iRiver iGP-100

We've been really spoilt over the past few months, with MP3 players falling in price while getting both smaller and sexier. iRiver has led the charge, with great menu systems, drag-and-drop Explorer support and excellent sound quality being hallmarks of award-winning products such as the iHP-100 series.

Unfortunately, the iGP-100 doesn't entirely manage to uphold the tradition. The principle cause for this is the basic physical design; we can't quite decide whether it looks more like a padlock or a yo-yo. Either way, while looking quite 'yoof', the shape is too unwieldy to be ergonomic. Unless you're wearing some seriously oversized trousers it will certainly feel cramped in your pocket, and trying to adjust any of the controls through clothing is fairly hopeless. It feels uncomfortable in the hand too, and even after a day or two of use we found ourselves having to scour the perimeter frequently to find the appropriate buttons.

We also don't like the fact that you can only play music from one folder at a time; putting the player in shuffle mode will only play tracks from the current folder. It's a bonus if you're a 'complete albums only' person, but inconvenient when you want to quickly change your playlist as you're running out the door in the morning. The screen - the same as that found on the iHP-100 series - while well-lit and with a generous 1.8in diagonal, focuses more on visibility rather than amount of information. It's big but the resolution isn't very high, and we'd have liked to see iRiver put a bit more effort into revamping it for the new generation of players.

On the plus side, we're big fans of being able to treat the player as a removable drive: no annoying DRM (digital rights management) software required. And with a capacity of 1.5GB, it's enough for 25 or so 128Kb/sec MP3-encoded albums, as well as a few important documents. You'll get more if you plump for a lower-rate WMA or OGG file, although these more complex codecs will have an effect on battery life.

There's more good news here too. We had no problems getting through a busy weekend travelling about, with the battery meter only starting to ebb on the Monday morning trek into the office. You can expect about four or five days of normal use, as long as you don't do too much ferreting around your folders, which will need the drive to spin up and buffer tracks.

Looking at the price, it seems like great value, but we'd rather spend the £15 extra on the lighter, slimmer, and easier-to-use Rio Nitrus.

Author: Ross Burridge