If there's one thing you learn quickly at CES, it's that the floor is for suckers. But the press lunch was quite nice, thanks!
We met with iRiver at the Wynn hotel and got to see some working prototypes of new players, such as the pictured Clix 2. The player will be available in 2-, 4-, and 8-gig configurations and probably released in second quarter of this year. The Clix, with its unique D-click navigation system, was good, but iRiver definitely refined the system: It's much slimmer depth-wise, has a standard USB port, mass storage support for people not using Windows, and a nifty animated background for those of us who like eye candy. You still navigate by pressing the sides of the player, a nice alternative from having to hit directional pads.
The W10 was also pretty impressive. It comes in the same memory capacities but features a touch screen, wi-fi with locale services (we saw a working map of Vegas), and a mini-SD slot for future expansion. The W10 is slated for a second or third quarter release and runs Windows CE, giving it a lot of potential.
Click the jump for pictures of the W10 and write-ups of some other iRiver players.
The W10, featuring Jim Jones:
The S10, a tiny 1 / 2 GB flash player with screen:
The iRiver S7, a screenless flash player that may or may not come to the States. Has good volume, though:
Side view of the Clix2: much slimmer than the original:
[...] Reminiscent of their partnership with Sansa to make a special Rhapsody flavored e200R player, Rhapsody announced iRiver will put out two flash players that work with Rhapsody DNA (meaning better compatibility and faster speeds). The Clix 2 will be one, and the other will be an unspecified device that will allow downloads over Wi-Fi to the player (almost certainly the W10 we reported on earlier) [...]