Photo gallery: iRiver Lplayer (8GB)If you're familiar with the terrific iRiver Clix and Clix 2, you'd be forgiven for thinking the iRiver Lplayer was its successor. The confusion arises because the cute little Lplayer looks like the Clix and sports the same D-Click interface. While the official Clix successor is actually the iRiver Spinn, these features were the two reasons we were so excited about the Lplayer in the first place.
Also known as the L Player to its friends, it's on sale now in 4GB and 8GB varieties, costing AU$119 and AU$159, respectively.
Design
As mentioned, the Lplayer rocks the popular iRiver D-Click interface, meaning instead of navigational buttons, you physically press the screen up, down, left and right to navigate menus. It's an incredibly intuitive design and won iRiver heaps of fans when it was first demonstrated within the Clix.
The Lplayer has a really solid feel without being overly weighty. In fact, it's a lot more rugged-feeling than the Clix and we're pleased. Plus, the standard mini-USB socket makes replacing USB cables a breeze should you lose the one supplied.
Next, iRiver has given the Lplayer a super-crisp 320x240-pixel screen with terrific a pixel density inside its 51mm (2-inch) construction. A 16:9 resolution or AMOLED would've given it a one-up over the third-gen iPod Nano, but videos and menus still look brilliant. Even small text is sharp and clear.
Features
Inside is support for a decent array of formats, including MP3, WMA, OGG, FLAC and ASF, but not WAV, sadly. It also appears that Audible audiobooks are not supported, though we weren't able to test this at the time of writing. Podcast fans can easily install the Podcast Ready app for automatically syncing podcasts, however.
Photos and videos are supported as well, but the process required to get them on the Lplayer — as with so many portable players — is clunky. XviD, WMV9 and MPEG-4 videos are supported at certain bit rates and resolutions, but Windows Media Player will occasionally be able to handle the conversion process. On a test machine, WMP 11 managed to convert and sync one video out of six.
iRiver bundles the iRiver Plus 3 media management PC software that makes video conversion and syncing much less troublesome. Happily, 27 of the 30 videos we selected for conversion and transfer to the Lplayer were successfully synced.
Also inside is an FM radio and broadcasts can be recorded to the Lplayer's memory. An internal microphone also enables voice recording and it's a great little microphone, with three WMA quality settings to choose from. It's sensitive and produces excellent recordings, ideal for one-on-one interviews.
Performance
The most notable feature of the Lplayer is its ease of use. Helped by its simple menus, this is a great player for technophobes and the usually gadget-fearing population. The only criticism is that you have to press the edges of the screen pretty hard to have your click recognised. It might not sound like a big deal, but after a couple of weeks it gets pretty annoying.
Once you get passed the disjointed video conversion and syncing process, the decent screen makes the process worthwhile. There's no way we'd call it a great portable video player, but it's a music player that does video pretty well. It's only a shame most video podcasts will need manually downloading, converting and syncing, as the Lplayer would make a great video podcast player.
It does, of course, make a decent music player. Sound quality is certainly good, though not as good as the Creative Zen or Apple iPod Classic. It's a slightly brighter sound with an emphasis on the treble. We're happy to say that most casual listeners will find the Lplayer's audio performance more than satisfactory, particularly if you upgrade to some decent earphones.
FLAC support and an 8GB capacity should also make the Lplayer a possible choice for audiophiles after a portable hi-fi experience. We'd still consider the Zen, though, with a theoretical limit of 64GB of flash memory, or the iPod classic with 160GB, as better choices.
Finally, battery life is underwhelming at 12 hours for audio and about three hours for video. Compared to the Cowon iAudio 7's unbelievable 60 hours, 12 just doesn't cut it.
Conclusion
iRiver's Lplayer is a great MP3 player, particularly if you love the Clix 2, but can't stretch the wallet far enough. It's cute, easy to use and it sounds good. If you like the Lplayer form factor and can afford a few more quids, check out the Clix 2 for that bigger, better screen and longer battery life. If video is your main concern, consider the Creative Zen — it has the best screen on the market by far and comes at some terrific price points.
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