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There are plenty of menu options for something that appears to be a fairly standard MP3 player at first sight and although I won’t go into all of them in detail, I’ll cover some of the most important ones. A handy feature is that the iFP-799 has a built in clock with alarm and you can set the time to be displayed instead of a graphic equalizer. The iFP-799 does display the ID3 tags, but this can be turned off and you can also set it to display time played or the time remaining of the current track.

There are lots of play mode settings as well, from repeating all the tracks on the device, to repeating a selected track or folder. You can even make your own play lists on the device and it’s also compatible with Winamp play lists. There are plenty of equalizer settings, with a fair few presets available, along with a range of customisable options and a very powerful bass boost option, not to mention 3D sound. There is also an option for the tracks to fade in or out and you can limit the maximum volume to prevent damage to your ears.

The iFP-799 only has English menus but it can display track data in 40 different languages, so it should be able to cope with most localised characters. You can also upgrade the firmware on the iFP-799 and I would recommend that you do so if you purchase one - iRiver has a history of releasing players with a fair few problems with the early firmware, so it’s always worth being up to date.

Upgrading the firmware is very easy to do – it’s all done through the iRiver manager software and only takes a couple of minutes. The latest Alpha firmware allows for the iFP-799 to accept drag and drop copying of the tracks, but according to the iRiver website this will be slower than using the iRiver manager software.

iRiver has supplied a fair few bits in the box, a set of basic Sennheiser headphones, which are OK but not great, a line-in/out cable, a USB to mini USB 2.0 cable, a neck strap, a carrying bag and an arm strap for the carrying bag. However, the bag that shipped with the review unit didn’t line up with the controls on the player – this made it difficult to fit the player inside and hard to access the controls when you did squeeze it in.

You also get three manuals, yes you read that correctly, three manuals - one quick start manual in 15 different languages, a full manual in three languages and a software manual in three languages, oh and a software CD as well.

That takes us onto the final point, the cost. Flash based players have dropped a lot in price over the last few months and you can now pick up some pretty affordable devices. The iFP-799 will set you back £149.99 which sounds pretty reasonable for a 1GB flash player. The only problem is that you can get a hard drive based player with five times the capacity for only £20 more. It might not have as many features as the iFP-799 and having a hard drive means that it is more prone to accidental damage than a flash player, but personally I would still prefer the larger capacity.

Verdict

The iRiver iFP-799 is by far the best sounding portable audio device I have ever come across, although you need to use some good quality headphones to really hear this. The battery life is also very impressive, but the downside is that it’s not rechargeable. However, it is awkward and quirky to use, lacks solid build quality and comes with some poorly manufactured accessories. If you absolutely must have a high-capacity flash player, the iFP-799 is worth a look, but I’d recommend digging a little deeper and going for hard disk based model.

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