Customer Reviews

iriver IFP-895T 512 MB MP3 Player

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I've used this for a month and so far, I am very satisfied.
The player comes with a full set of accessories, including earphones, sport armband, neckstrap, line-in cable, usb cable, and belt-clasp carrying case.

The LCD can display filenames from 40(!!) languages.
The firmware upgrade option is great. Since this product is sold in so many countries, you simply need to go to the iRiver website for your country and upgrade your firmware there to make this player use your language (your operating system's language may factor into this.. I'm not completely sure -- I've changed it from English to Korean using Korean WinXP). You can revert back to English from the settings menu.

For playback, you have several repeat and shuffle options and the standard equalizer with normal, rock, classical, jazz, customizable 3D, etc etc.

Just to name a few notable features:
-Alarm clock (connect the player to speakers if you need the alarm to wake you up)
-FM Tuner w/ recording option (you can set auto begin / end times to record a show)
-Voice recording / playback (the mic picks up sounds that are far away pretty well)
-Name learning (will display your name at startup)
-Multiple visualizations (waveform, graph, progressive, or just the nifty clock)
-On-the-go encoding for voice, FM, and line-in recording
-Etc., etc.

The controls will take a little time to get used to, as the three topside buttons and 4-way/clickable frontside joystick are not all that the player can do. This is actually a plus if you'd rather get used to the player and have many options instead of only being able to play/stop/etc. (e.g., give the joystick a quick push and a long push to the right to skip to the next music folder). The joystick's length is about what you see in pictures -- it doesn't protrude much, but it's short enough so that it becomes easy to move it in the wrong direction.

The firmware is continually upgraded, as is the music manager software.
A lyrics management software is also available in certain countries (no additional fee) where you can search for a song's lyrics from an internet lyrics database and have it automatically linked to the file before uploading into the player. Unfortunately, I do not think this is available in the Americas yet. If you can Korean, you may want to try it out...

As for filetypes, the player supports mp3, wma, ogg, asf, and some kind of iriver-only filetype up to 320kbps. Folders can go 500 deep with 1500 files.

Sound quality -- the most important aspect of a music player when it's bad, but a given when it's good: iRiver made its mark with quality and features. Don't worry, the sound quality is great -- I just wish the earphones were better. The earphones are average and are much better than cheapie $5~10 ones, but everything does sound a lot better when I have the player connected to nicer headphones or speakers.

Battery life is advertised as 40 hrs on one size AA. I think it's actually closer to 25~30 because of the bluish backlight (which looks very cool when turned on).

There are an abundance of settings available to set screen, ID3 display, songname & artist scrolling, battery optimization for rechargeable or alkaline, encoding quality, etc. There is also a "study" mode which is for... well I have no clue. :)

Overall, I love this player. I really suggest you take a look at the product website and PDF manual (particularly the part where they explain the menu options) to find out more about it. A glance at the firmware update details may also be helpful.

I believe the warranty is one year for a new product and 90 days for a refurbished one.

Oh, one last thing:
The player can be used as a removable drive -- you just need to upgrade firmware, which I suggest you do before anything else since upgrading the firmware will erase all the files in the player.

I have player for almost a month now and I'm loving it.
I bought it basically because it can play OGG files and my whole CD collection is ripped in OGG, because it has better quality than MP3. The equalizer mode 3D gives an amazing sound!

I also like the Alarm function and Sleep function. The Tuner Record Timer (Tuner Record Reservation) has been upgraded and now you can set up the length of the recording, not just the start. Make sure you download the upgraded managment software right away as the first thing, as there are several nice enhancements and some bug fixing.

Another important feature for me is the ability to use it with Linux, which unfortunately is not supported by iRiver yet. But there are open source tools that allow it to be used as a memory stick. A good starting point is http://ifp-driver.sourceforge.net/.
In my case (SuSE Linux 9.3 and KDE) I used Roback's libiriver-0.8:
http://www.roback.cc/projects/iRiver/
and the KIO slave updated by trisk found in the comment section of
http://www.kde-apps.org/content/show.php?content=11260
The direct link to the updated kio_ifp 0.12.1 is:
http://www.acm.jhu.edu/~trisk/kio_ifp-0.12.1.tar.gz
With those you can access your IFP-895 in Konqueror by just typing ifp:/ into the address field. But I sincerely wish iRiver upgrades the managment software to UMS for IFP-895, so that the player can be used as a USB memory stick directly without needing additional driver.

Someone complained that the battery life was not as long as advertised. I found that the back light time has a big impact on that. Fortunately you can set it to 1 s or even turn it off to increase battery life. Someone else complained about the size of the arm band. I don't know what they got, but my arm band is big enough for Arnold Schwarzenegger's arm.

There you have it. Highly recommended!

I actually started out with the 512MB IFP-700 series but ended up selling it to my sister and now have this older model so I've spent a year with both models. I primarily got it to play music while I jog, never really got around to using it for that and my armband remains still untouched BUT I can say the iriver players have singlehandedly changed music for me.
Currently I use mine at least 6 hours a day, much of that mountain biking(and thats with only 256MB of music). I'd recommend a larger memory player if your the kind of person that takes long road trips or likes to listen to the same couple cd's countless times, but for me the downgrade to 256MB was just right, I can play a large handfull of songs till I get sick of them and switch them out. My biggest problem with the player is finding a set of headsets that can last as long as it has.

Since my purchase of my first iriver player, both my sister and father have bought irivers. I haven't been able to compare it to an ipod as of yet, the major disadvantage apparently is the Iriver is not as user friendly. It seems fine to me, with the selection stick and side buttons I can easily change music, adjust volume, and even delete songs or switch modes without looking at the mp3 player in my pocket while I mountain bike.
Plus you can't beat watching IPod people drool as you demonstrate the Irivers ability to record off the built in radio, take voice memo's(very handy), and connect to their Ipod or cd player via headphone jack and steal their songs. I've also found the Iriver handy at editing my own music and use it for modifing sound effects for computer games.

Durability wise neither model has let me down, I've dropped them on countless occasions and theyve survived quite a few bike crashes no problem. I am starting to loose some pixels on the screen of this older player but thats no surprise considering its one of the oldest models, added to the abuse and constant use I put it through, but the sound is still clear as a bell with only the rarest of "player resets".

If you arent prepared to spend 300 dollars on a music player that you will only use a few minutes a day, any of the Iriver series is heads over tales better than any other portable mp3 player out there, that was true 2 years ago and it still is now.

I bought this player for my wife last spring. She loves it, and I use it as much as her now. I have been using it to listen to audio books before I go to sleep. Last night, I got out of bed to use the bathroom, book still playing. I'll blame it on being half asleep, but somehow I dropped it. The earphones unplugged from the player and before I had any time to react, my iRiver was going downstream.

I quickly fished it out, turned it off (it was still playing) and took out the battery. I left in on a window sill for 24 hours to dry out, put a fresh battery in it, and it is good as new (I also wiped in down with a sanitizing wipe).

So anyway, read the other reviews for info on the features, but I think this one says something about the quality of this MP3 player.

This is my first MP3 player and I am very satisfied with this product. I saw a few postings about the arm band being too small but mine fit fine and I am not a little person. The sound was excellent. Only problem was the software. I was purchacing songs on the internet in wma format and when I copied them to the MP3 player they would not play. I went to the iRiver web site and it noted the problem and said to use the Windows Media Player to copy the songs over. I did that and it worked fine.

The sound on the iriver ifp-895 is fantastic. It also comes with some really good (sounding) earbuds (sennheiser). I bought a second one from iriver america and they included a folding set of sennheiser PX100 that are amazing for a travel set of earphones. The earbuds do not fit my ears so well (for exercise for example) but they do sound really good. The ifp-895 is not the player to get if you are looking for "plays for sure" technology. However, it is the player to get if you have a load of albums that you want to digitize, it has direct mp3 encoding and you set the bit-rate (as far as I know only iriver has this and the newer
iriver players no longer have a line-in jack). It also has some great features like "power up and record a radio program for X minutes". Another feature is sleep power off. The iriver music manager is a good PC interface for transferring music, but if you are unhappy with that you can upgrade the firmware to be UMS (plug in the player and it maps the next available drive letter). You can find this on the iriver.com website (not iriveramerica.com). I don't have a need for it as I have the music manager software on all my PC's. Lastly it has .5 gig of memory which I equate to 10 cds/albums. That is plenty for a highly portable little player that I mostly use for exercise. The ifp-899 steps it up to 1 gig, which going forward I would consider a minimum requirement. In summary, great player with great sound and a bevy of features in a fantastic (small) form factor. I don't think they are making these any more so if you have the need to record via line-in (off a soundboard, old albums, I have found all kinds off uses for this feature) it is time to get one.

I purchased this MP3 player so I could listen to music while I work out. iRiver made one spectacular improvement with this model over the 700 series in including the sport armband. My wife and I shared the 256MB 700 series model and I had to buy the armband as an accessory.
The main complaint is that the iRiver Music Manager software is difficult at best. If I can get it to recognize that I have my player plugged into my computer it works great, otherwise it is a hassle. Using Windows Media Player or MusicMatch Jukebox is just as easy to put songs on the player, but not to organize them.
Overall a good product that is easy to use. My next MP3 purchase will be another iRiver.

I started off with an Ipod and then went to this (b/c of cost). It is simple and convenient and has cool features, like the ability to record the songs on the radio. But the radio signal is weak even for usually strongly-received stations. After I dropped it once, sometimes the machine just turns off, especially when it is in the hold zone. I prefer an ipod b/c more userfriendly. but in terms of convenience and liability, I would choose this.

This mp3 player is awesome ive had it for three years already and i have like two hundred and fortytwo songs and there is a little bit of space left!I love it.

So i was givin an iPod shuffle and it was defective so I exchanged it for the iRiver... I Love It!... The arm band is too small for an adult arm but works nicely as a wrist band. The player, talk about bells and whistles. I am too stuborn to read the directions so I know I dont know all of the features yet but it's so easy to used I didnt bother!