Anybody own a Chrome-X??

2002-07-02 07:11:02

I've been considering purchasing an mp3-cd player and like the I-River Chrome-X. After trying out and returning a few Sony's and an Expanium (gotta love Wally-World's liberal return policy!), the I-River looks like the only player that has a multi-line display, good battery life, a backlight, upgradable firmware, and quality for the price (99 USD). The Slim-X is nice but I am not interested in it due to the lack of on-board controls, and who cares if it's only 16mm wide? Not worth the extra $75 dollars in my book. (By the way, the Sony players are extremely dissapointing for the price, and the Expanium is a relic in my book).

Does anybody own the Chrome-X player, and if so, what are your impressions of it? Also, will it play 99 minute CD-R media? The extra 170MB translates into an hour or two more of music at the --aps setting, so I am curious (and hopeful) as to whether it will play back those discs. Any comments are greatly appreciated!

Maybe the I-River will be the first player to support Vorbis (through a firmware upgrade)?

Anybody own a Chrome-X??

Reply #1 – 2002-07-02 07:36:43

I own a ChromeX. My impressions of it are generally positive. For a $99 USD player, you really can't ask for much more than what's offered. Have you read the online reviews of this product?

http://gear.ign.com/articles/358/358439p1.html
http://hardware.dmusic.com/reviews/chromex/
http://alfmeister.home.attbi.com/iRiverIMP...P150Review.html

If you want to compare the features of the ChromeX with those of the other MP3 / CD players out there, feel free to take a look at this page for details at a glance. Although that product comparison chart lists the maximum CD capacity at 700 MB for the iRiver MP3 / CD players, I have read numerous posts from the users at the MP3.com hardware message boards, indicating that 90 minute and 99 minute CD-R media do work in these devices.

If you have any other specific questions about the ChromeX, feel free to ask...

Anybody own a Chrome-X??

Reply #2 – 2002-07-02 11:05:32

For $99 the Chrome-X seems like a no-brainer. If the Chrome-X had been available at the time I probably would have bought that instead of my Slim-X (yeah, I'm cheap like that). I had a RioVolt SP-90 for several months and was mostly pleased, but it had occasionally some annoying problems with VBRs and it wasn't officially firmware upgradeable so there was always a fear of killing it with a bad firmware upgrade.  iRiver seems cool, and I think they will add AAC and/or OGG support, they really seem to care about the quality of their products. Don't listen to me, I'm biased, I got an email today from iRiver saying I won a one of those iRiver shoulderbags because I registered on their site.