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As you all know, I bought an iriver Lplayer a while ago. I’ve been using it for a while now, so it’s time for the second round of reviewing.

Let me start off by saying I still think it was a great buy. You can’t argue with the fact that, at 100 bucks for the 8 GB version, this thing has a lot to offer: obviously, there’s MP3 and video playback, but also Vorbis and FLAC, as well as FM radio and voice recording, all in a pretty slick design. That being said, the rest of this post is going to be mostly criticism.

USB Cable on my desk by NickD40
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Music organization. I already brought this up in my previous post. Music is organized by artist or album, not both. Moreover, it’s not in alphabetical order unless you bother to correct that manually using the bundled iriverPlus software. While it’s nice that you can impose an order, the default should be more sensible than the file system order.

iriverPlus. If you’re anything like me, you’ll want to steer clear of any bundled software that might clutter up your system. Well, the Lplayer can act as a USB mass storage device, so you don’t need iriverPlus at all. At least in theory: from time to time, your mileage may vary.

For one, the software is pretty good at transcoding pretty much any video file transparently. However, you could use a third-party solution instead, and let’s face it, the Lplayer isn’t really a video player to begin with.

One thing you absolutely need iriverPlus for, though, is firmware updates, as they don’t seem to get listed at iriver.com anymore. And that’s a real shame, because the process is flawed. Yesterday, iriverPlus informed me of the availability of version 1.03, so I gladly gave it permission to install it. It downloaded the file to the player and subsequently disconnected it, so I assumed it would then restart and upgrade. However, it just kept running the 1.02 firmware. Had I missed anything?

So I reconnected the player, browsed the file system and found the U15.HEX file under the System directory. On a total hunch, I moved the file to the player’s root directory, and lo and behold, upon restarting, it upgraded flawlessly. While I didn’t read any instruction manuals, I don’t consider this a very transparent upgrade process, so I don’t suppose it’s intentional. Moreover, if all it takes is placing the file in the root directory, why can’t they offer it as a download outside of iriverPlus?

Screen. Like I said, I don’t really consider the Lplayer a video player. I knew that when I bought it, and I neither had nor have any intention of watching stuff on it. But the 2-inch screen has a 320×240 resolution, so if you insist on watching video, you can. Here’s the showstopper though: the device is madly glossy and while the screen may be pretty crisp, in broad daylight, you can barely tell if it’s on or off. At a price like that, it’s definitely justifiable, but be warned.

Formats. Wait, didn’t I say the Lplayer supported a shitton of formats? Yes, but here’s the thing: it only supports one type of cover art, and only one playlist format, and they both pretty much suck.

I already complained about the former in my previous post. It doesn’t make sense to embed the same cover image into every track of an album. How hard could it be to read in a file called AlbumArt.jpg or whatever? And I’m sure there are utilities that will let me embed my images into the track, but I absolutely refuse to do so.

Headphone-tastic by Andrew*
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Now, as I don’t look at the screen that often, I can live without cover art. But would it kill them to support standard M3U playlists? Even my old iriver h140 could read them, and they’re basically plain text lists, so it couldn’t be too much of a burden. But instead, you need to use iriverPlus to create playlists in the proprietary PLA format.

I didn’t mention PLA as a reason for installing iriverPlus earlier, since it’s actually a pretty simple—if not retarded—playlist format. Various iriver PMPs use it, so a Google search would quickly land you at this T50 playlist specification, which is identical. The author of that page even provides a Perl implementation, so I wrote a script to traverse music folders and automatically create PLA playlists; it’s a free download.

Mobility. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: the Lplayer is tiny. And that’s a good thing. However—and this really is a matter of personal preference—, sometimes, I really wish it had some sort of clip, so I wouldn’t have to put it in my pocket or whatever. It’s not that I’m suddenly tempted to glue one on or anything, but I’m sure I’m not the only person suffering from this practical issue.

Conclusion. So, yeah, the Lplayer has its flaws, just as any other device. Whether or not it’s the player for you is a matter of priorities. I mean, you can’t expect iriver to account for every possible usage pattern; at least they give you a choice, unlike some vendors. Personally, I still love my Lplayer, and that’s all that matters to me.

Update: Actually, you don’t need iriverPlus for firmware updates either. A quick Wireshark sniff taught me that it just initiates an HTTP download of a firmware.inf file, which then contains the URL to the latest U15.HEX—as well as the latest firmware for the U10 and the Clix.