Reviews for iRiver PMP-120 20GB Portable Media Player

Versatile PMP but could have done more

Strengths: 1. Plays DivX, Xvid video. 2. Sound quality is good. 3. The screen is super. Photo viewing is a pleasure. 4. Appears as ext hard drive when connected to pc. Copying music/video is plain drag-n-drop

Weakness: 1. Can't play oog, flac files. 2. Controls are confusing. 3. No video recording function. 4. Preset sound settings very limited. 5. No games.

The 3.5 inch screen is bright and crisp. Ideal for photo viewing. Sound quality is good, but the preset equilizer settings are very limited. It takes some time to learn the control functions. Plays a lot of video formats with acceptable quality. Can be connect to the TV by the supplied cable. But there is no video recording function. Can be used as a text viewer with the firmware version 2.04. FM radio reception is also good. The supplied carrying case is a niece touch. Appears as ext hard drive when connected to pc. Copying music/video/data files is a plain drag-n-drop. Also supports USB OTG function. Overall its a good player. I got my PMP120 for $330 with shipping. Bang for the buck I would say.

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iRiver PMP-120 20GB Portable Media Player

Strengths: Smallish, play a variety of media, rechargeable batteries

Weakness: Not the best carrying case, controls not as intuitive and user friendly as I would like

This is an interesting device. I think it’s a little pricey, but I’m planning a trip to a very remote area with all kinds of crazy conditions. It’s the first sort of portable music player I’ve had since the am/fm tape players of way, way back.

Physically it’s a little chunky. Maybe 2 decks of cards side by side, except it shaped a little like a flattened dumbbell. It gets larger on the edges so the sides can fit into your palms. But it weighs about as much as a portable cd player, or maybe a little heavier. The screen worries me a little; its really pushed forward and “presented.” Which is good for viewing but its also going to be the first point of contact if you accidentally bump it or drop it. It kind of looks like the outermost screen might be a guard and the “real” screen is safely recessed behind that.

As far as power, it uses rechargeable. I much prefer that than having to buy a bunch of batteries for this thing. The power seems to last about 2 hours even though all the paperwork says 4. Maybe I’m doing something wrong. I haven’t actually tried it yet, but the instructions say you can even use the USB connection to your laptop (that you would normally use to transfer files) as a power source. If that’s true, then that’s pretty innovative.

It comes with a sort of powder blue purse-style case that has a strap. One nice feature of this is that it has clamps inside, so if you have it unzipped and you drop it, you have a fighting chance that maybe the purse will cushion the fall. You may notice I’ve mentioned “drop” a couple of times. As I said, it has that flat dumbbell shape so it will fit nicely in a man sized hand, but for a woman or youngster it might be a little big for one hand. Rather than the strap they provide on the “purse” I think I might have preferred either a thick piece of elastic you could wrap around the back of your hand for good carry support. Or maybe even some sort of hook or folding Velcro so that you could seal it around a belt. I don’t know…but I can’t find anything to do with the strap.

Ok, so how does it actually work? Well you can play mp3’s, video files and keep pictures on there. It even has quite a few configurable settings and keeps time. In terms of function I have stuck some video files on there with pretty specific codecs and it has played them. So that’s good. 20 gigs of space. When I bought mine I was talking to a fellow customer who didn’t think that was enough space because in his mind a DVD is 4+ gigs. And so by those standard it would only mean you could put 4 movies on there. But if you regularly download movies off the internet-the standard these days is about 700mb. Plus there is no slot to put a DVD on this thing anyway. So you would have to compress a movie to some kind of AVI, MPG, or WMA format. The quality of playback is very good. The sound in the headphones is fine, but the crazy thing about his player is that it has a speaker but the sound is EXTREMELY low. I’ve gone over the instructions and touched every button trying to get some sound. So that was horrible planning. What if you want to watch or listen to music with somebody?

Overall design is pretty good, all the little buttons and slots and the kick-stand, so you can stand it, up plus the subtle rubber on the back to keep it in place on a table top are all pretty well thought out. The only one that might present a problem is one button that can change video from the regular screen to output to a TV, if you accidentally flip this button it will seem not to work anymore, cause you’ll just have a black screen. As for the buttons to operate---I don’t know… As is the case with a lot of devices today the buttons have multiple functions. But my only problem is navigating through folders; if you press what you think is the right button, the hang time is so long you figure you must have gotten the wrong button and then if you DO press another button it gets confused and stops doing anything. So you have to turn it off and start over.

Also plays radio stations and that can be very helpful, and I wasn’t expected it. But then I got greedy and started thinking “well how hard would it have been to throw tv stations in there too.” But that’s just me. Overall I think its pretty good to have something like this for travel or even the gym. I’m at the Y about 4 days a week, and now I know why everybody is connected to headphones. It really does make a tough workout easier.

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iRiver PMP-120

TestSeek.com has collected 8 expert reviews for iRiver PMP-120 and the average expert rating is 74 of 100. The average score reflects the expert community’s view on this product. Click below and use TestSeek.com to find all ratings, product awards and conclusions.

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iRiver PMP-120 20GB

IRiver PMP-120 20GB receives an overall TopTenREVIEWS score of 2.64 out of 4.00. It is ranked the #33 hard drive MP3 player of all time. The overall rating represents an intelligent balance of features, value as a function of price to features, and a summary of reviews from a variety of sources. The TopTen REVIEWS' formula gives a picture of important consumer features, market value, and a...

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iRiver PMP-120

Movies on the move have never been this good

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