H10 quick first impression at CES

[kwhilden]

I was at CES for the home audio portion, and had a coulpe of hours to go browse around the main halls. Lo and Behold, I found a display from M$ entitled Plays For Suckers, with about 50 different MP3 players underneath. This included one of every color H10! I liked the gunmetal gray unit best. One of them had enough battery juice left to work, so I turned it on and started messing about. The interface was simple enough to figure out in a couple of minutes. On the front face, top left button navigates 'up menu', top right button activates the currently selected item. The scroll bar is self explanatory. Unfortunately, I have big fingers (people wince when I shake their hand sometimes), and control of the scroll pad was not so great. I had a damn hard time selecting the right item, as it would either move three items at once, or not at all. I got kind of frustrated and tried using my pinkie finger to control the pad, which seemed to work better except for a slight reduction in dexterity. Perhaps with more time on the unit, I could learn how to control the scroll a little better, but maybe not... Definitely try before ou buy if you have big fingers. Maybe there is a sensitivity setting in the control panel, which could fix this problem.

Overall, I liked the visual impression, with the unit looking very professional. But the screen should be larger, as it seemed proportionally too small compared to the width of the player. The brightness/sharpness of the H10 also seemed not as good as my H320. I'm personally quite glad that I have an H320, because I LOVE file tree browsing, but that's likely because I learned computers when a GUI was something that stuck to your shoe.

I didn't really have time to dig through the menus and try all the features. Wish I would have known that my plane was delayed three hours and I would have spent more time. But I did get to have an 'out of body' experience at the Von Schweikert - Dartzeel - Jena Labs room at T.H.E. Show (next to Alexis Park CES). If anyone reading this is still at CES, go check out the best damn audio equipment on the Planet. Lots of extremely jaded audiophiles were shaking their heads in disbelief and laughing with glee. Tell the guy who looks like Vin Diesel you heard about it from me, and maybe he'll play one of your tracks.

Kevin Whilden