IRIVER SlimX iMP-350 Personal CD Player

Before the days of inexpensive hard drive based MP3 players, there was a line of MP3 players that were CD based. Since was the far more economical way of storing music because of instead of paying $500 for a gig, I could pay half that for roughly 700 Megs multiplied by however many CDs I could burn. I had virtually unlimited space at a fraction of the cost. So after reading many reviews, I went with the iRiver SlimX CD+ MP3 player. It served me well for nearly 5 years. I recently put it into retirement after getting my Creative Zen Sleek.

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Hardware
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The iRiver SlimX CD+ MP3 player is a very slim CD player. It is much thinner than most CD players and the diameter is not much larger. This is a very compact unit. This brings me to my first minor gripe: the lid s not spring latched so when you unlock the lid, you have to lift it. It would be nice if it popped open like most other CD players.

Another piece of hardware is the wired remote. This is a fantastic little gizmo, which has the drawback of being too important. But first, let me say that the screen is very small, but always readable. it shows the battery life, album, song, EQ setting, etc. The screen glows a light blue for a few seconds and like everything else, this is adjustable in the menu. The top and bottom buttons are the usual play, fast forward, stop etc. Additionally, there is a lock slider to keep you from accidentally switching tracks or shutting it off while at the gym. When I say the remote is too important it's because many critical features are on the remote so if you lose it or break it, you have only rudimentary control on the player itself.

As if that wasn't enough, the iRiver SlimX CD+ MP3 player has a separate external battery pack that plugs into the side of the player. This is in case the internal rechargeables run out of juice. I can't tell you how many times I've used this battery pack for the long commute where I forgot to charge the internals.

On the subject of batteries, the player has 2 internal rechargeables. These are skinny and tiny and proprietary. On a full charge, the batteries were good for well over 12 hours, bu after 5 years of daily use, they dropped to a respectable 7. I have no complaints with this because most batteries would have been long dead with the kind of daily 2 hour workout I gave it for 5 years. When the batteries did get low, I'd simply charge them with the included AC adapter. One of the nice touches that helped prolong the battery life was the ability to fully discharge and then charge the batteries. For those who don't know, regular rechargeable batteries have a memory. That is, if you don't discharge them fully before recharging them, they will only discharge down to that point. This is, of course, a simplification and takes many times of doing this before the battery loses life, but you get the idea. The point is, the makers took this into consideration and allowed for easy, proper battery care.

It should be noted that the battery life is drastically reduced by playing standard CDs. I suspect this is because those discs are constantly spinning where ones burned to CD are spin only enough to load the data into the buffer. Regardless, if you want this as just a CD player, it may not be the best choice.

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Sound quality
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Included with every single portable player since the dawn of time, are earbuds. Not to be different, iRiver included a pair with the iRiver SlimX CD+ MP3 player. These are surprisingly good and I still use them today for other applications. The bass is solid and the mids smooth. Although the player is not able to really crank the sound, I've never heard distortion at peak volumes. These aren't going to compare to studio headphones, but they are fine for the casual user.

One of the strong features that was rather new at the time, was the ability to play WMA files as well as MP3 files. It supports all flavors of compression ratios and promptly displays them in the readout. I've used all levels of compression to fit audiobooks on one CD and I've not noticed any quality degradation beyond what I would expect from the compression. This unit sounded nice the entire time I used it.

And now the major gripe: it has no support for DRM. DRM is digital rights management and allows for copy-protected songs. So if you download audiobooks from the library, this baby won't play them. This is simply because you burn the files to CD and play them. If it was able to play DRM protected files, any CD player could. But if you don't use protected music, then this is a non-issue.

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Software
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There is no included software simply because there is no concept of synchronizing like there is with today's players. The software you use is your favorite CD burning software. Simply burn the files to CD in whatever directory structure you want and pop them in. You're good to go.

While there is no syncing by today's definition, the player does read ID3 tags so if you want to mark up your music that way, then the player will read them. Other than that, there are no real playlists. This was another slight drawback in that I had to arrange all my music on CDs that were similar. So if I ever wanted to shuffle pop music, I had to make sure it and only it was on the CD. Not a big deal, but it did get tiresome re-burning CDs after getting a new album.

As well, don't expect to be able to hook this up to devices that support it such as the Xbox 360. There is no USB compatibility because it doesn't need it. Just be warned that if you're expecting this kind of advanced functionality it isn't there.

On the plus side, the firmware of the player is upgradeable. They released several updates that fixed bugs, extended battery life and added features. I'm sure this software is in maintenance mode right now, but it's nice that they can fix something if it pops up.

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Conclusion
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This style of MP3 player is looking a bit long in the tooth since most players are multi-gig for about the same price. But if you're looking for a cheap player and can find this one used, this is a solid workhorse with proven battery life, advanced features and excellent sound. This is a solid unit through and through.

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