Listening to ‘light’ music was never so much fun, literally. For a player so small, the iRiver lplayer is really a bang for the buck. The iRiver lplayer is in a sense the successor of the old line of iRiver Clix. Though smaller in size, it offers the same huge amount of its features as its ancestors.

First on the ergonomics, its really good considering the size of the player. The screen is relatively huge. A 2-inch TFT display with a 320 x 240 resolution. The controls are mostly the same as the iRiver Clix. As a rule, there is a dedicated button for the volume and the hold option.

The interface of the iRiver lplayer is not as flashy as the Clix but in some ways, it really suits the player. There are two themes to choose from: one with dot matrix text style and small icons and the other, large icons and standard text. Playlists are the most effective in this player, especially the sorting part.

The iRiver lplayer supports most of the audio formats including OGG and FLAC. It also comes with SRS Wow HD effects and 7 EQ presets. If you are a podcast listener, you can bookmark those stations, that’s definitely a plus point. It also supports most of the popular image formats. File browser is a must today in all MP3 players and this certainly has one.

A standard 3.5mm audio jack Hi-speed USB port for transfer of files is present. The battery is decent, 12 hours of audio playback and 3.5 hours of video playback.

Overall, the photo, video and the image quality are awesome for an MP3 player. I simply love the bass on this player, it really makes you look at the audio in an appreciative form. The iRiver lplayer is a really good MP3 player when compared to the others on the market.

The iRiver lplayer is available for $110 (4GB) and $160 (8GB). It is compatible with Microsoft Windows 2000, Windows XP and the Vista.