Latte Espresso Touchscreen Media Player, 16gb. My Review!

Latte looks like they want to move up the ladder in the touchscreen player market. Target.com sells this beautiful 3" touchscreen Espresso model in 8gb and 16gb versions for $120 and $150 respectively. No cutting costs on hardware features, as this player features a G-sensor, Haptic Feedback, Voice and FM Recording, and FM broadcast to any nearby FM radio. Target listed a microSD card slot, but my Espresso DID NOT have one. Target also lists a calendar app which doesn't exist on the Espresso.

The packaging is a nice change from plastic blister packs. Slide the top off to find the player. Lift out the player to find the normal contents beneath. You'll find a standard USB to mini-USB cable, some nice sounding in-canal earbuds, a user manual, warranty card, and coupon for 50 free songs. The earbuds appear to be well made and designed to compliment the Espresso's style. They come with uneven length cables to the buds which makes them easy to wrap behind your head. They also came with a nice net bag and spare set of tips. As a bonus they also sound Great. Good bass, plenty loud, external sound isolating, no audible noise, and expressive across the audio spectrum. They are on sale for $5.99 at Lattezone.com (regular $14.99) though, so don't be upset if they sound or look cheap to you. The only external control is the Power/Play/Pause/Hold slider. On the same end you'll find the USB and headphone jack. There is a small reset hole just around the corner. I love the way the Espresso looks, with a clean simple bronze body evenly framing the 3" touchscreen. The back and sides appear to be aluminum with a fine bevel between them . The front screen surround is plastic. The back is brushed, and the overall finish does a good job at not showing fingerprints. If you care about where your headphone jack is, then the Espresso has the perfect solution. The internal G-sensor knows where down is, and no matter how your rotate it the icons and apps all rotate to stay upright. The main menu is a simple array of icons. A tap takes you to either the files list for the app or right into the (radio) player. There is a nice haptic vibration to confirm your selection. Music. This Latte will play back MP3, WMA, FLAC, APE, and AAC (no DRM) files. I've tried MP3, WAV, WMA, and FLAC with success, although it wouldn't play lossless WMA files. The music app is nearly complete. Missing is the ability to advance to any part of a song. There doesn't appear to be gapless playback. I couldn't find any playlist support in the manual or on the device, but there is an option to add songs to a single favorites list. The now-playing screen lets you tap between album art, a graphic equalizer, EQ/bitrate/repeat/shuffle info, or the ID3 info including title, album, and artist. There is a large PLAY/PAUSE button, with track and volume buttons smaller and along the right side (or top in portrait view). You also get an A-B button, lyrics toggle, settings icon, and BACK (previous screen) icon. Finding a single song in a long list is a tedious process. There is no reliable way to jump to a relative position in a list, and with no swipe or fast scroll of the list the touchscreen capabilities are underutilized. Yet this music app is better than most I've seen on budget Chinese media players. I've been enjoying a shuffle though my music collection as I write this. Music gets a B+.

Video. Video format includes AVI, WMV, RM, RMVB, and FLV. Video is the only visual media to not rotate to portrait view. You can still flip the headphone end from right to left and the video will flip. I've tried WMV and AVI files on the Espresso, and although they play there is occasional frame drop. Audio will also get slighly out-of-sync. This may be no problem with videos formatted to fit the native resolution of the screen. My videos were all 480 x 272 or larger. The screen resolution is 420 x 240, but the user manual claims videos up to 800 x 480 (AVI) will play. This is no OLED screen, but videos look decent, and are certainly watchable. The resolution is slighty below what other 3" players feature, but on such a small screen the difference is not apparent. On a side note, the new (and expensive) Sony Walkman 3" t0uchscreen player has the same resolution yet worse video codec/format support. Video playback gets a B-.

Photos. You can view JPEG, BMP, and GIF images. You can rotate the screen, but images don't auto-rotate to fit the screen, nor will they reliably rotate as the screen rotates. There is a one-step zoom option. You can pan around a zoomed image, but screen response is slow and a bit unpredictable. Images looks fine on the screen though, when you can avoid glare. This app is immature, and my experience suggests it won't be updated. Photo display gets a C+.
Text. TXT files can be read. You get three font sizes, as three font colors to choose from. The text will rotate as you turn the player for landscape or horizontal views. Legibility depends on the background and font color you choose, but text is crisp on the 420 x 240 screen. Moving through a large text file isn't as easy as it could be. It should be easy enough to throw a grocery list on the player, though you can't create one on the player itself. Text gets a C+.

FM Radio. Works as expected. You can tune manually or let it autotune and select by preset stations. The presets page irritatingly doesn't let you pick a preset and jump to it, but it does let you delete or add stations easily. No RDS info. No HD radio tuning. Reception will vary depending on your headphones and orientation, as the headphone cable serves as the FM antenna. You can also record off of FM. You get two quality settings. To my ears the high quality WAV recording produced sounds just like the song did playing over the air. It take RDS to get an A from me, so FM Radio gets a B.

Voice Recording. There are two quality settings and five level settings. Recordings are in the .WAV format. I have no idea where the mic is on the Espresso but facing the screen the pickup seemed to be fine. There was noticeable 'static' in my recording. I could hear it through the headphone both while recording and playing back what I'd recorded. Not enough to make the recording useless, but something that will keep this feature of the Espresso from replacing your dictation machine. You can pause and resume while recording, and choose to save or not save a recording you've just made. You'll need to go into the music app or explorer to find an play back your recordings. Voice Recording gets a C-.

Stopwatch is your bonus app. Very basic. No lap times, and only a single timer. It displays time down to 100ths of a second. You can pause and resume a timing. There is also a reset icon. The display will rotate as the device rotates. That's it. Nothing special. C.

Explorer is what explorer does. Have a grand tour of the files you've put on your player.

Settings. Among other things the Settings option lets you turn on or off haptic response and the G-sensor. You can change or disable the backlight and power OFF timings. You'll also find your background choices here. Photo slide show timing is also here, although it would have been more useful in the Photo app.

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Summary. I strongly suggest you use a soft tipped stylus with the Espresso. It's hard to be precise enough with a fat finger as the small icon/targets demand. Otherwise I find this Latte a good value for the money. FM broadcast from a media player is very convenient, and it works well on the Espresso. You can set the frequency you want to broadcast at, and any FM radio with 30 feet or so should be able to play your music. A cheaper alternative to wireless audio than Bluetooth although not as versatile. It's not as nice a player as the Samsung P2 or P3, but you get twice as much memory capacity for the same money. Target seems to have the best price on them right now, but don't trust their description. There is NO memory slot and no calendar on the Espresso. If you can get over that, I highly recommend Latte's Espresso.

4D

Ematic 3 Inch Touchscreen Media Player

Three inch touchscreen players are coming out of the walls these days. Now Ematic gets into the game with it's own 8gb effort. Available from Walmart.com, the $79.99 price seems pretty amazing for what you get. For beginners there is the 8gb capacity. Add in a MicroSD slot for added future capacity. Now sum up the rest of the hardware features:

FM Radio and FM recording.

Built-in speaker.

Rechargeable Li-Polymer Battery.

E-Book (text) support.

Microphone for Voice Recording.

USB 2.0 Storage Device capable.

Did I mention it's a 3" touchscreen player? The package includes the expected (standard) mini USB charge/sync cable, in-canal earbuds, warranty card and user manual. There is also a small stylus and cleaning cloth.

For a touchscreen interface, Ematic's is still immature. There is no swipe action support. To scroll through lists you have to tap a down or up icon. It's clear they took the buttons from their non-touchscreen players and made graphic replicas of them on the screen. No advanced thinking here. You can select a file or function by tapping on it, but sorting through a long list of songs will be painful. Tapping the down or up arrow only moves one line at a time instead of one page at a time. If you have 500 songs on the player it may take you 250 taps to get to the one in the middle. Fortunately there is ID3 tag support, and you can sort your music by All Music, Album, Artist, Genre, Favorites, and Recordings. When you've got a song playing there is a Current Play option as well. Move to the bottom of the options and you find a Hold Recollection choice, Dir List choice, and MediaLib Update choice. I commend Ematic for being thorough here.

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Music: There is no album art support, but the Music app is otherwise complete. The Now Playing screen displays ID3 information, Volume, progression, a graphic equalizer, count (138/473), and Filename. You have buttons to access music settings, back to the file list, and main menu. You can even turn these buttons OFF if you don't want to see them at the top of the screen.

This Ematic will play MP3, WMA, WAV, and ASF files. It'll display lyrics if your songs have them (in the right format). I had no trouble playing MP3, WMA, and WAV files. The quality was surprisingly good. You get several equalizer presets including Rock, Pop, Classic, Bass, and Jazz. There is a single 5-band user equalizer you can customize. You'll find a 3D and BASS option too. I prefer my Music "Normal", but whatever you choose will be indicated on the now-playing screen. There is no gapless playback, but the delay between consecutive songs is small. Output is loud. With in-canal earplugs I found a measly "4" setting was loud enough for my old ears. This Ematic could easily cause hearing damage on it's higher settings. It should have no trouble with larger headphones. The Music app gets an A- , primarily for lack of album art support.

Video: The Ematic claims to play AVI, RM, RMVB, FLV, and WMV video files. I threw a 480 x 272 AVI file and it played fine. It also played (some of) my MP4 files and WMV videos. Don't trust the specs on the box or in the user manual. The Ematic appears to be better than they claim. I would occasionally notice a little audio/video sync error, but a tap of the Pause then Play again would clear it up. The reflective glass over the screen was the biggest flaw for video playback, as it causes glare in all but the darkest room. I'm impressed with video playback on this Ematic. For the broad codec and resolution support, as well as large 3" screen, the Ematic get's an A- for Video. It was only the glare that detracts.

Photo: The Ematic displayed any .JPG photo I threw on it. The crude UI makes zooming and rotating a photo very cumbersome, but you can at least do both. Zoom appears to be limited to 2x though. There doesn't appear to be a slide show option. No Swipe to change photos. You can have music playing while photos display, but with no automatic slide show it's pretty boring. Photos don't look as good on the LCD'd Ematic as they do an my AMOLED Cowon S9 or Iriver SPINN, but they'll impress anyone who hasn't seen an OLED display yet. Still a screen glare problem as with videos. It appears Photo display is the weakest effort on this player. Photo Display gets a C+. There is far more touchscreen potential.

FM Radio: The Radio app is straight forward and easy to use. Like every other player the FM radio requires headphones to be plugged in for it's antenna. Reception will vary with your location and the headphones you use. In the radio settings menu you set your region. Then have it auto-search for stations. Once it has located your channels they can be individually deleted from or added to. ON the radio screen there is a small record icon next to the station number. Tap it to open the record screen. There is only one quality choice (Low), and the recordings will be in WAV format. Sadly this will be a 32kbps 8KHz Mono Lossy file. For FM Music this is not acceptable, and far below the standard set by other players that can record from FM. It might suffice for talk radio, but what you'll hear from the recording will sound different from what you heard on the radio. There is no RDS support, and with such poor recording quality the radio app gets a B-.

E-Book: Text can be viewed but not edited on this Ematic. You get 3 font sizes. You get three font colors to choose from. Text can be manually paged through or will auto-page at a fixed rate. Lines are automatically wrapped to fit, and it appears tabs in the text are supported. The e-book app is better than most, so E-Book gets an A-. It would have been nice to view in portrait mode.

Voice Recording: Yes, you can record your voice with this Ematic. There is a record level setting, and I'll recommend you set in on the largest number right away. Voice is recorded in Low quality mono WAV format. There is no visible mic, so they might be using the speaker on the rear for input. I got much better results talking into the back of the player. You'll also need to be close, as it won't easily pick up noises from more than a foot or so away. It doesn't look like this could be used to record lectures. You can pause then resume a recording. You'll have to leave the recorder app to listen to your recordings. Voice recording gets a C. Average, with no exceptional value.

Extra(s?): There is only one "extra" on this Ematic, and it's a very basic stopwatch. You get one play button that will start or pause the timer. To reset it you have to exit out of the app. That's it.

Settings: In the settings menu you have a few things you can customize. You can change the timing and brightness of the backlight. You can hide or display the battery status icon. You can change between 8 different background/desktop images. You can set an auto-shutdown timer. There is also a system information option.

Build Quality: I'm 50-50 here. The earbuds that came with my Ematic are defective. The player itself seems well made and solid, if not a bit light. The User Interface is adequate, but dated. The back is what appears to be brushed aluminum, and does a decent job of not showing fingerprints. The gloss black plastic front is just the opposite. The little stylus proves valuable, as some of the targets are small on the screen. There is no external control. The only switch on one end is the Power/Hold slider. Build Quality of the Ematic gets a B. I'd have given it an A if the earbuds had worked.

Value: It has it's flaws, but this little Ematic does a far better job than earlier inexpensive touchscreen players I've reviewed. It won't compete with the Samsung P2 or P3, the Cowon S9, or the iPod Touch. For $80 its one hell of a good value though. I've been listening to mine all day, and the music is just a little sweeter knowing I only shed $80 for the privilege. Value is an A. Get one if you're considering one. Keep that receipt though, as you may need to exchange your earbuds.

4D

Samsung YP-Q2 Media Player. My Review.

Samsung's YP-Q2 surprised me when I saw it hanging from the pegboard at my local Target store. At $99.99 for an 8gb player it's a good value and a smart looking player.

Package: The Q2 comes with what appears to be Samsung's standard but proprietary USB cable and earbuds. There is also a Quick Guide and the typical warnings and registration reminders.

Looks: Strong on style, with a refined chrome edge surrounding the flat glass face, the Q2 is impressive to look at and comfortable in the hand.

User Interface: The bottom half of the front is a touch-sensitive backlit surface you'll use to maneuver from icon to icon, up and down lists, and to control volume and track selection.

External. To it's disadvantage the Q2 is short on external hard buttons. All you'll find is this power/hold/custom (∙∙∙) button on the right edge. Press the Hold end for a few seconds to turn it ON or OFF. A quick tap activates HOLD so the touchpad is deactivated. What the custom button does depends on the app you are in.

You'll find the headphone jack and data port along the bottom edge. The cable used is the same one included with Samsung's P2, P3, and T10. Any headphones with a 3.5mm plug will work, and I recommend upgrading from the included buds.

Apps. The Q2 is a versatile media player. You can play music, watch videos, enjoy your photos, listen to the radio, read text files. There's also a voice recorder and three games.

For Music you can play MP3, WMA, FLAC and OGG files. Audio quality is excellent. The Music application also gives you direct control over what is displayed on the screen and how the music is altered. You can speed up or slow down audio files without changing their pitch. You'll discover Samsung's 3.0 version of DNSe, it's custom sound processing filters, and you have four possible User defines equalizer settings. You can sort music by Artist, Albums, Songs, Genres, Playlists, Recently Added, and Most played. when in Album sort mode you can list by album names or album art. You have the required play modes including Normal, Repeat, Repeat One, and Shuffle. You can flag an A-B section for repeat. There is also Samsung's Audio Upscaler for those low bitrate files you may have. It is supposed to add back the missing bits to restore the song to it's uncompressed quality level. I haven't tried it so you'll have to take Samsung's word for now. The only negative aspects I can find is that there are no external volume or track buttons. You have to wake up the touch pad with an extra tap before you can use any of the controls. Otherwise Music play gets an A.

The Video app will play MPEG4 and WMV files. Video looks great on the 2.4" 4:3 ratio screen. Specific support includes SVI(Video : MPEG4, Audio : MP3(44.1kHz, 128kbps)), WMV, WMV9 Simple Profile, Max bitrate : 860kbps, WMA Audio Spec), Resolution : 320X240, Frame Rate : 30fps. You can't play higher resolution videos, although they can be converted by Emodio on your PC. You get brightness control from within the video app. There are also a couple of EQ presets to choose from. Videos play in landscape mode, and the touch pad controls rotate to work as expected in that orientation. Larger screens are more satisfying for movie watching, but the Q2 does a decent job with video. I wouldn't buy it for videos alone, but I'll give Video play on the Q2 a B. It would be better if it supported larger resolution files and a few more formats.

Photo support includes JPEG(Baseline) under 5MB in size. Other formats can be converted using the Emodio desktop application before installing on the Q2. At 320 x 240 Photos look good, although you won't see fine details. You can zoom and rotate images, although not as easily as you can using most touchscreen players. You get the option to turn on or off music or the FM radio from within the photo app. There is a decent slide show option. You have several transitions to choose from, and can control the delay between images. It's not the best photo app I've seen on a player, but the 2.4" screen is in the second tier. Photo display gets a B+.

The FM radio app on the Q2 is worth having and very thorough. You can auto-search for stations. Stations that support it will display RDS data when tuned to. You can flip between preset and manual tuning mode. The Q2 will record anything you can tune, and you can change the quality of recording up to 128Kbps MP3. The custom button will delete or save your current channel depending on it's current state. A nice way to build and edit your presets list. Quality of reception depends on your headphone cable as antenna. It's length and position both can effect how well stations come in. I'm impressed with the FM app on the Q2. It gets an A.

Voice Recording is handy, and the Q2 makes it easy. You get three quality levels to choose from. The highest is 128Kbps MP3. The microphone is on the back near the headphone jack. I'm impressed with the quality. I haven't tested it in a lecture, so can't speculate on it's range, but it should be great for voice memos. You get a chance to play your recording right after saving it, and can delete it from the recorder app.

Text files can be viewed on the Q2, and the text app does a decent job of displaying them. You can change the font size (custom button), rotate the text, change the background and text color, and bookmark your spot. The small screen limits how much you can see at a time, but paging through is easy. I doubt anyone will want to read a novel on their pocket player, but lists and notes are perfect excuses for a text viewer. You also get the option to play music or the FM radio from within the text app. The Q2's text app is better than most and only limited by the screen size. I'll give it an A-.

Games are included, and although they didn't interest me you might find them a decent distraction if stuck in an airport or without electricity some day. You get Bubble Smile, Bomb Bomb, and Chicken Runaway. You can find short descriptions in the owner's manual linked HERE.

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Summary: The Q2 suffers only from it's limited external buttons. All the media apps are well thought out and thorough. Playback quality and options are entertaining, and not hard to figure out. If they had included Bluetooth I'd give the Q2 a "Must Have". As it is it's a good buy. Far better than the Ipod Nano of the same capacity, and $50 cheaper. You won't be disappointed owning one.

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4D

iRiver P7. My Review

If you are looking for something that has a big screen and can play your videos then the iRiver P7 may be just what you need. With a 4.3" touchscreen and an original interface the P7 is an excellent video/photo display device. You also get ebook (TXT) display, Music play, FM radio with recording, and voice recording. There's a world clock, calculator, and calendar too. Included in the box is a Quick Guide, Software CD, Warranty booklet, Headphones with pads, Data Cable, and a stylus.
The Data Cable is proprietary. Plugged into your PC you are presented with three options: Power and Data, Power and Music, or only Power.

One nice thing about the touchscreen is that you can touch it with your finger or a stylus. A simple aluminum (I think) stylus is included. Dimensions are 0.53" thick by 4.44" wide by 2.9" tall. It weighs 174 grams or 6.1 ounces. For comparison my iPod Touch weighs 4.2 ounces and my Zune 80 weighs 4.9 ounces. It's no lightweight for sure.

Controls include a power button, volume +/-, and a menu button across the top edge. Along the right side is the headphone jack, microphone, hold slider, wrist strap connection point, microSD slot and a reset hole. The data port is under a sliding bar on the bottom edge. The back has a speaker slot, and the front has a small led charge indicator light.
UI. Turned on you are presented with "designed by iriver" as the Operating System loads up. No icons on this touchscreen. The home page is like a contemporary magazine contents page. Each application has it's own section of the screen. Music displays the album art of the last or current song playing. Photo is the last one you viewed. If there was art with the movie you last watched it'll display in the video section. You'll see the last radio channel listened to, and in the document section you get a snippet of the last text you viewed. I have to admit that I was not overly impressed the first time I turned on the P7. It's not obvious what to do, but touching any area on the screen invariably opens an application. Touch the album cover art and you'll find yourself in the music application. The upper most level gives you the choice of Now Playing, Quick List, All Music, Artists, Genres, "My Playlist", and "My Rating" to sort your music by. Quick list is basically a playlist you can create as you browse through your songs.

The Music App is straight forward and competent. Supported formats include MP3(8-320kbps), WMA(8-320kbps), OGG(Q-Q10), FLAC, and WAV. Music sounds great. The options along the bottom of the Now Playing screen include back (to music list), RWD, Pause/Play, FFwd, AB tagging, Bookmark, and Goto (bookmarks). You get a roughly 1.375" square album art image, a dynamic waveform graphic, the Title, EQ option, Shuffle/Repeat access, and the option to rate (0-5 stars) the song. A side menu gives you access to SRS WOW HD settings, User EQ settings, and Fade-in ON/OFF. If your song has lyrics attached a swipe across the album art will reveal them. A long swipe across the width of the screen will slide the art over to show a short section of the song list to scroll through and choose from. Lastly there is a standard M in the top right to take you to the home menu from any page. Video playback is also right to the point and excellent. Formats include AVI, WMV, MP4, RM.RV, DAT/MPG, 3GP/K3G, and FLV. The video app remembers where you are within any video previously played. You can stretch video to fill the whole screen. The expected skip back/forward and play/pause are there. You also get the same bookmarking options the music app had. The submenu has Ratio, Video Option, and Subtitles, with Scan Speed and Play mode under Video Option. I've tested MP4, AVI, and WMV files on my P7. All played fine. The only negative thing I can find about video play on the P7 is related to the screen technology used. The AMOLED screen of the iRiver SPINN can be viewed from any angle without color distortion. The P7's LCD screen discolors when viewed from any low angle, and dims a little when viewed from the side or above. It's also a little washed out compared to the same video played on any AMOLED screened player.

Photos are beautiful, although again not as stunning as they appear off the AMOLED screens of the Cowon S9 or iRiver SPINN. The P7 will rotate your photos to best fit the screen automatically, or you can rotate them yourself. Zoom and pan to 1/2, 1/3, or 1/4 of the photo on the screen, but not fluidly. Photo scaling and sliding is nothing to be proud of but it does work. You get to control the timing of your slide show, and can sort photos within folders to specify a subset you might want to slide show through. The 4.3" screen certainly improves the experience as it's close to the size of dedicated digital photo frames. You may not mind looking at your photos on a 2" screen ( of an Ipod Nano for example), but once you see them at 4.3" you won't want to go back. Recording is straight forward and versatile. Tap the red circle on the home screen and you're in the recording app. The submenu lets you pick from 3 quality settings including 64, 96, and 128Kbps WMA. The mic is on the right end of the P7, and I got the best recording if I talked directly into it or at least tilted the P7 so the right end was toward me. Once you have a recording or two you can play them directly from the recording app. Your list of recordings is revealed if you slide the screen from right to left.

The calculator appears better than I normally find on Korean made PMPs. This one has memory functions, square root, and percentage. Using it is a little confusing, however. One simple way to find the Golden Ratio is to take the square root of 5, divide it by two, then add one. This calculator won't let me enter "5 √ ÷ 2 = + 1 =". The math can be done, but not without employing the memory to save intermediate values. It doesn't seem to cache current results for the next calculation. Fix this, iRiver!Radio. Nothing special here. The P7 FM Radio app won't bother doing anything until you plug in some headphones (antenna), and actually reminds you to. Once plugged in, you can manually tune or have the P7 automatically scan for and create a preset list of available channels. No RDS. You can record from FM, and choose from three different quality settings. There is no scheduled record. Competent, but not extraordinary.

Text. A nice option for a big screened player. You can put any TXT file on the P7 and view it there. The screen will report how many pages of text there is in the file. It will auto-scroll the text for you, using a variable rate you can set in the submenu. You've got three sizes of fonts to choose from, also in the submenu. You can also pick from several languages. There is a bookmarking option, and once you have set at least one bookmark in a file you can then pick from a list of the bookmarked positions to go to. There is no font or background color option. The black/gray text on the white background is easy enough to read though. My old eyes appreciate the large font option.

Conclusions? At $199 for a 16gb model I think the P7 is a bargain. It has a microSD slot that supports at least 8gb cards (largest I had to try). It's not ideal as a pocketable player, but would be an excellent media device to keep in your briefcase or purse. It's an excellent way to show off photos and videos. You can sync media with it using Windows Media Player or the included Jetaudio app, or just drag and drop media files directly onto it. It played everything I put on it except a protected WMV file that was included with a BluRay movie. There is a rumor that it supports video output, but I have found no concrete proof of this.

I've you've been looking for a large screened player, this is a good one. It's likely to get better with firmware updates. I'm keeping mine.

4D

Firmware version 1.15 LINK (English). IRiver LINK.

Latte iVu Review. 8gb MP3 Player with FM Transmitter and Camera

A great player to take in your car. With it's own 12DC car charger and FM broadcast ability, the Latte iVu is optimized to take along with you.

First of all, the iVu from Latte is NOT a touchscreen player. Although I like touchscreen players for their simpler interfaces (in most cases) the iVu uses buttons on the top edge for control of it's functions, and once you figure out their uses the interface is a refreshing diversion as the screen stays free from fingerprints.From left to right the controls along the top edge include ESC/HOLD, Vol trigger, Menu, Back and Forward, and on the right end there is a Power/Play/Pause button.The front face reveals a 3" TFT screen with 400 x 240 pixel resolution (WQVGA), and left/right speakers on the ends. While not quite the 480 x 272 screens that are common on many players now, the iVu's screen looks great and will play videos in wide screen format up to 800 x 400 AVI.Although they are not great for anything with bass tracks, the little speakers do make it convenient to check out the features that include audio. The iVu will play music, videos, and FM radio. It will display photos and text. It has a stopwatch and calendar. The features that stand out though are rare on pocket media players. The iVu has a built-in camera that will take 2 megapixel photos, will record video with sound, and can output it's audio wirelessly to any nearby FM radio. I'm a big fan of bluetooth audio, but there is always an additional investment required to take advantage of bluetooth. Chances are great your car already has an FM radio, and any other portable media player you own that has it's own FM radio in it can receive and play the audio from the iVu. The left end of the iVu is where you'll find the 3.5mm headphone jack and standard mini USB port. No proprietary cable required. Included with the iVu is a 12DC to USB car adapter which will keep your iVu charged in your car, as well as a USB charging/data cable and typical earbud headphones. Music. You can play MP3, WMA, OGG, FLAC, ACC, and APE files with the iVu. Included was a FLAC file and an MP3 file to demonstrate binaural 3D sound. I'm not sure where you'll find any other examples to listen to, but the 3D demo shows off an amazing potential. Music sounded decent through the included earbuds, better through a better headset, and decent using FM to my desktop FM radio. Music will continue to play outside the music app, but a press of the play/pause button will take you instantly back into it. You can listen while viewing photos or text. There doesn't seem to be any cover art support, but you have a few display options within the music app. I'll give Music an A for the broad range of formats supported and output options.

Video. Supported video formats include AVI, RM, RMVB, and FLV. Maximum frame rate is 30fps. I dropped a couple 480x272 AVI videos on it that played fine on my Samsung P2 and although the video looked great the sound was out of sync with the image. The documentation suggest the videos up to 800x400AVI and 720x480RMVB will play, but until I can verify I'm reserving my judgement over the iVu's video ability. Radio. The radio includes manual search as well as auto preset search. You can add or delete channels from the presets. You can switch between stereo and mono output. You can pick from China, Japan, USA, Euro, and Campus Radio areas. Lastly you can record from the radio channel you are tuned to. With the headphones plugged in to serve as an antenna, the iVu found all my local stations reliably. When I tried to record from the radio the iVu locked up on me and would not respond to any inputs. Fortunately there is a on/off slide switch that serves as a hard OFF or reset and got the iVu working again. The Radio is satisfactory, but it'll take a firmware update to get the record feature working. Photos. The iVu wouldn't display any variable bitrate JPGs I put on it, but did display all other photos I tried. JPG, BMP, and GIFs are supported. There is a slide show feature which can be set to 2, 5, or 8 second between images. You can rotate images right or left in 90 degree steps. Zooming will work with photos that start out larger than the screen's native resolution. Images look crisp with the iVu's 155.5 dots_per_inch resolution. With all features working I have to give the photo app an A. eBook: Simple .TXT files are supported. You can set bookmarks, load a bookmark, and delete bookmarks associated with any file. There are Small, Mid, and Big font sizes to choose from. You can also choose from White, Green, or Black text color. There is even a Browse mode that will automatically page through your ebook at a chosen rate. It's not as graphically pleasing as the text viewer on the Samsung P2, but enough features are there to make it a reasonable application for perusing text when needed. I'll give the ebook reader a B+. Digital Camera: The iVu's lens is tiny and doesn't let in much light. With good light (outdoors in sunlight) it will take decent images although they don't match up to those I took with my original 2mp digital camera. You can set the captured resolution from 320 x 240 to 1600 x 1200. There are three backlight levels to choose from. You get Normal, Mono, Sepia, Negative, Solar1 and Solar2 effects to choose from. You can also switch between Auto and Night BW(?) settings. If they had put a better lens on the iVu the camera option might have been of value. I couldn't get a sharp picture no matter the setting. Digital Camera gets a D. Don't buy the iVu for this feature.

Digital Video: Video suffers the same fate. The tiny lens restricts the light coming into the iVu and results in grainy images. Action helps a little to hide the blur, but the iVu is no replacement for a standalone video camera. Even the assorted Flip Video cameras are better with significantly better lenses. Video gets a C, but only because the defects are less noticable in video than in still photos.

Voice Recorder: I have no idea where the microphone is on the iVu, but it must have one since it did record my voice when prompted to. You can choose between 32 kbps and 64 kbps WAV files for recording format. You can pause and resume within a single record session. The mic doesn't pick up very well, so keep the iVu close and don't expect to use it for lecture recording. Nothing more to say as it's a common feature and works. C for average. Other players have better mics, better formats, and better interfaces for their recording apps.

User Interface: It's not a touchscreen, but for a button controlled device the iVu is fairly straightforward. The fwd/back toggle does most of the work. ESC steps you out of sub menus. Menu and Play/Pause buttons often work the same for a selection option. You tap Vol then have a second or two to use the fwd/back buttons to raise or lower volume. I've played with more efficient UIs and some less efficient ones. The iVu's controls serve their purpose and feel as though they'll last.

Conclusion: I picked this 8gb iVu up at Target.com for $130 plus shipping and tax. With it's FM transmitter and camera it stands alone at that price point. Yet compared to other 8gb players with 3" screens seems a fair value. The 8gb Samsung P2 is $149 when on sale for comparison. If you're looking for a player to keep in your car, this is the one you should get.

4D