iRiver Clix Video Reviews

[Jason Dunn]

http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/iriver-clix-main.jpg

If you're jonesing for a Clix and just can't get enough, here are two video reviews that delve into the details of each device:

• Sean Alexander (http://blog.seanalexander.com/PermaLink,guid,8c3c2a02-33dc-4809-b9cc-b2ae1df0f37c.aspx) has a solid 25 minute overview of the device, the features, and the out of box experience. He also demonstrates the Urge service and how the Clix works with Windows Media Player 11. A great video review!

• Anything But iPod (http://www.anythingbutipod.com/archives/2006/05/iriver-clix-review.php) has a full written review of the Clix, along with an 8-minute video.

[BugDude10]

I just got mine Saturday, and so far I'm very pleased! :D (You really need to handle one in person to get a feel for the size and the very nice display.)

[Jason Dunn]

I just got mine Saturday, and so far I'm very pleased! :D (You really need to handle one in person to get a feel for the size and the very nice display.)

Yeah? Give us a mini-review. :-)

[BugDude10]

Well, I don't know what more I can add, especially to Sean's excellent video tour. (Criminey, he was on the team that worked on the Clix!)

As for the size, it is about half the size of a deck of cards, about as thick, and pretty light. (In a dress-shirt pocket, it barely pulls the pocket away from the shirt, and barely weighs it down.) It fits very comfortably in the hand if you want to carry it while you listen.

The fit & finish is excellent! The body and screen both seem likely to be very resistent to scratches.

The sound quality is excellent, which is what I have come to expect from iRiver. (I started with an iRiver iFP-190T 256MB flash-based player about three years ago, then got an iRiver H-140 40GB HD-based player about two years ago. They both sound excellent as well.) The included earbuds sound very nice, and have a cord long enough to reach from your ears to your pocket with some slack for movement. Volume is very good.

Control is very easy: the screen surface almost floats on the body of the device, and you navigate by pressing down (or clicking) on the appropriate side of the screen itself. (You get a nice, satisfying "click" when you do, too.) The lock switch seems to lock the whole float-mechanism so that the screen doesn't move at all when locked. The screen switch is sensitive enough that movement can activate the switch if you're walking with the unlocked device in your pants pocket (although not in a shirt pocket); of course, locking it and unlocking it is a very simple one-handed operation, so this should never be a problem.

Power on is almost immediate, and re-starting playback happens as quickly as you can click the screen.

The display is very impressive. The display itself is just a hair larger than a CompactFlash card, and it bright enough to see in all but the brightest light. The display is Pocket PC-sized -- 320x240 -- but since it's so much smaller, the graphics are very crisp, and the colors are very vivid. I never much cared whether a player could display album art, but I must admit the Clix looks good when it does.

Both of my older iRivers used a Windows Explorer-like file tree structure, but the Clix organizes everything for you by artist/album/song/genre/playlist. Scrolling through the artists/albums/songs/etc. is very quick, but not too much so. I suspect that the up/down arrow method is not as quick as the touch-sensitive dial on the iPods, but, hey, Apple has the patent on that mechanism, so what can you do?

Speaking of WMP 11, syncing a Clix-full of music -- 375 songs in my case (160kbps .WMAs) -- took only about two minutes or so. The Clix and WMP 11 work very nicely together so far; a nice touch is that WMP 11 will allow you to shuffle songs to your Clix, apparently loading it up with 2GB of tunes at random (which may or may not be a new feature -- I've never seen it before, but I may simply have missed it).

I was able to add a couple of .JPGs to the Clix by simply cutting & pasting in Windows Explorer, no problem. I resized them first in PSE to 320x240 to make them as small as possible, and they still look great even on such a small display. (Very vivid colors, again.)

I converted one .AVI to Clix-acceptable format ("Mike's New Car" from the "Monsters Inc." DVD, about 3:45) using iRiverter, then cut & paste it into the Clix "Video" directory. At 15fps, playback is not silky smooth, but the ability to take videos with you in this miniature device is pretty cool. (And I want to have a handful of cartoons handy to keep my 8-year-old occupied when necessary.) I wouldn't use this as a primary video-viewing device (that's what I have a PSP for!) but, again, it's very handy in a pinch. (Frankly, if you're watching video on a screen this size, the frame rate is probably not going to be your biggest concern.)

I don't have any problem with the storage capacity: I wanted something smaller (in every way) than the H-140 (and flash-based), but bigger than the 256MB I already have. 2GB holds plenty for what I want. If you have less than 10GB in tunes, then you may want something big enough to hold it all; if you just want to be able to take your favorite 300-500 songs with you, though, the Clix is an excellent choice in my opinion.

There's been some buzz online about whether iRiver is going to stay in the portable-music-player market. I presume iRiver is not going anywhere soon, or else Microsoft would not have partnered with iRiver for the launch of WMP 11 / Urge / Clix.

Just my $0.02.

[Jason Dunn]

Thanks for sharing your thoughts, it's great to get another point of view. :-)