The Pros and Cons of the IRiver Clix MP3 Player
I recently gave up on trying to repair my Rio MP3 player, which served me well for almost a year before it got smashed in my luggage, and purchased an iriver clix. There are many pros and a few cons to the this player. If you are interested in purchasing an MP3 player any time soon, consider the iriver clix.
The iriver clix comes with earbuds, a USB cable, a soft case for protection, and an install disc with Windows Media Player 11 and MTV’s URGE software.
Pro: There are an abundance of features to the iriver clix. Besides just the standard mp3 file playing, you can play videos, view photos, listen to FM radio, play flash games, view text files, and record voice messages.
Con: The install disc comes with Media Windows Player Beta. Supposedly you need this to run the device and synch music files. How ever, after days of just trying to get the player set up, tech support finally told me to roll back to Windows Media Player 10, which I already had before I used the install disc!
Pro: The button functions are simple, being that the directional pad is one big button surrounding the screen. All you do is click in the direction you desire to Play/Pause. Fast Forward, Rewind, etc., hence the name “clix”. You can also lock the pad so that you do not accidentally skip a track.
Con: The iriver only works with Windows XP on a PC. There is no way around this. You can not simply plug in the USB cable to your Mac and drag and drop files into the player. Your Mac will not recognize the device at all and will not even charge it. You can only use Windows Media Player to synch the files, which is very restricting, as I am accustomed to just dragging and dropping files rather than having to use the software.
Pro: There are several accessories to the iriver clix, including a car cassette player adapter to listen to your music through the car speakers, a portable speaker system to amp up the sound and play your music without earphones, and a cradle to let it sit on your desk.
Con: One important accessory is missing, a compatible AC adapter! The only way to charge your river clix is to plug it into the computer USB port. It is highly undesirable for long trips. It can hardly be called portable when you are anchored down by your PC, unless you have a laptop. I contacted sales department about any such accessory or any product from another company which would be compatible. They replied that there was no such accessory but they were planning to develop one soon. Everyone knows that MP3 players are like milk, they go bad fast! Two MP3 player purchases later they will finally release an AC adapter and you won’t care any more!
Pro: 2.2″x2.2″ screen. The screen is very nice and displays color very well. You can change your background and use any image you want to replace it. The display orientation can be switched between landscape and portrait. This comes in handy when you like using the portrait setting to navigate but need to watch videos in landscape.
Con: Successfully synching videos files and installing flash games can be a pain. Most video files will not synch with the player and the few that do often don’t work. Trying to figure out what you need to do to play video files can be very frustrating and more often than not it’s not even worth trying. But if you don’t care as much about the video feature, it can be just an extra feature for rare use. The player is still worth buying without the video feature.
Pro: The Custom Equalizer setting lets you adjust the sound to the way you like it, whether you like a lot of bass or want the vocals to be sharp.
Con:The battery life is a supposed 27 hours max, but I’ve only gotten 5 hours max, although I must say that I constatly skip songs. I suppose it matters how you use the device. But don’t expect to go all day without recharging.
Pro: 2 Gigabytes of space. If you need to have more than 2 Gigabytes of music available, get help! Then again, videos will take up a lot of your space. 2 Gigs is plenty for me, especially when compared to the price of other MP3 players which cost more but have less space.
Over all I think that the iriver clix is a worthwhile purchase at $200.00 plus tax, but has many limitations that need to be worked out. The price is very good when compared to the features of other MP3 players. Switching from a Rio to an iriver clix is less than a year was like going from Windows 95 to XP. Technology is improving rapidly and becoming cheaper. If the iclix were available when MP3 players first came out it would cost $5,000 or more. I am very happy with my iriver clix, but of course wish I could use it on my Mac and charge it with an AC adapter. Despite some drawbacks I highly recommend the iriver clix.
-Michael Kelly
To find out more about the iriver clix such as pricing and available accessories visit www.iriveramerica.com.
