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The iriver brand revolves around the advanced user who wants more out of their DAP than just blasting loud music. Today we have the E10 from iriver, which is a 6GB player. Does it really offer more for the demanding listener? Read on to find out. Bundle 
iriver E10 Stereo Earphones USB Cable Pouch Cable Straps (2 No.) Player User Guide iriver Plus 2 & User Guide Layout The iriver E10 is a simple looking player with no extravagant navigation controls. Its dimensions are similar to a Nano; except for the thickness of the E10. On the face of the player there is 1.5-inch color TFT LCD that supports 128 x 128 pixels resolution. Below the screen there are four large buttons; they are the navigation keys of the player. There are another two buttons; these are comparatively smaller in size each placed under the lower corners of the screen. The on the left is a Smart button which can be assigned an operation from a predefined list of options. The one on the right is the power ON/OFF button of the player. 
To the left of the player is the hold switch. Sliding the switch to hold also turns the player into a remote control for a TV set. To the lower end on the left side there is the player reset hole. On the right of the player is volume control of the player. Towards the lower end on the right side is the MIC. 
At the bottom of the player is where the connectors are placed. There is a custom USB port and the earphone jack. A large infrared port sits on top of the player. Turn the player on its back and at the lower left corner you will find the wrist strap holder. 
Music Quality Now to the most important topic when it comes to a DAP; the music quality. The iriver E10's sound quality can be best defined as pure. For an iriver DAP, there is nothing outstanding about its sound quality. The iAudios we tested have much better quality. For that matter the sound quality was as good as the Samsung YP-K3. There was no distortion in the sound of the player, regardless of the volume levels. All the sounds; the highs, mids, and lows sounded perfect. That being the reason why I called it pure; maybe I was expecting too much form the player it being an iriver product. Well now I'll come to the earphones which are the other defining factor for a player's music quality. Here I'll make it even clearer why I find the music quality just "pure". Most iriver players are bundled with Sennheiser earphones. The E10 is bundled with standard earphones. So I used Sony earplugs and there was hardly any performance difference. Just that the vacuum created by the earplugs took the music purity up a couple of notches. The thump and liveliness I expected was still missing. Now I'll take you through the details of the sound tweaks offered by the E10 to enhance your listening experience. The E10 has a dozen Equalizer Presets that are listed on the screen when you hold the right button down for a couple of seconds. The E10 equalizer presets offered are Normal, Classic, Live, Pop, Rock, Jazz, Ubass, Metal, Dance, Party, Club, and Custom. If you navigate to the Sounds under Settings you get just the Custom Equalizer, SRS settings, and the Fade-In effect setting. The custom equalizer is a 5 band equalizer while SRS offers SRS, TruBass, WOW, and Focus to enhance your listening experience. SRS lets you set the treble and TruBass lets you set the bass. As for Focus you have three options; Lows, Mids, and Highs. Setting the Focus on any one of these enhances either one; the Lows, Mids, or the Highs respectively. WOW lets you set the surround sound effect of the player's output. Fade-In offers a turn ON/OFF, this smoothly takes you into and out of a song. Interface The iriver E10 does not have a conventional type of interface. The interface is based on flash and there are icons that appear to direct you through the menus. The menus are in list form and hitting the right button after highlighting your choice takes you to through the sub menu. The player has 6GB of capacity and offers FM Radio, Picture Viewer, and Video Player along with its default function as a DAP. The player also has Extras to offer such as Flash Games, File Browser, Alarm Clock, Text Viewer, and Recording. The player also supports Themes. You get just two themes with the player and can also download more themes to the player. You can also customize the background of the player to your choice of image from the images present in the player. Playing the flash games provided on the player stops the playback of music or FM. But while viewing images or text is continues to play peacefully in the background. For Music Playback options you need to hold the right button when in Now Playing. You then get a list of options like Play Mode, Quick List, Equalizer, Rate, Scan Speed, Playback speed, and Lyrics Display. The Play Mode offer options like Repeat, Shuffle, Repeat and Shuffle, and Repeat One. Quick List is a simple way of adding songs to a quick playlist. Equalizer offers the list of presets and the custom preset with the additional SRS mentioned before. Rate helps you rate a song on a scale of 5 stars. This later helps you sort your personal choice of songs according to the song rating you give. Scan speed lets you decide the speed at which the player scans through a song. Scan speeds offered range from 2x all the way to 60x. At 60x you would virtually be skipping an entire track but comes handy if you are listening to a very long compilation especially for the trance fans. Playback Speed you can set the playback speed from -1 to 5, 0 being normal playback. This I felt was only for fun when you're completely bored out of the collection. The last option is Lyrics display where you can either turn it ON/OFF. The Settings option offers setting of Date and time for scheduling an alarm. There is also a Timer option which lets you set the Auto Power OFF, Sleep and Backlight display of the player. There is an Advanced option under settings, this provides with Text Scroll Speed, System Information, and an option to Reset all the settings to factory settings. The player as I mentioned earlier has an Infrared port and there is an option Remote Control to set the device it is to work with. FM Radio The E10's FM radio is very good and provides clear reception. There were no hassles faced in auto scanning the radio stations. Once scanned, they are auto saved and you can just scroll through the channels. You can also manually tune into channels which I really didn't find the need for with the auto scan doing the needful. Video Playback The screen quality is simply brilliant and so is the color reproduction but the screen size is just 1.5-inches. Given all its brilliance, how much can you really enjoy watching a video on a 1.5-inch display? Of course, unless you have no qualms about holding the player 6 inches away from your eyes. Data Transfer 
The iriver E10 was bundled with iriver Plus 2 Software which is outdated. Immediately after installation it upgraded itself to iriver Plus 3, the latest edition. This synchronization software provided wasn't really necessary especially if you like to arrange music the way it is on your HDD. The only problem would be that you'd have to go through the file browser to play a track. Else the iriver Plus 3 did a neat job of sorting the music during synchronization on the fly. The transfer speeds were USB 2.0 and 6 GB didn't take too long to fill up. The drive was pretty fast and also tempted me into using it as a portable storage. The iriver Plus software also helps upgrade the player's firmware. Infrared Remote The E10 has the added feature of being used as a Remote control for a TV. There is list of TV sets that the player supports. All you have to do is find out at which band does your TV remote work and set it on the player. It really wasn't necessary to have a remote on the player but what the hell if it really doesn't cost too much you don't have much to bother about. The E10 supports 100+ TV sets so get that old TV manual out of the dirt, figure out the infrared band of your TV remote and now you have two remotes to the idiot box. Battery Life The E10 has a very good battery life. The rechargeable battery of the player only charges through USB. You could buy a standard charger as an accessory. The player lasts easily for 5 days with about 3 hours of listening everyday. Incase the battery dies out you can also change the battery by just opening up the player. Replacing batteries for the E10 also isn't much of a problem Conclusion The iriver E10 sells for Rs. 9,750 off the street with one year warranty. There is nothing exceptional about the player. Just for a comparatively better sound, a decent capacity with good battery life and a few features this is quite a good deal. But if you're looking for something way better then the iAudio's are for you. Test Unit Sourced from: Salora International, Mumbai
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