Product Reviews

As the iPod continues to trounce all-comers in the digital music market, Apple's competitors are turning to portable video players in the hope of catching up. Sadly, iRiver's PMP-120 isn't the product for the job.

Its main problem is the user interface. The function of the buttons varies depending on context, so it's far from obvious how to carry out even the most basic tasks. A dedicated Help button provides explanations but, even after you've memorised the controls, many annoyances remain. For example, if you hold the Play button for a fraction too long after highlighting the video you want, you're dumped back at the main menu. This isn't a bug; it's the result of a poor decision to make the control do double duty.

The device takes almost 20 seconds to start up, which seems like an age when you're after a short burst of entertainment. Annoyingly, you can only fast forward in chunks of around 40-seconds. If you wind, say, 30-seconds ahead and let go of the button, the video plays from where you started.

The PMP-120 can play MPEG4 files

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encoded with the DivX and Xvid codecs (subject to bit-rate and resolution limits). It handled almost all the files we tried that met these criteria, but you can't tell if a file is compatible without downloading it. Some AVIs not only failed to play, but made the device freeze. The bundled Media Converter software works well at converting other file types (including WMVs but not the Media Center dvr-ms) to a playable format, but it's a time-consuming process.

The real problem with these devices is finding anything to watch on them. Ripping DVD content to a video file infringes copyright, and there's little content available legally in MPEG4 format - although the archive.org Moving Images collection and www.divx.com are both worth a look. Recording TV shows for your own use is legal, but the PMP-120 has no way of automating this, unlike the Archos and Creative Zen PMC players.

Although the device's screen and sound quality are both clear, the composite video output seemed washed out on our test TV. During video playback the battery lasts around four hours, which is slightly less than competing products. The interfaces for other media are as clumsy as those for video. If you want to be able to search your music collection, you have to tell the player manually to update its ID3 tag database every time you add files. There's no way of finding a photo from thumbnails: instead you have to construct photo playlists, which is awkward.

While the PMP-120 has some plus points, including an FM tuner and the ability to copy files directly from a camera or flash memory drive, they don't make up for it being so annoying to use.