Customer Reviews

iriver H120 20GB MP3 Jukebox

5 star:		(126)
4 star:		(44)
3 star:		(16)
2 star:		(8)
1 star:		(14)

 

 

Dont get me wrong...the ipod is great. It is by far the best design on the market, but it does fall short in some areas and the iriver picks up that slack.
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.

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.

Having owned four different iPods and become weary of their bad screens and ease of dropping, I thought I'd give this iRiver player a try. For the most part, I'm pleased with it, but it's hard to write a review of it without comparing it to the iPod, so here goes:

Plus:

Great sound. Plenty loud enough and very customizable. The included WOW and SRS functionality gives any music great presence, even through the skimpy earbuds that come with the unit. You can switch from one equalizer setting to another with the touch of a button--something you can't do with the iPod, which requires you to navigate back to the Settings menu.

Clear, easy-to-read screen. By the way, it has a blue cast, not green, as in the photograph above. And it provides far more information at a glance than does the iPod's screen.

Extras. Built-in voice recorder, optical in and out ports--and a Stop button. Hallelujah.

Illuminated inline remote with clip. Just too cool.

Grip. Not as slippery and prone to hitting the floor as the iPod. But then the iRiver isn't quite as stylish, either.

Minus:

Navigation. If you're used to the ease of use of the iPod, you may find navigating around this unit a little difficult, especially as the main navigation button on the front of the unit is made for tiny fingers, and it's all too easy to press it in the wrong direction (the remote is better for this).

Charging. You must use the AC adapter to charge the unit (unlike the iPod, the iRiver doesn't charge off its connection to the computer). And charging takes several hours. However, the battery maintains its charge for a longer period than does the iPod's. The iRiver also has no dock.

Software. You can simply mount the unit as a hard drive, drag files onto it, and unmount it. Or you can try to use the "DB" software that comes with the unit, which I've found doesn't work. And the iRiver itself doesn't make it clear enough when you can disconnect it from your computer, particularly if you're using a Mac (the only way to disconnect the unit completely from the Mac is to shut the Mac down--a nuisance).

Packaging. The iPod clearly has the edge here. The iRiver comes in a blister pack that you have to cut apart with scissors, so it's hard to fit all the pieces back into the packaging for storage (the iPod comes in a slick square box that's easy to reassemble) and avoid the sharp edges of the plastic.

Advice: If you're a PC user looking for an alternative to the iPod, one with extra features and superb sound, get the iRiver. Mac users will probably be happier overall with the iPod.

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 <name of artist> 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! :)

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.

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Having owned this product for a about a month, I am happy to report that I am very, very pleased. I am not going to go over the plethora of features and options in this review, rather I will list some of the things that I enjoy most - in hopes to enlighten you as a potential buyer.

For me, it came down to this mp3 player and of course the famous iPod. Although the design of the pod is quite nice, and navigation is a breeze, it is way too simplistic and lacks the versatility of the iRiver. I find the design of the iHP to be quite nice.. with an all-metal exterior and well designed remote (with all the funcions of the main unit - such as track listing, bitrate, etc). When you hold this you get a sense of the sheer quality of the unit. Solid.

The main reasons for my purchase are as follows:

Long (16 hour) battery life. While the iPod's 4-5 hour life may be sufficient, you never know when you might be yearning for melodic fix with no access to a charger.

Optical in/out - line/in out. Very nice to have this at a buddies house and be able to hook up to his stereo (iPod needs docking station for optical out). Also you can hook it up to a car stereo via the tape adapter, very nice.

No Drivers. So your at so-and-so's house and she has that set list for your favorite band. Just plug in the player to a USB port and drag the folders to the drive that pops up and your all set. Which leads me to my next plus..

Functions as a hard drive. With no drivers needed for installation, the iRiver functions as a secondary hard drive. You can store data files as well as read text documents on the player itself. Did I mention the HD is made by Toshiba? 'nuff said.

Ogg Vorbis support. For those of you that don't know, the .ogg format is a way of compressing music files similar to mp3. Ogg is open-source and is completely free, unlike mp3 (trust me its not a free source). Here is where ogg really shines. You can encode a .ogg music file to sound the SAME as mp3 - but it will take up LESS SPACE. Or (my favorite), you can have it take up about the same space, and sound BETTER. This seems nice but let me tell you, ogg files sound AMAZING on this player. I was very impressed with it. Did I mention that the iPod has copyright protection on a lot of files?

Comes standard with a leather case. This may not seem like much, but its a nice case that covers the optical input/output as well has having a nice beltloop. The beltloop came in handy more than I thought it would.

Volume fade. May not seem like much, but when you turn the player on, or resume it from being paused, it fades the volume up slowly to the point it was at last. I LOVE this. It is the little things like this that make me proud of my iRiver *wipes a solitary tear from eye*.

I could go on and on, and probably should - but other reviews cover the rest and I want to watch Adaptation. So heres the wrap-up.

This player sparked me to write the first review I have ever written for ANY product on the internet. I wanted to share with everyone the joys that is iRiver. But what review would be complete without a few complaints, you say? Well.. as much as I love my baby, here they are.

Slow scroll speed. You can turn this setting up, but it is still not as fast and responsive as the scroll wheel on the iPod. With over 15 gigs of music on my player already - this has yet to annoy me more than slightly, and is easily covered up by the other features (plus the unit is firmware upgradeable.. so they might even fix this).

Neophyte usability. If you are even remotely savvy with electronics (mainly computers/directory trees) you should have no problem. This is more of a warning to those people who are looking to buy this product for the clueless. The setup is not bad by any means, but it is not as straightforward as the iPods.

In a nutshell, if you want a solid mp3 player with tons of high-end features, great sound, and lots of depth, buy the iRiver iHP.

If you really don't need any extra features, want to spend more moeny for less, and just want simplistic player to get the job done, get the iPod.

Seriously guys and gals, this thing is worth every penny. I truly believe it is the best mp3 player on the market. Hope this eclectic review helped someone. G'nite and thanks for such an outstanding product, iRiver. Keep up the good work.

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.

Like a lot of other reviewers here, I did a ton of research on the hard-drive MP3 players currently on the market. If you take nothing away from all this information overload, realize this:

BE CAREFULL BUYING AN MP3 PLAYER!!!

There are so many details regarding the players on the market, and so many problems/annoyances. If you (like a lot of us) are going to be archiving your CD collection onto your PC and hoping to have access to it via a portable player, that's a lot of time and effort to put into a project - the player you buy can really screw you in the end.

So, for example, iPods have short-lived batteries that cost a lot to replace. They also don't have a built-in line-out (it's on the Dock, which you may or may not get and would have to schlep around). You must run Apple software to transfer the files and some people have problems (I've always had mixed feeling about running Apple software on a PC). Their sound quality is undocumented and puzzling.

Creative Labs units require special (and poorly written) transfer software. One of their units even forgets what song you last played, forcing you to renegotiate the playlist EVERY TIME! The standard Jukebox units are actually pretty feature rich, but they are HUGE compared to iPod and iRiver. Archos units are also big, cheaply made, and offer mediocre sound quality. Rio units are buggy and have battery problems.

On and on and on.

This iRiver player was designed by people who use their grey matter. After reading the manual (RTFM people, it ain't that hard), transfering my music collection, and using the unit for the past couple of days, I can tell you that it has NONE of the annoyances/problems the other units seem to all have. It's a nicely made: feels totally solid, small and light. Of course, these units are new so I guess the jury is still out regarding long-term reliability. Still, you get the sense the unit is going to last.

I must disagree with some of the other reviewers: the unit is not at all complicated to use. In fact it was almost too easy - I had all my music on the unit in about 20 minutes, and started playing in less than an hour. The controls are very intuitive, allowing you to sort your music either by directory or tag information (EXTREMELY HANDY since not all of my MP3's have good tag info). (Oh, and a warning: watch out for hidden files that Windows Media Player puts in your music folders, specifically "desktop.ini" files and JPEGs of album art, none of which do you want to transfer to your MP3 player!) I was almost dissapointed that the thing didn't require more tweaking!

There are just so many signs that iRiver really has its act together. I'm pretty sure iRiver is the ONLY company to use the new Lithium/Polymer batteries. The batteries don't suffer from charging memory! Charge it as often as you want, and you don't ever have to discharge it for "battery conditioning" - it doesn't need it. The battery is supposed to last 4-5 years (That's 3X the longevity of iPod batteries) and iRiver states on their website that they will replace the battery FOR FREE if it doesn't last about that long.

The unit I got even came with the latest firmware. I checked and realized I didn't even have to upgrade it.

Bottom line: Buy one of these iRiver players! The technology is so good, it just gets out of your way. I'm looking forward to getting much better aquainted with my music collection.

Portable MP3/Storage devices are starting to bloom, so I decided it was time to buy one. I wanted exellent sound quality within something durable, long-lasting, and a little stylish. I was looking for plenty of storage space, so I could also carry videos and CD images, along with my music. I bought the iRiver iHP 120 because it fits all my needs, along with great features.

Sound:
The sound quality is amazing, and very customizable with EQ presets and SRS effects.

+ You can select from a list of 6 graphic EQ presets, and then you can give an additional boost to Bass or Treble.

+ You can also adjust the effects of SRS and TruBass. SRS gives you a rich, fuller sound (so your tiny headphones don't sound so tiny). TruBass works in the same effect, helping to improve Bass tones. The iRiver let's you focus between improving Highs/Lows, and even let's you boost at certain frequencies! (between 40Hz-400Hz)

Controls:
Navigation is tricky at first, but it's easy to learn. The side-buttons on this device are very sturdy, and easily accessible through the leather case. The Joystick on the front of this device can take some getting used to, but overall very easy to use.

+ Browsing through folders, menus, and songs are easy and confortable with the joystick.

+ You can choose to browse songs by Album/Artist/Genre/Title. If you use ID3 tags, large amounts of songs are MUCH easier to browse through.

+ The remote control is easy to use, and is just as good (if not better) at browsing songs/folders/menus on the iRiver. The remote has it's own backlit LCD too. The headphone jack on the remote is somehwat tucked in, and not all headphones might plug-in correctly. The iRiver comes with a small adapter cord to fix this, if you want to be bothered by an extra little cord. Overall this is an awesome remote. It almost deserves it's own leather case. :)

- If you want to browse large amounts of songs, without using ID3 tag data, then you are screwed. I don't use ID3 data because it tends to be inaccurate, and who wants to be bothered by fixing/revising the ID3 tags on every single-one of their songs? You scroll through songs using the joystick. You can adjust the scroll speed, but you still have to scroll through each song in the folder. I wish there was a shortcut option to scroll by each starting alphabetical letter.

+/- You can't create playlists on the iRiver. However, you can create .m3u playlists using winamp, and then transfer them to the iRiver and browse through playlists. You can also queue a song to be played after the current song is done playing, which is handy.

+/- The manual gives you detailed instructions on how to operate the screen & controls. It's packed with plenty of screens and illustrations, but sometimes they clutter the page so much that it makes the manual very confusing.

Display:
The LCD screen is very beautiful, and easy to read. The screen lights up with a blue backlight, and you can configure shutoff/contrast settings.

+ The main display is well organized. Stereo sound-level meters, battery indicator, Song title & folder, along with playing time & progress bar, and more.

+ Even the Remote gets an LCD display, with it's own backlight! How cool is that! Not as much can be displayed on the screen, but it's still very handy.

- Not friendly with displaying long filenames. If you don't use ID3 tags, and name your songs using the (Artist) - (Title).mp3 format, you might find that only the (Artist) part will fit on the screen. When a long filename is highlighted, the player will scroll through the filename. You can change between different scrolling effects, but overall it's slow and gets annoying when you are looking for a particular song through 20+ different songs by the same band/artist.

+/- You can open and read text files on the screen. The text document doesn't wrap to your screen, so the side-scrolling is strange. There's a feature to search the document by it's size in kbytes, which most people will find useless. Still, I didn't buy the iRiver to read books or novels, so I'm glad they added the feature for those that wanted it.

Storage:
The iRiver plugs into your computer like a storage device. This unit comes packaged with transfer software, but you don't need it. When you plug it into a PC for the first time, Windows will automatically install it's own drivers for your device.

+ True Drag & drop. You can go into "My Computer" and open up your iRiver like a normal Hard Drive. You can create or drag-in your own folder structures. You can drag any type of file into this unit.

+ The iRiver iHP 120 comes with a 20 gig hard drive, and I find that to be plenty of space. You can hear a small whir when you power-on your Iriver, but overall very silent. There is no buzz or sound leakage into the audio.

+ When they say this thing is like an external hard drive, they literally mean it. You can even install an O/S onto your iRiver, and use it to boot up your PC. No, I am not joking.

Hardware:
Nothing feels cheap about this device. It's nice and small, about the size of the iPod. The outer-casing is metal, the buttons/joystick feel very sturdy, and the jacks on the top/bottom of this device are very durable. The LCD is protected by a thick glass plate on the front of the player. I haven't had much of a chance to stress the battery. The battery-life is advertised at 16 hours, and many reviews confirm this to be accurate. You can't remove the battery, so if the device hangs (not happened yet), there is a reset button on the bottom that you can reach with a paper-clip.

The iRiver comes with a sleek, black leather case. There's holes on the front and sides of this case to allow you access to all the buttons. The only thing covered up is the line in/out jacks, which are blocked by the snap-on strap at the top. Just snap it off and you can easily get to the in/out jacks. The leather case has a big plastic window on the front, so you can see the display. The back of the case has a loop for your belt, but that's it.

The remote is made of plastic, but still very durable. The screen is covered by a small glass plate, and the buttons/knobs are easy to use. The headphone jack is a bit recessed into the remote, causing some headphones to have problems plugging in. A small adapter cord is included to fix this. There is a clip on the back of the remote, so you can clip it somewhere on your clothing.

Voice Recorder:
One reason I got the iRiver, was the voice recorder. The iRiver comes with a built-in mic, and comes packaged with a small external mic. You can also record from the line-in jack. You can't record from the radio built-in to the iRiver, even if there's some mention of this in the manual. You can record to a .wav or .mp3 file, and change the bitrate of the .mp3 recording between 40k-320k. The iRiver can record continuously for 5 hours, and then it will stop automatically. (some people don't like this, might be changed with a later firmware upgrade?)

The recording quality is exellent. There is a level control for the external mic, but not the internal one. There's an Automatic Gain Control feature, which adjusts the gain so you don't get any distortion in your recording. I think AGC is automatically disabled for Line-in recording. You can set up the iRiver to power-on into standby-recording mode, which can be handy for reconding on the fly.

Radio:
The iRiver comes with an FM radio, which is nice to have. You can save up to 20 radio presets. The iRiver uses your headphones as an antenna, so the reception isn't so great. It cuts-out and gets fuzzy, especially if you are jogging around power-lines and tall buildings. Accessing the radio is also a bit akward. You can set up the iRiver to power-on into radio mode.

Accessories:
The iRiver comes with an AC Adapter, USB cable, small external mic with clip, transfer software, long male/male cord with 1/8 plugs, remote control w/ small adapter cord, headphones /w extra pads, and the manual w/ warranty cards and etc. The headphones are garbage, but all pre-packaged headphones turn out to be garbage.

Overall, I am very satisfied with the iRiver iHP 120. If my iRiver were ever lost or stolen, I'd cry myself a river. Then I'd buy a new iRiver. As lame as that sounds, it's the truth. I love this MP3 player.

After buying an Apple iPod and trying it for a few weeks, I returned it and purchased an iRiver iHP-120 instead. Below is my comparison:

Advantages to the iRiver iHP-120 over the iPod:

The iRiver's battery lasts twice as long as the iPod (16 hours instead of 8 hours).

While I haven't actually held one in each hand to compare, according to the on-line specs, the iRiver is a few grams lighter (weight) than the iPod, in spite of it's slightly larger casing.

The buttons are more tactile and resistant. A problem with the iPod was that the buttons on the unit itself (not the remote) were so incredibly feather-touch sensitive, that unless I kept re-engaging the hold switch, I would accidently press buttons all the time just while holding it!

The iRiver has a much better remote. All the iPod's remote had was a play/pause button, and FWD and REV buttons. The iRiver's remote, while slightly larger, has full-functionality (you can actually get away with NEVER using the buttons on the main unit), and also has a backlighted LCD screen which shows almost all the info you would need while listening and navigating your music library. In addition, the iRiver's remote has a much better clip for attaching it to your belt, shirt pocket, etc.

The iRiver's carrying case is better. It has a clear-plastic window exposing the screen, and perfectly placed holes for all buttons and ports. Unlike the iPod, you never actually need to remove the iRiver from it's case if you don't want! Not even to charge or connect to PC.

With the iRiver, you can choose to either browse your music library by file tree, or by artist/album/genre (MP3).

The iRiver can record (right out of the box, not with an optional accessory!). In addition to the built-in mic for voice recoring, the package includes an external mic (with lapel clip). The unit also has analog/optical ports for line in/out.

The iRiver has a built-in FM radio with support for 20 preset stations (unfortunately you can't record from the radio).

One thing that bugged me about the iPod was that if the title of the song was long, only some of it would be shown on the screen. The name would just be truncated and you could never see the rest. The iRiver on the other hand, has a nice feature where if the title of the song is longer than the width of the screen, it will scroll over so show the rest. And on top of that, you can configure the speed at which it scrolls, and how it scrolls to the next "screen" of text (vertically, horizontally). I don't know why Apple didn't think of that. Mind you, things like that could always be fixed in a future firmware update...

The iRiver is shipped with everything you need. Including an AC adaptor, USB 2.0 cable, carrying case, headphones, external mic, remote, etc. There is no cradle, but then again you don't need to use the same cable for power/data as you do with the iPod. When I had the iPod I had to buy a USB 2.0/Firewire combo cable so that I didn't have to keep unplugging the firewire from the computer every time I wanted to charge the unit. The iRiver comes with an AC adaptor, and a USB 2.0 cable (which is faster than firewire anyway-- I filled my entire 20GB iRiver in less than 40 minutes).

The iRiver, in my opinion, has better sound. When I had my iPod I found that if I had any of the EQ effects turned on, many of my songs would be distorted. The iRiver doesn't have that problem, and also, unlike the iPod, the iRiver has a user-configurable EQ setting as well as the presets, not to mention SRS surround sound and WOW effects. Balance, treble/bass.

The iRiver can be used as a portable HD simply by connecting it to a PC (shows up as a new drive letter). Even though the Apple iPod can do this too, the difference is that with the iRiver, you can copy your music files back to a PC again. The iPod did not allow this, unless you chose NOT to have the music files available for listening on the iPod.
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Below are the things that I liked better about the Apple iPod. Although some are great features, I ultimately think that the iRiver is a better unit:

The circular scroll wheel on the iPod is extremely innovative. It allows you to scroll as slowly or as quickly through large lists of songs (or scan forward/backward within a song) as you want, and be as accurate as you want with the scrolling. Although the iRiver has a nice joystick-type controller, and you can scroll quite fast, it isn't as useful as the iPod's scroll wheel.

The iPod is *slightly* thinner. While both the iPod and the iRiver are identical in length and width, the iPod is a tiny bit thinner.

The iPod boots up instantly. No wait time at all. Unfortunately, the iRiver takes about 10 seconds to boot up if you choose to browse your library by file tree, or about 30 seconds if you want to browse by artist/album/genre.

While listening, you can create an on-the-go playlist, queueing up as many songs as you want. Then save it to your computer later. The iRiver, by comparison, can only queue up one song (the next song) to play after the current one ends. With the iRiver, you can still create playlists, but must do it on your computer using Winamp (not included).


There's my opinion!