Home > Consumer Reviews > iriver SlimX iMP-350 CD/MP3 Player with Ultraslim Design

There are well over 100 reviews (mostly positive)
for the iRiver iMP-350 (SlimX) on Amazon alone,
so I won't waste too much space writing yet another
comprehensive review ...

Suffice to say, this is a great piece of gear, with
all the bells and whistles one expects from a MP3-CD
player (and more). A real gadget-freak's "dream".
As another review noted, you'd need at least IQ 90 to
figure out all the features (particularly learning
the remote).

The only quibbles I have are: [1] bundled earbuds are
very poor (solution: buy better ones); [2] embarrasing
'carrying pouch' (solution: 3rd-party CD portable case);
[3] remote feels a bit fragile/light (better treat this
with kid gloves, since you lost most advanced functions
if you lose/break the remote); [4] remote LCD is *small*
(you need to hold it really close to your face to make
out some of the tiniest text and icons, the LCD is very
high-res/crisp but only about 1" across -- postage stamp
sized!), [5] clunky auxillary battery pack/tube (although
it's nice that iRiver includes this for no extra cost).

I had a difficult time finding places to buy the special
rectangular NiMH batteries which the SlimX uses, not to
mention a source for an external charger. I figured the
following might be helpful for others in the same boat:

iRiver iMP-350/SlimX uses 2x NiMH "prismatic" (gumstick)
batteries of 1400mAh capacity each. These are the batts
which you install into the flip doors under where the CD
spins. Apparently, these batteries are commonly used by
portable MiniDisc units from Sony, Panasonic, etc. The
following batteries should be equivalent:

- Sanyo HF-A1U
- Sony NH-14WM
- Panasonic RP-BP140H

The lowest price I've found so far [on the net, anyway]
is US$/battery (Sanyo HF-A1U), from TNR Technical
(notice the pricelist posted is already outdated):

http://www.tnrtechnical.com/prismatic-rectangular-cells.html

The Sony and Panasonic batteries appear to be more $$$ (some
places sell the Sony NH14WM for UK$, or nearly US$).
I doubt the Sony battery is 10x better than the Sanyo part,
especially considering they both claim ~1400mAh capacity.
If anyone wants to conduct a comparison please post results
here :)

If you are considering purchasing an extra set (or two)
of these prismatic batteries, you'll want a charger also.
The best (only?) standalone charger I've come across, that
definitely works with all three types of battery [above]
is Sony's BC-7HT:

Ray

After much frustration, and pulling out my own hair, it appears I have finally found a suitable MP3-CD player.

I started with the RCA RP2410 player, which froze every 5-6 minutes, and could only be restarted by removing the batteries. If you don't believe how bad it is, read the reviews. As of this writing, it averages 2 stars. Ouch.

Then came the Memorex MPD8507CP. Don't even get me started.

I thought I had found the one when I got the RioVolt SP250, but I made the unfortunate discovery that its battery life was about 15 minutes to 2 hours - not the 15 promised hours at all. Go look at my review of it for yourself, though.

I had given up on MP3 CD Players. Then, I found the iRiver SlimX. This is, hands down, the best one on the market (I'd know; I bought 3 before this and tried 5-6 others in stores). It comes with all needed accessories - AC Adapter, carrying case, remote, earphones, two special stick batteries for 13 hours of battery life, and an external battery pod which will hold 2 AA NiMH batteries to extend battery life by 10 hours. The instruction manual is great, and anything not found there can be found at their website, and/or technical support.

This player's slim design is ingenius, and the screen is on the remote - and remote can do anything that another CD player can. All the standard features are there, like repeat track/directory, resume, shuffle, program order (I believe that WinAmp playlists can be imported, too), options, and tons more! The screen itself packs all you need onto it in an organized manner (ID3 tags, volume sound balance, file type/bitrate, bass type, and more...even the song's lyrics, which can be done with a program at iRiver's website) and allows easy navigation of your music. You can plug any pair of headphones you want into this remote, and the sound quality will be great. The ones that come with it are surprisingly good.

What else? Tons (I know that's pretty clichéd, but bear with me)! This can handle VBRs (variable bit rates), meaning you can decrease sound quality slightly to reduce file size - very useful with data-format audio files. I have managed to fit 275 80 kbps WMA files onto a 650MB CDRW CD for over 18 hours of music! This player also supports MP3 and ASF files, and can read from CD-Rs and CD-RWs. I reccomend CD-RWs, so you can remove songs and put new ones on the disc. On an unrelated issue, the player also has firmware upgrades which add new features to the player, available for download and burning at iRiver's website. And unlike other players with 8 minute antiskip, this player allows you to turn that off, to save battery life!

Then there's the option screen. This lets you do the following: enter your name into the player's memory (in case someone steals it or it is lost, you can identify it), change the backlight contrast/brightness on the screen, the function of some of the remote's buttons, choose the audio CD's antishock length, turn several functions like resume, fade in, repeat and shuffle on and off, create your own bass setting, change the length of inactivity until the player turning itself off, language (35 of them, from Afrikaans to Ukrainian), change display of time remaining in song or time elapsed in song, fast foward on/off and speed, directory skip, sound balance between ears, auto-pause, and more.

I highly reccomend that if you buy this product, you buy a set of Palm Pilot stick-on screen protectors, cut one to the right size, and stick in onto the screen to avoid scratching. Hey, it worked for me!

To summarize, this is the greatest CD-MP3 player on the market. If you can afford it (took me a while to earn the money), this is the one for you.

I had done alot of researching and searching around for a good all in one media player(You should too). I saw the 350 in a best buy catalog and decided to check it out. I was planning to get the slim sony model, i dunno what it was called... but when i saw all the features of the 350 slim x, i was blown away. I went to the store to see it first hand. I saw the slim 400 too but i thought it looked kinda boring, not as good as the 350 with that sharpish curve on the top and they both had almost the same features so i decided to get a 350. OMG it is awesome. People say it takes a while to load songs, it really doesnt. I have my super mp3 disc with 165 songs on it, over 16 hours of music, and it takes exactly 6 secs to load, which is great considering all the stuff it has to read. The firmware update works great. You get updates at iriver.com, the new update even puts the game snakebyte on to play on the remote which is great to kill some time in a train or bus. Theres even a program that lets u put lyrics on your songs which will display on the remote as the song progresses. I found the program a little hard to figure out... but i got it after reading the intructions at iriver.com. The radio sounds great. I would recommend getting better headphones, not that they sound bad, but they kinda look cheap. I have to agree with some other reviewers that say the remote is a bit hard to use at first. IT is for about the first 2 days but this is because the remote controls so much different things, i swear there are like over 80 different things u can tweck to suit your listening needs, u can have ur nam displayed on the remote, u can change the visuilzations(yes it has 3 differnt ones)Considering all the remote can do id say that it is really simple to use and the font size is just right. I have 20/20 vision but my mom has really bad vision and wears these thick lens glasses and she could read the remote fine too. My bro owns a new panasonic cd player and its so funny to put the slim x next to his. The slim x is literally half the thickness of the panasonic. and it is smaller and yet the slim x has so much more features on it. I got mine for 120. I bet if u shop around, u can get it cheaper, the 550 is coming out also, or it did, but it still has relatively the same features and i still think the 350 looks better than the 400 and 550. Well i hope this review helps u alot. I highly recommend this all in one player.Im sure there is nothing out there that can beat these slimx player, i think its all about thich of the 3 models u think look the best. O and some people worry about the brand name, iriver, its a great brand, they specialize in making mp3 players, maybe u have heard of the rios, iriver makes them. Well i again hope this review is helpful.

There are well over 100 reviews (mostly positive)
for the iRiver iMP-350 (SlimX) on Amazon alone,
so I won't waste too much space writing yet another
comprehensive review ...

Suffice to say, this is a great piece of gear, with
all the bells and whistles one expects from a MP3-CD
player (and more). A real gadget-freak's "wet dream".
As another review noted, you'd need at least IQ 90 to
figure out all the features (particularly learning
the remote).

The only quibbles I have are: [1] bundled earbuds are
very poor (solution: buy better ones); [2] embarrasing
'carrying pouch' (solution: 3rd-party CD portable case);
[3] remote feels a bit fragile/light (better treat this
with kid gloves, since you lost most advanced functions
if you lose/break the remote); [4] remote LCD is *small*
(you need to hold it really close to your face to make
out some of the tiniest text and icons, the LCD is very
high-res/crisp but only about 1" across -- postage stamp
sized!), [5] clunky auxillary battery pack/tube (although
it's nice that iRiver includes this for no extra cost).

I had a difficult time finding places to buy the special
rectangular NiMH batteries which the SlimX uses, not to
mention a source for an external charger. I figured the
following might be helpful for others in the same boat:

iRiver iMP-350/SlimX uses 2x NiMH "prismatic" (gumstick)
batteries of 1400mAh capacity each. These are the batts
which you install into the flip doors under where the CD
spins. Apparently, these batteries are commonly used by
portable MiniDisc units from Sony, Panasonic, etc. The
following batteries should be equivalent:

- Sanyo HF-A1U
- Sony NH-14WM
- Panasonic RP-BP140H...

The Sony and Panasonic batteries appear to be more $$$ ...
I doubt the Sony battery is 10x better than the Sanyo part,
especially considering they both claim ~1400mAh capacity.
If anyone wants to conduct a comparison please post results
here :)

If you are considering purchasing an extra set (or two)
of these prismatic batteries, you'll want a charger also.
The best (only?) standalone charger I've come across, that
definitely works with all three types of battery [above]
is Sony's BC-7HT...

Ray

Let's face it: there is today a dizzying array of cd players, MP3 players, and combination cd/MP3 players available on the market, and most of these are a lot cheaper than the SlimX. So why spend the money for this comparatively pricey unit? First of all, the bottom line when evaluating any music player should be sound quality, and this machine is first-rate in this respect. A tragedy in recent years (in my opinion)has been that manufacturers have diminished the output levels of portable units for the sake of being able to boast of longer playback time per set of batteries. They have figured (rightly, I guess) that most users are not all that concerned about sound quality.
By contrast, the Slim X provides stronger output than just about all other current players available, and this does translate to improved sound. Furthermore, one of its best features is a customizable equalizer that allows users to set their spectrum of bass/treble boost. This also includes a series of preset EQ settings that are optimized for classical, jazz, rock, dance, metal, etc. (there is, of course, also a "neutral" setting).

One of the principal annoyances of portable disc players generally is that they invariably skip when users engage in vigorous body movements (e.g., running). The SlimX includes different antiskip settings, including one for *eight minute* antiskip. This is sufficient to ensure that the machine virtually never skips, period.

Operation of the SlimX is handled through a small and well-designed remote control. The many (!) various functions available to users are mediated through "firmware" that is upgradable through iRiver's web site (upgrading requires a small bit of knowledge about downloading files and burning-to-cdr or cd-rw disc). This firmware feature is important, since the people at iRiver have shown an admirable willingness to respond to user feedback/complaints in the form of regularly improved firmware. For example, up until the most recent firmware upgrades, the SlimX was not capable of providing "gapless" playback for cd's that feature nonstop music (for example, dj mixes). Version 2.10 of the firmware solved this problem.

The SlimX actually has many features related to MP3 tracklisting/sequencing, track ID text/tags, etc., that many owners will never bother to use. Those options are available, however, to those for whom such features are important.

The design of the SlimX unit itself is slender and elegant. It's not as tiny, obviously, as some current MP3 players, but for a disc-based unit it's about as "slim" and light as is possible.

Are there flaws? Yes, a few. For example, the small size of the remote makes it difficult to read the display in some cases (especially for those of us who are over forty :-) ). The power supply options, while good, are not ideal. The unit comes with a set of two rechargable batteries that don't really last all that long (I find that they last about 3-4 hours and that they require more time than this to recharge). I suppose this is the "dark side" of the unit's strong musical output, so I shouldn't complain. Thankfully, there is a small attachment in which users can load two AA batteries, and this extends playback time considerably. This is useful, but ergonomically a bit clumsy.

The provided FM tuner is good, but some of us (in the older generation?) still would like to listen to AM radio for sports, news, etc., and this option is not available. Making the tuner feature both AM and FM would have seemed a fairly simple addition.

As is ALWAYS the case with portable players, the tiny headphones provided are not very good. To make use of the excellent sound quality available through the SlimX users are advised to invest in a good quality headset. My own earbuds of choice are the pricey but absolutely incredible Etymotic-4P's. These buds come at a steep price, but provide years of fantastic sound quality.

Given the complexity of the many functions available and the potential confusion involved in navigating through the many user menus (this involves distinguishing "long button pushes" from short ones, etc., and for me required a certain learning curve), it's important to add that there is a pretty good user manual included with the SlimX. It's a good idea NOT to lose this booklet!

Overall, this is the best cd/mp3 disc player I've encountered, and I've been very happy with it. It was/is not the cheapest machine out there, but for me, the user flexibility, long antishock time, and (especially) the high sonic quality have rendered the price issue unimportant.