Review: iRiver S10 portable audio player

iRiver has carved itself quite a name in the digital media player market, with a range of feature-rich devices.

One of its latest offerings, the S10, is a small player designed to go head-to-head with Apple's popular iPod Shuffle.

In its favour, the S10 has a number of features that the Shuffle doesn't. The most obvious of these is the screen, which displays text and images.

Here, you can view what’s playing, a built-in graphic equaliser, photos or and videos. However, the screen's low resolution limits their usefulness.

In addition to music playback – which can be of any mp3, WMA, ASF or OGG track – the iRiver S10 also has an FM radio, an audio recorder, clock and a photo slideshow feature.

Because of the player's small size, iRiver has designed a novel control system. Menus are navigated by pressing the top, bottom and sides of the screen, which gives a satisfying click when selected.

Both 1GB and 2GB versions of the player comes with iRiver’s Plus 3 music application, which searches through your computer and catalogues all the music and photos it finds. Transferring it to the S10 is a simple case of plugging it in to a USB port and selecting the media files tracks you want.

The S10 is supplied with a decent pair of headphones and outputs good, balanced sound. The headphones are combined into a necklace, which allows the player to hang like a pendant around the neck. Although this design may proffer stret cred, it actually makes it quite difficult to and operate; a longer or elasticated cord would be more useful.

Although more expensive than the iPod Shuffle, the S10 is around the same size and comes with handier features.

Vista compatible: Yes