Without unnecessary prefaces, I’ll say right away: I’m talking about the iRiver S100 multimedia player.
iRiver - what's what
If you, dear readers, were fond of MP3 players 5-7 years ago, then you hardly need to remember this South Korean company. For those who are not familiar, I’ll say elementary: in those epochs when MP3 players were a necessary luxury (listening on cassettes was no longer fashionable, but in MP3 it was expensive), iRiver was the most chic. The youth, who are always on the crest of the wave of extreme technology, worked at night, postponed the scholarship, just to stock up on this kind of magic:
iRiver IFP-700 - it was true!
These "prisms" cost a lot! Still - 40 hours from one finger-type battery, good ability to record directly in MP3, and memory - not to listen to re-listen - as much as 512MB! Well, someone modestly stated that 128MB was enough for him and, having broken a piggy bank, went to audiophile forums in search of a "used iriver". Well, if the funds were still not enough, then it was possible to grab something cheaper, and not so reliable.
So, it's 2010. Players are a dime a dozen - from the cheap ones like the Ritmix to the extremely precious ones like the iPod Touch. The very same sector of MP3-players has changed so that its title is faster a tribute to the chronicle, since elementary MP3-players are now seen occasionally. For the most part, these devices, which have every chance to recreate not only MP3, but also FLAC and APE - uncompressed formats. In addition, if the device has at least a small multicolor screen, then it will certainly begin to recreate video, thus becoming not an MP3, but a multimedia player.
The stories continue
That is how the iRiver S100 - although it is small (a bit more than a credit card), although it is thin (about a centimeter), it is still a multimedia player that can handle not only MP3, but also 720x480 video resolution. Boldly speaking, if suddenly you get a DVDRip encoded in Xvid on your computer, you can safely upload it to the iRiver S100 and watch. But for perfect viewing, 2.83 inches is still not enough. If, of course, not "South Park" look. And we are not joking! The fact is that "South Park" is extremely simple from a visual point of view - large objects, lack of detail and variegation. Therefore, it is allowed to watch this cartoon even on tiny screens. As for color films, it is better to take care of your eyes. Nevertheless, one charge of the player will be enough for 7.5 hours of video viewing!
Unkillable Kenny looks extremely good on the iRiver S100 screen
And now, a tiny lyrical deviation from the protracted lyrical digression, which has smoothly turned into a real industrial educational program. In general, it just so happened that part of the web presents the iRiver S100 somewhat incorrectly. So, on all, even the most famous sites, you will read that this player reacts to the "wave" of the hand, that it has a G-sensor, that it plays for 35 hours. Experimentally, this information has not been confirmed. She was not confirmed by the official. international site iRiver - the player lacks a G-sensor, and it plays for 42 hours. It's either bad or great that the G-sensor is missing - it's hard to say, it's a matter of taste. As for us - it is lacking, well, God is with him. As for the operating time, we note that, according to the operating time, iRiver S100 beats only COWON D2 + with its own 55 for several hours and COWON iAudio J3, which wins back 64 hours. Of course, these devices do not have a chance to brag about their compactness and lightness.
Specificity
Experienced people say that habits are second nature. We don’t know if it’s like that, however, for the first time picking up the player, we began to click on the screen. "Commander, I'm mechanical!" The screen is huge, at the bottom there is a single button, albeit with arrows around it. Realizing that the screen is ordinary here, we were delighted - both for us, so players with touch controls are not particularly comfortable in everyday life.In everyday life, the player "dangles" in a pocket, therefore it must be very ergonomic, which primarily combines with the ability to control it "blindly". Turn up or turn down the volume, change the track, pause - all this must be done simply and elementarily, without useless movements; the device does not have to leave a pocket.
iRiver S100 is controlled by buttons. These are the "invisible" (arrows are buttons).
miniUSB and "flash drive" are neatly hidden under the "shutter".
And fortunately, they are comfortable to press when the player is in the pocket. The central protruding key serves as a reference point for the finger. Note that on the bottom edge there is a miniUSB input and a slot for microSD cards, so 4GB or 8GB of internal memory can be increased by 32GB of external memory. By the way, be sure to format the "flash drive" in the player! After formatting, a system of folders is formed on the card, into which it will be necessary to occupy files. Without this system, "External memory" will become empty. The volume is controlled by "rockers" on the edge, and the "On / Off" key is also Hold.
The main menu consists of eight pts. You move on them - and at the same time the wallpaper changes.
The iRiver S100 is loaded with extremely beautiful and comfortable clipart, however, of course, any menu item is allowed to define your own wallpaper and so personalize the player!
Once in the player, the music is sorted by artist, genre, album, etc. In fact, now it is difficult to find a player that does not have such a media library system. It is amusing that the creators of iRiver, taking the principle of a media library to their weapons, did not abandon the usual browser, since the tags in MP3 are not always written so neatly to work as an aspect for sorting.
Move in the music catalog as you like!
But the task of the player is to recreate the sound files and recreate them perfectly. iRiver S100, as befits an "iriver", differs in "bass" - no matter what genre you listen to, you will never find yourself in such a situation when the low frequencies are low. Nevertheless, they are constantly allowed to increase, for example, by presetting the U-Bass equalizer, while overdriving and disappearing mid and high frequencies will not occur.
Usually for "irivers" the SRS WOW HS and SRS CS Headphone sound enhancers are integrated into the iRiver S100. The task of the SRS is the same as that of the BBE in the COWON players and the Samsung DNSe - to return the naturalness to the sound compressed in MP3: to highlight the highs or lows, to add spatiality. SRS gives a good result, if you have economical headphones, such which are crystal physiologically incapable of good sound. If you don't have enough troubles with headphones, then SRS is perceived as an exaggerated result and starts to act against itself: the music sounds unnatural, emphatically “processed”. And since the iRiver S100 recreates compression formats without losing FLAC and APE, then there is a reason to listen to music specifically in these formats, and after that, the Lord himself commanded to go without SRS. By the way, iRiver S100 showed itself excellently together with prof. monitor headphones Sennheiser HD 380 pro with an impedance of 54 ohms and a power of 110 dB. In office criteria, the volume was 17% enough with a head off.
Fascinating "raisins" unfolds if you press and hold the "Up" key in the main menu.
Let's call this "multitasking" business! Naturally, this is not the same multitasking that we find on phones and computers. But the principle is similar: the likelihood of being thrown from process to process. For example, you can watch a movie on the iRiver S100 and, suddenly feeling that "no longer climbs", switch to the audio player or photo viewing mode.
“And when you get bored - come back”, the movie will “play” from the place where you interrupted it.
There are also cute little things in the iRiver S100. For example, you can take a chance and read a thick book in TXT format.
And you can not clog your brain and not darken your eyes, and calmly strum into a simple flash game. Or watch a "flash" cartoon!
In general, after taking a walk with the iRiver S100, we draw the following conclusion.iRiver S100 is an entry-level media player. Although he can do almost not everything, the dimensions show that all the same his main task is to recreate the music. And here, as they say, there is no wrangling. On the contrary. Having compared the sound of the iRiver S100 with the classic “iPod”, we have to bend over towards the “iriver”. “Iriver” seemed to us the most juicy and detailed. So it comes out: a compact, light, thin, indescribably long-playing device from the manufacturer of multimedia players at a fun cost - what else is needed?
