Product Reviews

IRiver's Clix 2 is a miniature multimedia player with 8GB of flash memory, a 2.2in screen and a resolution of 320x240. It has a battery life of three hours and 43 minutes for video playback and a spectacular 31 hours and five minutes for audio. A useful Power & Play mode lets you continue to use the player even while it's plugged into the USB port.

The directional controls for the menus are concealed beneath the front panel of the Clix, so just

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squeeze the player at the edge of the direction in which you want to navigate. The other controls are marked only by symbols on the back of the player, which makes them hard to distinguish.

The Clix produces clear sound, but very low tones aren't audible without boosting the bass. There are a lot of EQ and 3D settings available, but most failed to make our music sound better. The bundled headphones are comfortable, but they sound rather muddy and unclear, particularly on busy tracks with a lot of musical detail.

The screen is crisp and doesn't suffer from visible graining, but its colours aren't as accurate as those of the iPod Nano. WMV and AVI videos looked slightly oversaturated and underexposed, with too many shadowed areas and too much intensity on dark colours.

We were also disappointed by fundamental problems such as an inability to list tracks in album order and a confusing button layout. At a lower price, these would be easy to forgive, but this expensive player has too many flaws to justify its price.