iRiver PMP-140 personal media player

Posted by T3 Online on Thu 17 Mar 2005

A media player inspired by Professor Rubik

Yes, it does look like a games machine, doesn't it? But this is iRiver's first stab at a portable media player. The styling is reasonably attractive, but it can't hide the fact that this is quite a bulky device.

Unlike other portable media gizmos we've seen, this one can't record video; it only plays it back. However, you can use it to view BMP and JPEG pictures, and to listen to MP3 and WMA tunes (although not protected ones). It also has a built-in FM tuner and an MP3 encoder. Pictures can even be transferred directly to the device from a limited number of digital cameras.

The user interface is up to the company's usual standard. Full marks for consistency, but when you're talking about being consistently awful, it's time for a rethink. Negotiating the menus is like cracking a cryptic riddle that would tax even Garry Kasparov. This player is meant to provide entertainment, but surely not of the puzzle-solving kind.

On the plus side, videos do look great on the bright and crisp screen, but the PMP-140 is quite fussy about what files it'll play. Despite the fact that it supports DivX 3, 4 and 5, we couldn't get any of our selection to play with the audio and video in sync without first processing the file with the supplied software. Unfortunately, fixing a full movie takes around half an hour of processing time, and it didn't solve the problem with all videos.

With a better user interface and more thought gone into how video is handled, this could have been an interesting portable media player, but it's just far too frustrating to use and much too expensive at its current price to recommend.