iriver SlimX iMP-350 CD/MP3 Player with Ultraslim Design
From iRiver
The iMP-350 SlimX is the newest MP3 CD player on the market. Technologically superior with many features and a slim 16.7mm thickness, and lightweight for easy carrying, this gorgeous player combines many features consumers have been looking for, all in one unit. The iMP-350 SlimX provides WinAmp playlist playback support. The SlimX product carries the same high quality that customers have come to expect from iRiver, and unparalleled customer service to help consumers get the most out of their product.
- Amazon Sales Rank: #37482 in Consumer Electronics
- Brand: iRiver
- Model: imp-350
With its beautiful sound quality, royal good looks, and simple operation, the iRiver SlimX portable MP3-CD player sets a new standard for future portable units to follow.
The SlimX is one of the most adaptable players we've encountered. It rolls upgradable firmware, eight-minute antishock protection, ASF (Advanced Streaming Format) and WMA (Windows Media Audio) compatibility, ID3 tag support, and the ability to play standard audio CDs, MP3-encoded discs, CD-Rs, and CD-RWs into an ultratrim (0.6 inches thick) player. And the sound is deluxe, delivering crisp highs, discernible mids, and bass thick enough to make low-end aficionados nod their heads in approval.
Since we had yet to fully investigate WMA, we felt compelled to dig into the format. At first we were hesitant: how could WMA compress music files to half their size--at, say, 64 Kbps--and still sound good? After dumping an entire, 100-song playlist onto a single CD-R, however, we were humbled. The procedure was painless, and the sound was incredible. The iRiver SlimX completely fulfilled our demands; using the gorgeous inline remote, we easily skipped ahead 10 tracks at a time, used fast-scan to hear a particular verse, and made a customized playlist on the fly.
In fact, the remote lets you operate every function (save changing a disc) without having to dig the unit out of your backpack or its carrying case (included, but frail), and it also includes a hold switch that prevents accidental playback.
After the WMA-disc success, we switched over to an MP3 compilation made by a friend. While reading the different ID3 tags (MP3 file markers that feed song, artist, and album names to your player), we first played the songs whose titles intrigued us most, like "Nannari to Naru Deshou" by the excellent Japanese female duo Puffy. That's why ID3 tags are so cool--they allow you to search by name, not track number.
Next, we took the SlimX out on a long walk to judge its portability. Unless we made silly, Pete Townshend-style windmill movements, each disc played satisfactorily. We noticed that standard audio CDs popped more than anything we burned off the Web, which was strange. We also sampled the five equalizer presets, although we noticed only subtle differences in sound at low volumes.
While listening to any Web-audio disc, the SlimX fills up its antiskip buffer with the eight minutes of music. Essentially, this means the player doesn't have to read the disc as much, which results in prolonged battery life, and ultimately the SlimX delivered on its promise of up to 23 hours playing time. To get these results for yourself, just make sure the two flat NiMH batteries are fully charged, and pop an extra pair of AAs into the external battery pod. It's that easy.
For those new to ASF, MP3, and WMA formats, you may be disappointed by the SlimX's user's manual, which is skimpy at best. Our Guide to Making MP3 Files will familiarize you with the basics and help you turn your computer into a virtual jukebox.
For those of you who are considering upgrading to the iRiver SlimX--or are looking to pick up your first player--we highly recommend this player. In fact, we miss our test player so much, we're going to buy one of our own. --Arno Kazarian
Pros:
- Upgradable firmware
- Compatibility with MP3, WMA, ASF, standard audio CDs, and CD-R/RWs
- Supports ID3 tags for easy search of MP3 files
- Nearly skip-free performance
- Relatively useless user's manual
- Shallow-sounding earbud headphones
- Frivolous carrying case
Amazing features. Simply the best CD/MP3 (along w/ iMP-400)
There are well over 100 reviews (mostly positive)
for the iRiver iMP-350 (SlimX) on Amazon alone,
so I won't waste too much space writing yet another
comprehensive review ...
Suffice to say, this is a great piece of gear, with
all the bells and whistles one expects from a MP3-CD
player (and more). A real gadget-freak's "dream".
As another review noted, you'd need at least IQ 90 to
figure out all the features (particularly learning
the remote).
The only quibbles I have are: [1] bundled earbuds are
very poor (solution: buy better ones); [2] embarrasing
'carrying pouch' (solution: 3rd-party CD portable case);
[3] remote feels a bit fragile/light (better treat this
with kid gloves, since you lost most advanced functions
if you lose/break the remote); [4] remote LCD is *small*
(you need to hold it really close to your face to make
out some of the tiniest text and icons, the LCD is very
high-res/crisp but only about 1" across -- postage stamp
sized!), [5] clunky auxillary battery pack/tube (although
it's nice that iRiver includes this for no extra cost).
I had a difficult time finding places to buy the special
rectangular NiMH batteries which the SlimX uses, not to
mention a source for an external charger. I figured the
following might be helpful for others in the same boat:
iRiver iMP-350/SlimX uses 2x NiMH "prismatic" (gumstick)
batteries of 1400mAh capacity each. These are the batts
which you install into the flip doors under where the CD
spins. Apparently, these batteries are commonly used by
portable MiniDisc units from Sony, Panasonic, etc. The
following batteries should be equivalent:
- Sanyo HF-A1U
- Sony NH-14WM
- Panasonic RP-BP140H
The lowest price I've found so far [on the net, anyway]
is US$/battery (Sanyo HF-A1U), from TNR Technical
(notice the pricelist posted is already outdated):
http://www.tnrtechnical.com/prismatic-rectangular-cells.html
The Sony and Panasonic batteries appear to be more $$$ (some
places sell the Sony NH14WM for UK$, or nearly US$).
I doubt the Sony battery is 10x better than the Sanyo part,
especially considering they both claim ~1400mAh capacity.
If anyone wants to conduct a comparison please post results
here :)
If you are considering purchasing an extra set (or two)
of these prismatic batteries, you'll want a charger also.
The best (only?) standalone charger I've come across, that
definitely works with all three types of battery [above]
is Sony's BC-7HT:
Ray
FINALLY!
After much frustration, and pulling out my own hair, it appears I have finally found a suitable MP3-CD player.
I started with the RCA RP2410 player, which froze every 5-6 minutes, and could only be restarted by removing the batteries. If you don't believe how bad it is, read the reviews. As of this writing, it averages 2 stars. Ouch.
Then came the Memorex MPD8507CP. Don't even get me started.
I thought I had found the one when I got the RioVolt SP250, but I made the unfortunate discovery that its battery life was about 15 minutes to 2 hours - not the 15 promised hours at all. Go look at my review of it for yourself, though.
I had given up on MP3 CD Players. Then, I found the iRiver SlimX. This is, hands down, the best one on the market (I'd know; I bought 3 before this and tried 5-6 others in stores). It comes with all needed accessories - AC Adapter, carrying case, remote, earphones, two special stick batteries for 13 hours of battery life, and an external battery pod which will hold 2 AA NiMH batteries to extend battery life by 10 hours. The instruction manual is great, and anything not found there can be found at their website, and/or technical support.
This player's slim design is ingenius, and the screen is on the remote - and remote can do anything that another CD player can. All the standard features are there, like repeat track/directory, resume, shuffle, program order (I believe that WinAmp playlists can be imported, too), options, and tons more! The screen itself packs all you need onto it in an organized manner (ID3 tags, volume sound balance, file type/bitrate, bass type, and more...even the song's lyrics, which can be done with a program at iRiver's website) and allows easy navigation of your music. You can plug any pair of headphones you want into this remote, and the sound quality will be great. The ones that come with it are surprisingly good.
What else? Tons (I know that's pretty clichéd, but bear with me)! This can handle VBRs (variable bit rates), meaning you can decrease sound quality slightly to reduce file size - very useful with data-format audio files. I have managed to fit 275 80 kbps WMA files onto a 650MB CDRW CD for over 18 hours of music! This player also supports MP3 and ASF files, and can read from CD-Rs and CD-RWs. I reccomend CD-RWs, so you can remove songs and put new ones on the disc. On an unrelated issue, the player also has firmware upgrades which add new features to the player, available for download and burning at iRiver's website. And unlike other players with 8 minute antiskip, this player allows you to turn that off, to save battery life!
Then there's the option screen. This lets you do the following: enter your name into the player's memory (in case someone steals it or it is lost, you can identify it), change the backlight contrast/brightness on the screen, the function of some of the remote's buttons, choose the audio CD's antishock length, turn several functions like resume, fade in, repeat and shuffle on and off, create your own bass setting, change the length of inactivity until the player turning itself off, language (35 of them, from Afrikaans to Ukrainian), change display of time remaining in song or time elapsed in song, fast foward on/off and speed, directory skip, sound balance between ears, auto-pause, and more.
I highly reccomend that if you buy this product, you buy a set of Palm Pilot stick-on screen protectors, cut one to the right size, and stick in onto the screen to avoid scratching. Hey, it worked for me!
To summarize, this is the greatest CD-MP3 player on the market. If you can afford it (took me a while to earn the money), this is the one for you.
Honestly.... IT ROCKS!!!
I had done alot of researching and searching around for a good all in one media player(You should too). I saw the 350 in a best buy catalog and decided to check it out. I was planning to get the slim sony model, i dunno what it was called... but when i saw all the features of the 350 slim x, i was blown away. I went to the store to see it first hand. I saw the slim 400 too but i thought it looked kinda boring, not as good as the 350 with that sharpish curve on the top and they both had almost the same features so i decided to get a 350. OMG it is awesome. People say it takes a while to load songs, it really doesnt. I have my super mp3 disc with 165 songs on it, over 16 hours of music, and it takes exactly 6 secs to load, which is great considering all the stuff it has to read. The firmware update works great. You get updates at iriver.com, the new update even puts the game snakebyte on to play on the remote which is great to kill some time in a train or bus. Theres even a program that lets u put lyrics on your songs which will display on the remote as the song progresses. I found the program a little hard to figure out... but i got it after reading the intructions at iriver.com. The radio sounds great. I would recommend getting better headphones, not that they sound bad, but they kinda look cheap. I have to agree with some other reviewers that say the remote is a bit hard to use at first. IT is for about the first 2 days but this is because the remote controls so much different things, i swear there are like over 80 different things u can tweck to suit your listening needs, u can have ur nam displayed on the remote, u can change the visuilzations(yes it has 3 differnt ones)Considering all the remote can do id say that it is really simple to use and the font size is just right. I have 20/20 vision but my mom has really bad vision and wears these thick lens glasses and she could read the remote fine too. My bro owns a new panasonic cd player and its so funny to put the slim x next to his. The slim x is literally half the thickness of the panasonic. and it is smaller and yet the slim x has so much more features on it. I got mine for 120. I bet if u shop around, u can get it cheaper, the 550 is coming out also, or it did, but it still has relatively the same features and i still think the 350 looks better than the 400 and 550. Well i hope this review helps u alot. I highly recommend this all in one player.Im sure there is nothing out there that can beat these slimx player, i think its all about thich of the 3 models u think look the best. O and some people worry about the brand name, iriver, its a great brand, they specialize in making mp3 players, maybe u have heard of the rios, iriver makes them. Well i again hope this review is helpful.
