Performance
We got 21 hours of continuous MP3 music playback from a complete charge of the player's battery. This is about average and certainly acceptable. Music quality gets top marks all round. Bass reproduction is powerful on the bass-heavy track Slam by Pendulum, yet mid-range and high-end tones are clear and well pronounced on the classical gem Naturaleza Muerta performed by Sarah Brightman.
Unsurprisingly, the supplied headphones are -- as stock headphones often tend to be -- a bit rubbish. You'll want to source a nicer pair if you care at all about music quality.
The high-resolution 56mm (2.2-inch) colour LCD screen is bright and comfortable to look at. Photos are automatically displayed horizontally and are incredibly crisp. Videos look fantastic too, providing they're encoded at a decent bit rate, such as 768Kbps MPEG-4 at 25 frames per second.
The FM radio has a very fast auto seek function and it found all the stations in our local area. It also has space for 20 saved frequencies and reception quality is excellent.
For managing your media, iRiver includes its software. It's very simple to use, with a clean layout and a pleasant silver colour scheme. Transferring 1.5GB of MP3s to the X20 using the software took just under 8 minutes on our office computer. This is very quick and beats Samsung's competing YP-T9 by over 10 minutes.
The software takes care of your music, videos, photos and even text files. Videos are automatically converted into the appropriate MPEG-4 format within the software. The whole process is a one-click exercise that requires little experience, though it took our office computer over half an hour to convert a 30-minute video file.
Conclusion
With its stylish design, a great range of features and user-friendly software, the X20's got magnificent potential. Despite the mechanical scroll wheel taking a bit of getting used to, the size and quality of the screen makes this an adorable little MP3 player. Sony's NW-A808 player, however, offers comparable screen quality and video playback, but in a sleeker, tidier case and with significantly better battery life.
If you're looking for a lightweight MP3 player and feel you could be quite partial to the occasional video clip, don't overlook the iRiver X20 when making your decision.
Supplier: Advanced MP3Players.com
Edited by Jason Jenkins
Additional editing by Kate Macefield
iPhone App 
Newsletters 
RSS Feeds 
Send Us Tips
User reviews2
Add your review
newtonseye 9 November 2007
Good: Mini Movies, Great Sound
Bad: Cheap feel,White Wheel
Comment: When the box arrived, I really wondered if there was anything in it.
This is so light, I worry a bit about loosing it.
It is, however very cool and the sound is GREAT.
I filled it up with two movies and 1100 wmas and mp3s.
That I dragged and dropped into the correct folders in the player.
One of the things that I always find a bit annoying is that if you want to watch your own Movies, that you paid hard eared money for, that you cant easily convert them into something that you can use on your PMP ( personal media player), searching around I found
http://sourceforge.net/projects/iriverter
Which converts quite nicely, if not aways in the language you expected :)
So far I like it and its not so small that I have trouble pressing buttons, that were designed for tiny people 25% my size.
Pictures, movies mp3s wmas, oogs.. overall I say great, now lets have one with 16GB as you cant add more than a 2Gb Sd card, with the current firmware.. who knows they may possibly update it to take the higher capacity cards at some point.
RICHARD Moffat 5 May 2007
Good: WMA format, not an IPOD, sound quality (with Sennheiser headphones), ease of use
Bad: No AC charger supplied with player. Not able to find a maufacturer website that has any info on product and accessories!
Comment: Needed to replace my battered RIO Carbon. Thought I would get a Creative Zen but product felt clunky and not very durable. Passing through Hong Kong found this gem. Easy to use, small enough to slip into a pocket and sound quality (albeit with non-Iriver headphones) excellent. WMA file format ideal as straight transfer from RIO. Does not feel as if it has the same tough quality as the RIO, but nonetheless a worthy successor. Extra 3Gb space welcome. Great value for money exceptional. The 8Gb model in Hong Kong cost under £110.
See all 2 user reviews