iRiver Spinn review

Performance
The Spinn's usability entirely depends on how you hold it, as mentioned earlier. Its wheel-centric navigation does work and it is very intuitive, but as cycling back through menus requires you use either a separate physical button or an icon on the touchscreen, it's not hugely fluid and not as seamless as on the iPod touch or iRiver Clix. We'd love to see the Spinn with the Clix's D-Click system instead of the wheel.

We didn't want to disown the horizontally styled menus though, and the wheel certainly makes them fun to navigate. Like menu items, song listings and photo gallery thumbnails can be cycled through horizontally, and videos feature full motion thumbnails. Additionally, your photos can be used as background wallpapers, transforming the default grey theme from dull to divine.

A note to iRiver, though: artist, album and song info really should've been arranged vertically, as there just isn't enough space to display long words on a single line.

In terms of audio performance, the Spinn is audibly in line with Creative's Zen -- that is, excellent -- with decent sonic balance and low distortion levels. We gave Ingrid Michaelson's folksy debut Boys And Girls a blast alongside the aforementioned Zen and Cowon's audiophile-approved (and CNET.co.uk favourite) iAudio D2.

The D2 produces a clearer treble and deeper bass, though the Spinn has an ever-so-slightly preferable mid-range. A five-band equaliser is at your disposal should you want to tweak this performance.

iRiver's Plus 3 software comes bundled to manage files, and while Windows Media Player is a better content manager, Plus 3 is a decent video converter. The Spinn's AMOLED screen supports 65k colours and we found videos to be warmer and more natural-looking when compared with identical videos on Creative's LCD-sporting Zen. Its native 16:9 resolution is also ideal for watching movies.

Battery life wasn't overly impressive during our typical usage scenario tests. Out of a single full charge we got roughly 17 hours of audio (320 MP3s and some WAV), about 45 minutes of video (WMV, high quality), some photo browsing and general player navigation with the screen brightness set to medium.

Conclusion
Overall the Spinn is a decent performer, with its marvellous screen, decent audio quality and terrific audio file format support being its main assets, as well as its general ease of use.

But as the mechanical wheel only takes on half of the navigational controls and is nearly impossible to use single-handedly, we're not as keen on it as we are the Clix' D-Click interface, and it's more of a gimmick than a god-send. Frankly, the Spinn's good, but it's not our favourite player.

Edited by Nick Hide