning. It is not at all complicated, though menus require a lot of clicks left and right to get what you are trying to do.

The expandable memory slot is an advantage and a easy way to upgrade this player to double its capacity via cheap micro sd cards. The problem here is that files on the micro sd are not read in the database for browsing by track, artist, album etc, but has to be accessed rather crudely through a file manager. I have used a 4gb micro sd with no problems. Keep this memory for adding lengthy movies, where you may store 5 - 6 full length movies that are easy to access on this media. The player can be used as a portable hard drive (Obviously). Battery life was quite good, though the bad news is that this player comes with no wall charger and must be charged via a PC or Mac's USB port (Powered of course). I use my iPhone's charger to charge this device (USB Charger with 5 volts output with 1 Amp total output).

The audio quality on the headphones is quite decent, but the speaker is definitely weak and unpronounced. Only listening to the device on full volume in a dead silent room gives you a semi decent listening experience. The good thing here is that many problems have been fixed via firmware upgrades provided by iriver, which I have got 3 times already since purchase in April. Hopefully they will address the speaker volume in the next update. One of the worse features of the device is the fact that the screen is terrible. It is sufficient for mp3 menu options, but falls far short for photo and video options. When in portrait mode the screen is clear, but when used in landscape mode (For photos and videos) the screen gets inadvertently polarized and produces poor and unclear photos.

The iriver e100 is a decent media player, but by no means the best. It has good features and poor ones as well. It could have been a great media player had there not been so many mistakes. Yet I believe that many entry level media player buyers will enjoy this player, as well as some advanced users (Due to advanced recording functions / file support), though the large chunk of the middle spectrum will be unhappy with the many quirks. I have used better players and worse ones as well. The iPod nano is still a heavy weight in its class, though for users looking to break away from the iPod and iTunes bundle, and jazz up their player with FM, Recording, Direct MP3, Photo, Text and Video and a speaker - at a lower price than the iPod, the iriver makes sense. This player is a jack of all trades, but master of none.


Pros:
Color Options
Lightweight
Multiple Files Supported
FM Tuner
Frequent Firmware Upgrades
Integrated Speaker
Line In / Mic In / FM Recording
Micro SD Expandable
Direct Copy without conversions

Cons:
Plastic Body
Poor Screen
Speaker Volume
No Charger Provided (USB Charging Only)
Micro SD Browsing Complexity

I got this player because I wanted a one I could take out to the woods with my me, plug in a decent microphone and record acoustic guitar songs. This player works great. What the specs don't say is that the line in is stereo not just mono, so you can use nice stereo mics, so its better than I thought. Also the recording quality is really quite good through the line-in. Its comparable to the line-in on my macbook.

Beyond that, its a decent player. The battery life is good, the sound quality is fine (a little worse than my ipod but WAY better than my $20 player) The headphones are okay, the video is watchable. Its a little slower getting around than my ipod, it lags a little but it really doesn't bother me much.

One thing you should know is that you need access to a Windows computer when you first get it to configure the player and install the latest firmware, and also to put movies on it. After that, you change its settings so it can communicate with Linux or your Mac, which it does fine after the changes have been made.

The only disappointment was with the Micro SD expansion. I have not found a way to record directly to it, and it freezes on startup if it is inside, so you can only insert it once its on. Also it doesn't integrate with the music library, so unless you intend to watch movies/listen to long audiobooks from the Micro SD card, just skip the expansion card.

However because of the quality stereo line in recording, I give it 5 stars.

The iRiver iFP-899 has been an indispensable companion for recording college lectures and meetings. I was looking forward to trying the new E100 because of the larger storage size and display screen. Unfortunately, the E100 is a major disappointment. Numerous web sites detail the poor sound quality, slightly undersized enter button, and other problems. Let me focus on a few seldom discussed issues.

Many people report sporadically having the iRiver Plus 3 software not recognizing the E100. The dust cap on the E100's USB connector can interfere with fully inserting the USB cable connector by catching on the dust cap. Should this occur, the E100 will display Power & Play, and Power Only which makes you think everything is OK when, in fact, the iRiver Plus 3 has not actually recognized the E100. If you fully insert the connector without catching it on the dust cover, the E100 will display Power & Data, Power & Play, and Power Only - the iRiver Plus 3 will now recognize the E100

For the last five days, the iRiver Tech Support at 562-758-6393 has not returned my calls. They have not replied to my email. By-the-way, the iRiver Technical Support is outsourced to a third party company.

The iFP-899 has an Automatic Gain Control (AGC) setting for recording which does not appear in the E100 settings. When I recorded a talk with the E100, the sound level was so weak that it was almost useless. I looked at the file with Sound Forge and found the signal was down in the mud. In contrast, the iFP-899 recorded the same talk without difficulty.

Having External Mic and Line-in recording are a major plus which separate iRiver products from others. However, what good are they if there is no incoming signal level indicator to let you know how much to adjust the line-in gain. Moreover, adjusting the line-in gain should not be buried in the settings but readily available while recording. The E100 needs AGC and Peak Limiting for the internal mic, external mic, and line-in to be effective. With such features, they could address a large market of users who would like to directly record from wireless microphone systems in lecture halls and churches. Let's hope they add such features.

The feature list of the E100 would have set the E100 above the competition. Unfortunately, the implementation was not up to par. Let's hope the next version puts iRivers back in the driver seat for producing dynamite products which outshine the competition.

I bought this for my husband Albert for his birthday. He initially wanted the iPod, but it was too expensive, plus he loses tiny things. I asked him to search around to see if there was another item that could substitute. Reluctantly, he chose the iRiver E100 8 GB Multimedia Player and he has fallen in love with this product. I haven't heard a peep about him still wanting the iPod. He constantly has a new thing to tell me about how great it is for recording his music. He is a musician and he takes it with him to jazz jams as well as his regular gigs and it picks up everything and sounds crystal clear in the playback. He loves it, so I love it...

This is my review update.

I was looking for something which has line-in recording with mp3 play. Most of mp3 players don't have line-in recoding. So I bought Olympus WS-321M voice recorder(Linein recoding.) It works great for voice recording but not good for line-in music recording.

After long research, finally I decided Iriver E100 for Line-in recording and mp3 play. It works great much better than Olympus WS-321M voice recorder(Linein recoding). I returned WS-321M when I have Iriver E100.

Pro: with $99.99
1. Line-in recording - you can hook up a headphone jack and record any sound from speaker specailly music or performance. recoring time is long enough. tape recorder has time limit 30min or 1 hour.
Ex, When I rocord music performance, I record sound and video seperately to make better. Sound recoding is done with Iriver E100 and edit with Video. It gives great result. Most music recorders are expensive.

2. External speaker - many mp3 pleyers don't have. Volume is not very loud but good enough for a person hearing. sometime, I don't want to use a earphone. It gives an ear pain.

3. Small and lighter Video Play - I like it. It converts and plays all my music videos and movies without a problem.

4. Radio, Voice recoding, 8GB Memory (ex, WS-321M has 1GB)

Con:
1. Plastic button and menu control. - Could have better material than plastic button. Menu control is not familiar with other product users. But after 1 day use, It's O.K. for me

2. USB power - should have regular A.C. adapter.

For me this is the best choice. With $99.99 I got what I want.




For me, money works I am happy now.

got this player last week, after some testing at the store
the screen is a joke, very poor, if you use it solely as audio player, you should be OK
sound is very good, you can just throw the supplied earphones away, put on Bose earphones, the sound is exceptional, even in "express mode" (no audio processing at all), sounds is even better with 192kbps ogg vorbis, it claims it supports FLAC, but I don't have any of them
this player supports ALL platforms with mass storage mode, or you can use MTP mode to support encrypted wma, it can play .asf just fine
the library database is a minus, it can't bulid database for files on memory card, as well as internal memory after 4GB, luckily, it has file manager, and I sort files using folders (old school), but the files/folders sorted by date, be aware of that
it supports microSD-HC, tested with 8GB card, it just works, nothing special
the fw (1.06) is pretty laggy, esp after USB is connected, it's highly recommended to upgrade fw to 1.10 (you have to be careful to pick the software based on USB mode)
another plus of this player that it supports MTP or mass storage, but be aware of that, you must decide which mode you'd like to use before transfer any audio file onto the unit, because ALL audio files will be erased, except on the memory card
it doesn't come with USB charger, just charge with moto V3 charger, or charge through your host computer USB

pro:
mass storage mode
ogg vorbis, asf, FLAC support
exceptional audio quality
supports microSD-HC up to 8GB (may support 16GB, but I don't have it yet)
file manager
can record from mic, line in, FM radio
Far East language support (trad/simp Chinese, Japanese, Korean)
standard miniUSB jack

con:
poor display
weak speaker
d-pad operation based on screen landscape mode (up for prev, down for next), and it's kinda too sensitive
headphones jack appears not fully plugged in

conclusion: once you get this player, upgrade fw to 1.10 to fix laggy problem, mass storage mode can let you access both internal memory and memory card, exceptional audio quality gained a lot of score, because I use it mainly for audio files, poor display is not a big deal then

I bought an iRiver from Walmart and it stopped working 3 months later. Upon contacting iRiver, I was told both verbally and in writing that Walmart is not an authorized reseller of their products so they will not support their product. I am assuming that the majority of the products sold on here won't be warranteed either. This is the message they gave me:

Dear Valued Customer,

Thank you for choosing iriver product. Unfortunately, we are unable to provide manufacturer's warranty support to the products which were not sold through our authorized resellers. If you have any trouble with your device(s) which were purchased at unauthorized resellers, please return it back to where you have purchased and ask for credit or refund where applicable. Please purchase iriver device through our authorized distribution/retail partners where you can find them at to be ensured so that your device will be fully covered by our limited warranty and customer support.

Please understand that the commitment of iriver to protect its distribution partnerships, which will provide best quality products and value to end users.

Sincerely,
iriver Customer Support Team

Do yourself a favor and buy something else. I have had an RCA mp3 player and an omnitech mp3 player neither of which broke.

They also have a F rating on the Better Business Bureau website. If I had known that, I wouldn't have purchase this.

The good thing about this little player is that the audio quality is very good. Not the best of these little players, but quite good. Be careful with the various enhancements, though as it is easy to get it set to where the device digitally clips the audio, resulting in some clicks, or worse. The included headphones are surprisingly good.

So why only 3 stars - well, out of the box this device is all but unusable. The usual firmware upgrades are a version of Russian Roulette. Each new firmware fixes some bugs and creates others. The latest firmware seems to have the fade-in/out stuck on - okay for isolated pop tracks, but not so great for classical or albums.

The supplied software program is poorly documented, and very buggy - I've crashed mine three times in a couple of hours. An attempt to upgrade results in download failures (which it tries to blame on the network connection - perhaps to the iriver server, but it's definitely not a problem with my internet connection).

When using drag'n'drop to load up media files, the files are arranged in random order. You can fix the order with the supplied software, but even then, sometimes you have to move a single track into position, as the automatic alphabetizing seems to work, but doesn't move quite all of the files into place.

Playlists are only accepted from the software app - standard playlists are such as m3u are not recognized. The player plays flac, but Windows Media Player is unable to load them onto the device in MTP mode. You have to switch to MSC(?) mode, which is better anyway, since that gives you the file system access.

Be careful how you disconnect - if you do it by turning off the device after a download, expect to lose or corrupt your newly downloaded files. You need to use the app disconnect function and then let the device build its database before turning it off.

There are numerous reports of this device being finicky about what sort of SDHC micro cards it likes. Folks seem to have good luck with the class 6 ones, but less so with others. I have an 8GB SDHC Class6, I got for it, but haven't yet tried it.

Now for the big disappointment - video - it seems to only like the format created by the application in transfer mode, despite the specs. My AVI files created by handbrake in what would seem to be an avi format that complies with the device spec were not playable. The app doesn't seem to recognize DVD VIDEO_TS directories for movies, so you will have to rip to some intermediate format and then let the app convert to a WMV on transfer - conversion of the files seems to take around 30 minutes per hour of video (on an AMD X2 5200, with the CPUs both running nearly flat out).

Once you have a playable video, the display is rather crappy - posterization is common, and the viewing angle is quite narrow. Battery life seems to be somewhat less than specified. It's touch and go whether I can get a full day of audio playing from it.

The control switches seem to be poorly debounced, so sometimes the device seems unresponsive or goes past what you are looking for. Other than that, browsing/navigation is easy, provided you know a couple of the tricks to get to set audio settings tucked away in the Music screen.

I was just about to send this back after fiddling with for several hours, but by then I had discovered enough to make it work acceptably for audio.
Straigth wav(e) files are not supported. I don't know anything about the MP3 capabilities, since I wanted the lossless FLAC. Audio playback is not gapless, so certain ablums will have annoying breaks where they shouldn't or you will have to rip the entire ablum as a single track. I sold it for half-price to my son, and he's happy with it. I have replaced it with Cowon D2+. I figure it's better to let him use/lose the iriver than a more expensive, better performing unit.

Summary: Not too bad for audio, especially if you can get a price around $70, which comes from some other sites. For video, spend $125 and get the Cowon D2(+). It's not perfect either, but has quite good video with a wide viewing angle, and the audio quality there is into the top tier, as a very excellent sounding device, worthy of a good set of headphones, such as the Sony MDR-V6.

I did a lot of research before purchasing this.. It has exactly what I wanted.. some memory AND a line in. I paid around $80 for it.. and you'd be hard pressed to find another 8 GB for the money. Can't be used with napster, but there is more than 1 record store in town.
The controls take a bit of getting use to, but so did my ex-girlfriend.. and I kept her for 3 years. I had a H-10 before this and it lasted a rough and tumbled 8 years.
Bottom line.. for the music and storage, and sound (several eqs to choose from or make your own,.. a definite.. This also has a built in recorder for voice, FM radio, record off the radio, and 2 decent speakers.
You'll pay a little more for white.. but iriver is a very good company that hasn't made alot of noise. However you don't necessarily have to make noise to be good.

For the price of the iRiver E100 it stands pretty well on it's own. The sound quality is excellent and the numerous features it offers over similar MP3 players is a plus as well. The main problem I had with the player was the plastic body. And after a few drops on the ground the player still managed to function until the last fall. The screen cracked in three places and the earphones jack barely functions anymore. Stronger body means longer lasting product for those clumsy consumers.

Pros:
Drag-and-drop feature (doesn't require software to add music)
Lightweight
Multiple Files Supported
Video/Photo supported
Microphone
FM recording/FM Tuner
Micro SD Expandable
Integrated speakers

Cons:
Radio presets reset itself when battery dies
MicroSD data are not integrated into device library
Plastic body
Sloppy library (not alphabetized/no search command)