iRiver keeps fighting the useless fight against the iPod, this time trying to convince us that its 1GB T50 is as cool as the shuffle. How you could think otherwise is beyond me, what with its little knob navigation thing and tiny 1.01-inch screen. Like everything else iRiver, it does support nerd-friendly audio formats like OGG (and MP3 and WMA, natch). Other useful gems include FM radio support and voice recording via its built-in microphone. A single AAA battery powers the T50—available in both black and white, mind you—for about 52 straight hours. Not bad, but non-Apple DAPs these days seem about as sensible as investing in the ice telegraph wires. That, and it just looks dumb.
Product Page [iRiver via Akihabara News]
>non-Apple DAPs these days seem about as sensible as investing in the ice telegraph wires.
That and reading Crunchgear. Wow, this place is as dead as iRiver’s sales.
The iPod Shuffle is probably one of the worst DAPs I’ve ever encountered, so this new DAP from iRiver is a welcome relief. It can play more formats and has a screen! Looks very cool, too. So long as Apple continues to lock stuff up with their DRM scheme and proprietary audio codecs and hyper-inflated prices, I’ll always be steering clear of them.
Wow, what a vacuous ‘preview’, entirely without merit.
“non-Apple DAPs these days seem about as sensible as investing in the ice telegraph wires”
Clearly Nicholas Deleon knows very little about DAPs; maybe he should stick to fawning over his Apple products from now on … or preferably be made redundant from Crunch Gear? Hope springs eternal.
After five months, I’d think you could get around to fixing the factual errors above. (Hint: it’s a color screen.) I get more features, more formats, long (user-replaceable) battery life… and I can turn the DRM off. Call me a nerd if you wish, but I have the better product.