3 April 2007

By: Dan Frincu, Hardware Editor
Iriver X20 Uses NAND Memory
The SSD fashion is taking new grounds
The introduction of Solid State Storage (SSD) disks using non-volatile NAND memory modules has brought an entire change to the hard drive industry, they have immediately accepted the idea and went along with the development and production of drives based on this new technology, many saying that in a matter of just a couple of years, the SSD drives will replace current spinning platters hard drives.But this isn't the only line of interest for NAND memory modules, they have long been used in Flash memory storage devices and MP3 Players, but one company above other made a big splash in the industry with their hard drive-based music and video players. I'm talking about Apple with their iPod series of products, which have a phenomenal success, while using hard drives with moving components in them for some of their high capacity players. Now it's time for NAND to make it back to the market and Iriver is doing just that by introducing the X20 portable media player. It is available in 2GB, 4GB and 8GB-sized memory, plus it has the option of connecting a microSD card to it for further storage extension and ease of use. It basically has all of the things you could want in a media player, as it can playback files in MP3, WMA, OGG audio format, as well as MPEG4 and WMV for video and JPEG pictures.Another feature is the QVGA 320x240 pixel TFT display and the fact that you aren't limited to listening to music on the headphones, the player also has integrated speakers. Other functions include FM radio, alarm clock, watch and voice recorder with MP3 compression of the recorded file. The battery is rechargeable through the USB 2.0 port, which is also used for connecting to the PC, and can last as long as 22 hours on audio playback mode and up to 6 hours for video playback. The product is available from $145 for the 2GB model and up to $275 for the 8GB model. It is also available in Romania at the official distributor for this line of products, Skin.
Iriver X20 www.iriver.com
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