Meet our arms: they’re throughout iRiver’s newest DAB-ready MP3 and video participant, the B30 — a shiny 16GB participant with digital radio inbuilt.
It is a handsome participant, in all probability meaty sufficient to crush a medium to massive insect. However be warned: it appears like a touchscreen participant, nevertheless it is not. As an alternative, it has touch-sensitive buttons. Epic meh.
It has haptic suggestions (fast, little vibrations behind the management pad) for each button press, nevertheless, and this, mixed with a transparent menu system, makes looking music and video very nice.
As for format assist, we had the B30 enjoying AAC, MP3, WMA, WAV, WMA Lossless, APE, FLAC and OGG audio codecs, and DivX, Xvid, H.264, MPEG-4 (easy profile) and WMV video information. DRM-free iTunes Plus downloads are additionally supported. Our reference video information appeared okay, however considerably higher screens exist in the marketplace for watching video, resembling Cowon’s S9. Additionally, the extremely shiny display made viewing in daylight a ache within the eyeballs.
The excellent news is that sound high quality was wonderful by way of our reference Denon AH-D5000 headphones, with clear, highly effective sound and deep bass. There is a heap of equaliser settings too, together with a customized EQ and SRS WOW. Album artwork will be displayed (see a photograph over the web page), however there isn’t any gapless playback choice, so it is no use for followers of dwell albums.
No less than in our workplace, DAB radio reception was, to be brutally sincere, an infinite pile of crap. Nevertheless it can be good, as long as you get a very good sign (and the B30 has a telescopic aerial to assist). Radio stations are introduced on-screen in an inventory, and each DAB, FM and certainly your personal voice will be recorded on to the participant’s reminiscence. Observe that for voice, there is a built-in microphone.
Different options, resembling playback of SWF Flash video games, a built-in speaker, subtitles for movies, a built-in microSD slot for increasing the inner reminiscence, and having the ability to seize stills from movies, make this a totally featured participant. It simply lacks the superior, fairly interfaces granted to gamers from Sony or Apple.
It is good worth although. Superior MP3 Gamers shall be promoting the 8GB mannequin for round £139, and the 16GB mannequin for round £179, though these costs could change earlier than the B30 goes on sale round mid-August.
We have a bunch of hands-on photographs over the subsequent few pages and could have a full evaluation for you quickly.
