pwnt.be

I barely use my old iriver H140 anymore. Don’t get me wrong: it’s an awesome product and it’s certainly served me well. But I’ve grown tired of it, and about the only times I listen to music on the go is when I have my laptop handy. Thus, being an audiophile, I urgently need a new gadget.

I’ve been doing some digging and iriver’s Lplayer looks decent enough. The 4 GB version sells at €99, which is just about what I’m willing to pay. It certainly seems like a fair price, considering that the butt-ugly iPod nano—we’ve been over this—will set you back a whopping €139 and the Cowon iAudio D2 is priced around €150 for whatever reason.

iriver Lplayer

Frankly, I still don’t give a damn about the video capabilities, but the UI looks spiffy enough. Evidently, like we’ve come to expect from iriver, aside from MP3, the device supports Vorbis and FLAC, though the latter seems a bit overkill on a 4 GB flash drive. It’s also nice to see that they continue to embrace FM radio, which I do still use, occasionally. Finally, according to its manual, the Lplayer is a proper external mass-storage device, a feature I certainly appreciate in my H140.

PC Magazine recently ran a review of the Lplayer and they’re mostly enthusiastic about it. My only gripe with the device so far would have to be its appearance. In the pictures I’ve seen so far, it looked reasonably nice, but not extremely elegant. I’m not sure which color I’d get either.

So, any thoughts? Except for getting an iPod, I’m open to suggestions.

Update: Or maybe I could just wait until they disclose pricing information on the sexy Spinn. It might well be worth the extra investment.