A Well-Designed Failure!

Category: Review on iRiver P7 16GB Mp3 player

Posted by: 3-Jul

Strengths: Impressive design, new approach to touch-screen interface, affordable

Weaknesses: Slow touch-screen response time, malfunctioning PC software, no flexibility with respect to video format support, no Bluetooth or Wi-Fi connectivity, poor performance

Attractive to the eye, the iRiver P7 16GB is a portable video player that falls under the touch-screen category. The features of the P7 include a large 4.3-inch screen, voice recording, text reader, music, video, radio, and photo playback. The most attractive feature is the price tag.

The iRiver P7 comes with a gorgeous aluminium body and is small enough to fit into the pocket. iRiver has taken a new approach to the touch-screen interface, which displays the main menu screen like a magazine. The functions are laid out on a single screen and compartmentalized into an attractive arrangement of boxes. There is no specific advantage to this feature, except that it breaks away from the mundane, conventional type of menu display. The audio quality is probably the only notable feature of the player, which supports MP3, WMA, FLAC, WAV, and OGG file formats, along with album artwork and lyrics.

Having said all that, the negatives really stand out in this player. There is nothing else worth mentioning about the iRiver P7. The player is sluggish and responds very slowly, testing your patience to the maximum. Video quality is something the player can’t boast about and offers neither a drag-and-drop video format nor resolution flexibility. The voice recording feature delivers poor performance and so does the photo viewer. The PC software CD that includes three applications is the biggest failure of all, because it simply doesn’t work.

The iRiver P7 is attractive only in terms of looks and the pricing; otherwise it is a real turkey.