What kinda iMP do you have? How long? Experiences?

[j235]

I've had my iMP 350 since August of 2002.

I bought it for $150 from CompUSA (who had it going for $180 IIRC). I lied and told them that Target had it going for $150 and they pricematched down. What a nice company!

The backlight on the remote stopped working in February of 2003 (after the cord hung on desks at school a few too many times). It was an easy fix, but I never bothered to buy solder :P

Then in September of 2003, the unspeakable happens. It stops working!! As a last ditch effort to try to get it working, I email iRiver america's support not expecting much. To my surprise they offer to replace it for free!
Now THAT's customer support

The batteries dropped to about 8 hours playtime, so I started using the external battery pack with some NIMH rechargables around November.

I bought an iHP-120 last week, so the slimx's gonna go to a friend. I'll miss it but we must move on.

I wouldn't have bought the iHP-120 if iriver hadn't given me such good support with my SlimX. Other companies need to realize that customer support should be their top priority.


Share some of your experiences with your iMP

[Lsportline43]

I bought my iMP-550 from Compuplus.com also. I got in November 2003. I love the player and I want to keep it forever. All the reliablity problems scare me though. I was going to sell my iMP-550 and get an iHP-120. I thought about it for a little and then decided that I still wanted to keep the iMP-550 anyways. Now I am going to buy an extended warranty just to make me sleep better at night. Well that is my story with my iMP-550. Thanks for reading.

[riverrock]

I've got an iMP 400 (Firmware 1.80) for just over a year now and I use it almost every day.

I think its great!

Since I figured out how to get 18-20 CDs on one 700MB CD-R(W) its even better!

WMA 9 96KBPS VBR 2 PASS encoding through EAC - check it out - sounds fantastic even with the MX-300 earbuds!

I really do not care about OGG support- WMA 9 as above gives better quality and smaller files, the best of both worlds.

thats my 2 (euro) cents!

riverrock

edited 24.03.05

[(eX)]

i've had my IMP-400 for a year and it had some serious problems but everything's fine now i'm wondering about the new imp-1100 but no info about the player is out yet , or i'll just wait for a dvd-cd-mp3 player ... i don't think it will be soon , but it's a good investment

the imp-400's backlight stopped working and as i'm far from any replacement stores ( i'm in Bulgaria , got mine from a web site ( forgot which was ) and it was delivered in Ireland and my parents brought it here ) so i didn't get a replacement but after 1 or 2 months the backlight appeared again and it's fine now

the new problem is that it won't read cd's when the player is in vertical position as i wear it now in my jacket pocket , but the thing is that it won't read only when vertical on it's back ( on the even side ) , but when i put it on the front ( where the open button is ) everything is ok ! that's one of the stragnest things i've seen

[SRGilbert]

Hey great thread! I seem to be the most veteran of you all. I've had my iMP-250 (Iriver2) since September 2001. Living in the states, I had to have it imported from Korea through MPwiz.com for the bargain price of $225 shipped.

It's worked flawlessly since day one, and has only gotten better though some really great FW updates. I always said that the only thing that make me put it away is if Iriver made a harddrive player. Needless to say, I now have an iHP-120, but there are things about the Iriver2 I miss. One cool "feature" of the CD players was the 10 disc position memory. This was great if you like extended long running programs (like radio shows, ect.) If you kept them on different discs, it would start where you left off. If you were halfway though an hour long program, you could switch to a music disc, and then switch back the the program where you left off. No way to do that with the iHP though.

As mp3/CD players go, I still think the iMP-250 is the best. The controls are perfectly laid out for use in a car, the LCD on the player is invaluable, LCD remote can be handy, and it just looks very cool!

Too bad Iriver discontinued these, apart from it's larger size (and smaller buffer) compared to recent models, in my opinion, it's still their most innovative unit.

What's not to love?

[dh2]

Got an iMP-550 for a couple of days now.
Great thing, thin and elegant.

Just love it.

i use a cd-rw with packet write. Gives me about 530 mb of space.

GREAT TINY THING!!!

[seadzz]

I like the remote. Why didnt they just make the LCD a bit bigger and use that remote concept with the ihp-1xx.....no that would have been to easy.

Lets bugger up the design and put all the wires on one end!!

Slightly brainless designers at IrIver.

sdz

[SRGilbert]

Originally Posted by seadzz

I like the remote. Why didnt they just make the LCD a bit bigger and use that remote concept with the ihp-1xx.....no that would have been to easy.

Lets bugger up the design and put all the wires on one end!!

Slightly brainless designers at IrIver.

sdz

Well, keep in mind that the 250's was the first LCD remote of it's kind. Having a fully functional 2 line remote was pretty revolutionary at the time! Honestly though, having the headphone jack on the other end isn't really optimal either, and frankly, I hardly ever used it. When I did use it, I had it velcro'd to my dash board in my car so I could read the display without looking down at the player on it's stand, I didn't use the buttons or the jack in this case. The controls on the top of the 250 are very intuitive for one-handed operation as they are pretty distinctive and very tactile. Also, no buttons on the sides of the player!

[vinnie97]

I've had my iMP-350 since August 2002 as well (also bought it from CompUSA but I think the price was much closer to $200 ). It's still working to this day. My only complaints are it's difficulty in reading my ultra-speed cd-rw discs (burnt @ 24X) and the poor shock protection which still isn't suitable enough for jogging.

I purchased the RioVolt SP100 (which I think was based on the imp100) sometime in 2001, I believe, and while I did get much use out of it, the workmanship and build quality seemed a bit cheaper than the 350 and it's lid mechanism became quite problematic (was difficult to open as the switch became almost 100% non-functional). I blame it on the aging of cheap plastic materials. The shock protection was also a joke.

[SRGilbert]

Originally Posted by vinnie97

I've had my iMP-350 since August 2002.......my only complaints are it's difficulty in reading my ultra-speed cd-rw discs (burnt @ 24X) and the poor shock protection which still isn't suitable enough for jogging.

It's been well known for quite a while that you will get much quicker boot-up time and much better tracking if you only use standard CD-r's and always burn at no more than 2x (I always did mine at 1X) and always use a single session (no packet writing, no multi-session, ect.) I know it seems wasteful, but CD-r's are so cheap anyway and your player will start up almost instantly, and should skip less. Try it, you'll see!

[JiPi]

Eh-hrum! Don't burn you CDs at 1X just yet! I got news for you. My iMP-350 reads CD-RW written at 24x just fine and it boots up just as fast as it does with CD-R burnt at 32X. So I don't know if it's the fact that you iMP-350 is an older model than mine, or whatever, but I really don't think you should burn your CDs at 1X, unless you really feel the need to, or have lots of time to waste.

[cpchan]

I have had my IMP-400 since Sept,, 2003 (bought it mainly because of the promised Ogg Vorbis support). I must say that this is by far the best portable that I ever had. I use it everyday (upgraded to the latest firmware) for at least 4 hours and I haven't had any problems with it. I am a happy Iriver customer.

Charles

[vinnie97]

SRGilbert, I *do* use cd-r's as well. Notice I didn't complain about the loading time for cd-r's, only cd-rw's. Also, I don't utilize packet writing or multiple sessions either.

Regarding cd-r's, I burn them @ max speed (usually 48-52X) and the IMP has little to no difficulty in reading said discs. In fact, recent tests have proven that burning at such slow speeds on modern burners/discs actually creates discs that are more error-ridden than discs burnt at a higher speed (say, at least 24X or 32X).

Jipi, I've only tested with one 24X cd-rw disc (which I believe is manufactured by Infodisc) that came bundled with my Lite-On burner. I need to track down some Verbatim discs, which come highly recommended as far as quality is concerned.

[jtwn]

Got my imp-550 in last December. Has to be one of the best things ive ever bought + I returned Sony's DNE-1 - their flagship pcdp which is unbelievably inferior to the 550. Cant wait for the imp-1100 though...wooot

[FlameGrilled]

Former iMP-250 and SP-250 user, shortly to be over when some poor git comes to collect the promised 250 (hmm, getting 75% of what i paid for it aint bad considering it's been run ragged).

To date, i've owned & used an abused 5 different SP250 and iMP-250 decks, and used them in just about every feasible out-of-spec usage you could probably imagine (including a door stop once or twice - i kid you not).

No.5 has been, relatively speaking, treated gently (although others would say i toture iMP's into a long and painful existence) as this was my personal toy (the other four were purchased to use as on-demand compressed audio decks to replace some stationary MD units which plagued my existence when working in broadcasting).

So, the fact the first four died from spindle failures (look up how CD burners die, where a spindle failure equates to the motor bearings getting shot and therefore excessive vibration is caused leading to problematic read instances that get progressively worse) is entirely down to my abuse of the decks, and no reflect to state there was any lack of quality to the 250 models build.

let's face it, if there had been no super-duper reliable 250, they wouldn't have had a test bed to produce a super slimline equiv called the iMP-350 would they..??

So, yes i guess i am a veteran too of iMP's (it would be around the same time as SRGilbert got his, i guess when i got my first pair of SP's).

Unless i have removed it, out of friustration with a past bit of aggro, my anti-shock test report for the 250 may still be posted at iRiver International (it's easy to find, it's the only one in the Supporters Column if it exists still).

One of my notable experiences was the remote. Being left-handed, the remote isn't exactly wonderfully leftie-suited, but it's more usable than many such devices - so i gotta be kinda and honest in saying it's definately not lacking function and ease of use.

I can take or leave having a display on the remote (SP250 had none, iMP-250 remote had the display on it) - but part of my long-term use of the personal 250 deck involved it being mounted on a custom built non-isolated holder on a nice rigid-framed (i.e. super-stiff race-grade) bike frame with the remote clipped (via the control cables) for access and use.

That should be a recipe for anti-shock hell, but we are talking 250 decks here - not lesser unworthy other-make decks of the generation :P

Antishock hell, with an iMP-250, never..!!!!!

FG - Formely the uncool one, now just a bit scorched.... :P

[terrymx]

i have the imp350 for 9 months, then i sold it to my friend for $25. purchased the imp400 and is using it to this day.

i must say both the imp350 adn imp400 sound quality is the same, they use the same chip. i would rather just buy the imp350 for $100 and use the extra money for a headphone instead of spending $160 on the imp400. but i have to say the imp400 is a big improvement over the imp350 in all other areas (except the ergonomic buttons of its remote control). the thing is reenforced and look like it will last longer than the imp350, it can take falls better. the belt pouch is very useful and eliminate teh cumbersome of having to put the cd player in your own jeans pocket. the car kit is very good quality for freebees. with multisession (who need it for an mp3 cd anyway) turned off, it load and start playing music in 7-8 seconds, and thats a 4x memorex i'm using. i couldnt ask more from this cd player other than to improve its sound quality. well actaully i'm 90% satisfied, but it could sound smoother and the treble tend to be sharp on some of my headphones.

[FlameGrilled]

it seems my old Kat Test of the iMP-250 still exists over at iRiver.. in case someone wants to make a pointer to to it for the iMP topics.

iMP-250, a no-nonense deck you never really appreciate fully til you stop using it. I wouldn't go back to it and ditch the D-NE1 now, but if it were still here and the NE1 got trashed, the 250 would be put back into service without a doubt or question of wrecked sanity.

FG

[Chiminou]

I got my iMP-550 in November 2004 and I LOVE IT!
I owned a few sony cd/mp3 players and returned them ALL.. even the most expensives ones did not compare to the imp-550!!!

The 550 has the best sound, it sounds warm and the adjustable EQ is the best i've seen in all new cd/mp3 players on the market! PLUS all the features... the 550 has it all! i heard the imp-900 is as great and has even more headroom for the EQ adjustments... it'll be my next purchase.

[NPswimdude500]

Originally Posted by j235

I've had my iMP 350 since August of 2002.

I bought it for $150 from CompUSA (who had it going for $180 IIRC). I lied and told them that Target had it going for $150 and they pricematched down. What a nice company!

The backlight on the remote stopped working in February of 2003 (after the cord hung on desks at school a few too many times). It was an easy fix, but I never bothered to buy solder :P

Then in September of 2003, the unspeakable happens. It stops working!! As a last ditch effort to try to get it working, I email iRiver america's support not expecting much. To my surprise they offer to replace it for free!
Now THAT's customer support

The batteries dropped to about 8 hours playtime, so I started using the external battery pack with some NIMH rechargables around November.

I bought an iHP-120 last week, so the slimx's gonna go to a friend. I'll miss it but we must move on.

I wouldn't have bought the iHP-120 if iriver hadn't given me such good support with my SlimX. Other companies need to realize that customer support should be their top priority.


Share some of your experiences with your iMP

almoast exactly the reason i bought my iHP-120, cuz the support was so good with my iMP-350. I still have it, since buying it in January of 02

EDIT: but i got mine for $100 (rebates)

[sanjay]

so who here has an iriver chromeX iMP-150

/me puts his hand up "I DO I DO"

shame its still in melbourne. there should be more interest for CDPs i reckon, they still offer the cheapest megabyte/dollar ratio.