Home > Consumer Reviews > iriver iMP50 MP3 / CD Player with Car Adapter

This probably is the best kept secret in the world of affordable MP3 CD players. Iriver is known for making premium players and this one is both PREMIUM and AFFORDABLE. The sound quality is MUCH better then the competetion and I love the large LCD display. The battery life is also amazing so the cost of ownership is really low. It has car adapter too and it comes in very handy on long road trips, my car does not have an MP3 CD Player and this is a great way to listen to your music collection on the road. Very happy would recommend it without any reservations whatsoever.

It's been almost a month since we own this player.
It'll do everything it advertise it doing. It'll play MP3 CDs, Audio CDs and so on. In its daily use, it didn't skip at all. From the home-made CDs, it seems that it prefers the blue surface over any other colour.
My biggest complaints about this player are:
1) headphones are of medium to good quality (lack of bass frequencies)
2) because of this you actually do not hear the unit distorting sound over a certain level. Use of very good headphones makes distorsion clear (as also playing the unit through a powered amplifier)
3) complete lack of LINE OUT. This would eliminate / attenuate the distorsions above, and would make it easier to hook it up to the car's stereo (via included cassette adapter)
4) misleading run time on batteries. Although I believe their claims to be correct, people would be more interested in knowing playable time with good quality MP3 CDs (like 128kbps or above). Using this format, battery time is about 2 to 3 hours (average) with 4 hours peaks (I use Duracell 1.8 amperes rechargeable batteries). The battery indicator is of almost no use, as it recomputes its bar-level after each disk spin (read after each song). So, all of a sudden you'd have 1-2 bars when previously you had 3-4. Then, complete silence...
5) ergonomics: folks who designed the placement of the buttons probably never used the layout. The close proximity of Rev and Fwd to Play / Stop is confusing, as is the similarity in shape. There's nothing helpful about taking the standard WinAmp buttons layout and arranging it in a circle, except that's probably very cheap to shape. A better idea would have been to separate buttons by function (for instance Rev / Fwd in one place and Play / Stop in another).
For the money, this is an average unit. I would not buy one again, mostly because of the sound quality if anything else. It's not bad, but leaves a lot to be desired. Strangely, in the digital era I guess we are no longer used to think in Hi-Fi terms, and this is definitely not one of those.

Pros:
-- Very Big Graphic LCD with much information display. This is not a simple LCD that can only display fixed pattern. It is a high-resolution dot matrix that can display grahics, which provides lots of flexibility.
-- Support multiple languages including Japanese and Korean. To my great surprise, it can even gracefully display Chinese!!! That¡¯s amazing! It must come with a big Memory! I strong recommend this one to Chinese Folks!
-- File systems navigation function make it very easy to locate and organize the files you wish to play, Just like using file explorer in a PC.
-- You can explore the files and use many other functions while playback. The player has stored all song information on the CDR when starting up. So it needn¡¯t read CDR when exploring the files.
-- Battery life, though not very outstanding, is very good. And the 4 level battery indicator is quite accurate and informative. (You can even adjust the threshold of the battery indicator!)
-- Best of all, the firmware is upgradeable, which means it will have more functions and can support new formats in the future.

Cons:
-- Sound quality is fair. Especially, the bass is not too good. But i can¡¯t expect more for this price.
-- Plastic body. Again it is for this price.
-- CD is loaded from the bottom. I understand it is designed in this way in order to reduce the cost. Anyway, it is not very inconvenient.
-- No AC adapter and mediocre earphone. (Find a good earphone elsewhere)
-- Some button settings are not very user-friendly. I sometimes pressed the wrong key.
On the whole, for the price I paid..., I must confess I am very satisfied and should not complain more. Strong recommended!!!!

I had a RioVolt SP90 for about 2 years now, still works great too, gave it to my brother, and i was in store to buy a new one.

After going through a ton of reviews for products, i came upon this, and at that excellent price, and all the positive comments here, i decided to choose this one.

Let me tell you, this thing is great! You get alot of options to tinker with, which are all easy to navigate thanks to the very detailed User Manual. It plays everything i've thrown at it so far, as far as Bit Rates are concerned. Nice volume too, my RioVolt didn't get very loud, this thing does though. I also upgraded to the 1.10 version firmware right away.

My only real gripes are the fact that the supplied ear buds suck (i have studio headphones i use anyway, so no big eal there). Also the car adapter doesn't come with the power plug, i wasn't planning on using the player in a car though (i have a Pioneer MP3 player in my car). Another couple minor things was the fact that the folder name doesn't scroll during playback, there's no backlight for the LCD, and you gotta load CD's in the bottom of the player is kinda wierd.

Well, in conclusion, this is WELL worth what there asking, a very nice MP3 player, no doubt. They coulda offered an AC Adapter along with it, but those can be easily purchased at Radio Shack for like $5. The cons are very little when compaired to the pros, i'm not gonna get into grave detail on the features, the supplied reviews covered all those pretty much.

This puppy deserves a 4.5 really, because there is no such thing as perfect, but then again, for this price, this is a screamer.

What is important:

The sound quality is great, even with 128kbps MP3s, sound like regular CDs, and I am a picky former musician.

Price, well gee, this price for an iRiver is great, Thanks AMAZON, and you shipped it free, but so fast!

The headphone buds sorta suck, but they *are* free, and are easily better than anything in a discount shelf. This player deserves headphones with neodymium magnets to be really appreceated!

So many features! Man alive! There are plenty of others, that cost more, and don't have anywhere near the controls and adjustments available.

Firmware upgrade went easy as pie, you need a computer with a cd burner, but doing the upgrade is as simple as putting the burned disk in the player, hitting play, and leaving it alone until it shuts off after a few seconds.

With upgrade there are 8 EQ presets, and 3 user adjustable presets that can be done with base level and crossover settings, and then the same with the treble end. Pretty nice for a cheap toy (it doesn't deserve the title cheap, really)

Battery life with MP3s ain't too bad, just not nearly as much as they claim so far that I see, but I am still testing these puppies.

I have two of them, and both run great.

Loading the disks in the bottom/back of the drive is wierd, and the cover/back is a little bit flimsy, but within the scope of the price, and I don't really see it as an issue if you take care of it, but I would recommend getting a shoulder holder or something and not using it in the pocket to be safe...

On some of the weaker MP3s the volume will be just adequate, I hoped for a little more margin, but it is very acceptable.

Four line display a big plus, this player has all of the major features of their most expensive models, just not a remote, and no illumination and a few more things.

The free cassette adapter is a real plus, and considering the price, it is acceptable though a little bit sad that there is no car or home power adapter... But this *is* their entry level product, and they did a very respectable job, if you complain, you are asking for too much!

The buttons feel perfect and the placement isn't too bad.

With bass settings higher, it is good, even without the bass boost, though a bass boost button would be nice because each recording responds to the EQ settings a little bit different. I will take the great EQ over bass boost any day, though.

Anti shock not too great with cd, but with MP3-cd, wonderful, and both have 3 settings, off, medium time, long time based upon seconds.

I was able to setup the thing within a few minutes and it was fun in the doing. The manual is really pretty good, just an occasional Grammar error.

Get this puppy as a second player, an entry level player, a nice gift to a friend, a walk around that you won't cry over too much if lost or stolen, though the thief would be getting too good a thing.

This isn't a slim thing, but it is smaller than the photo makes it look like. Totally acceptable.

A very good product for a very low price.

Thanks Amazon and iRiver. I hope that they are good with the warranty, if so, this is a no brainer!