iRiver Clix First Impressions

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My trusty old Rio Carbon died the other day when it fell out of its little carrying case and was abruptly introduced to the cold, harsh reality of a concrete parking garage floor. RIP, Rio.

I needed a replacement (otherwise I can't bear spending time at the gym) but I wasn't going to buy one of these and I also wasn't going to wait for one of these because my requirements are basically "very small," "plays WMAs," and "must be in-stores now."

The Clix meets those requirements and is pretty cute, too. It just arrived and my first impressions (without actually using it yet – how hard can it be to screw up "playing music"?!?):

  • They definitely learnt from Apple in the packaging department; 100% white cardboard all around. There's nary a flesh-eating plastic moulded case in sight. Great.
  • It is small and white and cute. Not that it really matters; it's not like I'm showing it off as a fashion accessory or anything. But I'll go ahead and call that a positive :-). Great.
  • It comes with a CD but why would I want to use it? I plugged the USB cable into my Vista RC2 machine with Windows Media Player 11 and it worked flawlessly. Great.
  • The USB cable is not the mini-plug style, but rather the flat-and-skinny style. I used to be able to use the same cable to sync / charge my phone as my Rio, but now I will have to take two cables with me. Not great.
  • I dragged over a bunch of albums from my media library and it's happily syncing. Great.

Well, that's about it so far; as long as it can actually play the music while I'm in the gym, it will have met my needs. If not, I'll let you know more later...