Wednesday, September 24, 2008

iriver Spinn Unboxing and Preview

iriver Spinn arrived at my door step the other day directly from Korea. I'm so surprise that the box is so small. I'm even surprise when I see the Spinn itself. It's so petite and cool.

I bought from ebay seller k-gadget. If you want one you can search ebay. Last time I saw there is 2 units available. k-gadget is a nice person and provides good service.

This are the specs of Spinn:

  • 3.2-inch WQVGA (480x272) AMOLED touchscreen with haptic feedback (more on this later)
  • Spinn Wheeler
  • Bluetooth 2.0 for A2DP earphones
  • DMB, DAB and FM tuners with recording function
  • Video: MPEG4 SP, WMV9 SP, XVID
  • SWF (flash lite 2.1)
  • Audio: MP3, WMA, OGG, FLAC, ASF
  • Photo: JPEG
  • Voice recording
  • Text viewer
  • Battery: 24 hour audio, 5 hour video
  • Capacity: 4 or 8 GB
  • Expansion Slot: NONE


Here comes the unboxing:

After removing the outer box and bubble wrap reveals a small square box.

Specs detailed

Inside is a round container made of brushed metal top and thick transparent plastic base


Brushed metal top.

Underside of the container. Detail specs of Spinn including weight.

Container with metal top removed revealing a sealed pack. Inside the pack is USB cable, earphones... (more on that later)

Top: Accessories pack. Bottom left: Spinn inside container. Bottom right: Metal cover.

Tada! The Spinn! with it's back facing. (serial no. photoshoped)

Here comes the beautiful. May I present you the Spinn!

Spinn with glass-like plastic container in the background

Accessory pack opened.

Multi-language connected Quick-start guide.

Under the quick-start guide are the USB cable and earphones.

A mini CD and a warranty booklet are at the bottom of accessory pack

Both the USB cable and earphones are included with a strap with smiley face.

Warranty booklet with mini CD.

Propriety USB cable with smiley cable wrap.

Spinn in it's glory!

Top View. Left to right: mic, back button, hold button, spin wheel at the end.

Bottom view: Propriety USB cable port, 3.5mm audio


Left side of Spinn. Volume and power button.

Back of Spinn. Reset hole on upper left.

Comparison shot with Cowon D2.



Sound
As music is the main function of Spinn (as well as all irivers) , I have a high expectation in this department. Overall, Spinn doesn't dissapoint at all but still there is a 'gap' from Cowon D2. The clarity is not as good as D2. Fortunately, there is custom EQ and whole lot a options. Further tweaking proves the Spinn is capable of producing very good sound. There are also SRS options but ony the EQ or SRS can be selected at any one time. In fact that's a bless as the SRS is all bull-shit and you don't want to enable it. Spinn is a very good music player and produce good bass and treble(with tweaking of course) but still can't compete with Cowon D2 (although it is unfair to compare it to D2 as D2 has one of the best DAC on board).


Video
Video experience on Spinn is good. The screen has a rich color and the resolution of 480x272 on 3" screen is sharp. As stated in the specs, Spinn supports MPEG4 SP and WMV9 SP. I haven't really tried it but I loaded one XVID video with 720x384 and it plays it albeit very laggy with skipped frames. So I convert it into 480x270 XVID and it plays nicely. Its screen is nice and sufficient for watching videos/movies without subtitle (you know, too small to read).


Interface
The interface is teamed as an anolog radio dial which you can adjust by turning the spin knob. To select just click the knob. This is something new. Of course touch screen is on board as well, as without touch screen nowdays is like 'you're from last decade'. Haptic feedback is included. It means it gives you a feedback by vibrating when you touch-select something on the screen. It is disabled to save energy when battery is running low, well-thought of. Another nice touch is to delete a file, you just drag it into a 'trash can', no menu here.


Extras
FM radio with recording and voice recording is included. Spinn can read txt files as well. Viewing photo is OK but wasted space on both left and right most of the time as Spinn employed a wide screen. One more selling features is the Spinn is equipped with bluetooth! It is only used for A2DP bluetooth earphones. DMB is useless outside of Korea but it's one of the features. Together with the Spinn, iriver plus 3 (on mini CD) is used for converting and transfering media files into Spinn. It is not needed for transfering media filed into Spinn to be playable. You can just 'drag and drop'.


Conclusion
iriver Spinn is a very nice looking player and very good music player. It's small and light and the build quality is superb. It's nice to have albeit the price is on the higher side. Currently it's only available in Korea, so if you have one in your hand it will surely attract some attentions. It is definitely a better media player than the ipod if you don't use DRM music (by the way, only idiots will buy DRM music).


Pros:
Nice screen
Music format supported (ogg, flac)
Video format supported (MPEG4, XVID, WMV9)
'Drag n drop' feature
Haptic feedback
Nice intuitive interface

Cons:
Small screen
Useless SRS
No memory expansion slot
Propriety USB cable (don't ever lose it!)
No wall socket adaptor included, charged through USB port only

2 comments:

wendyter said...

whee.. hadn't been dropping by for some time.
how come you never show me your spinn?
be very gentle with thy iriver though. my H10 has got a 'pretty' screen saver. damnit. hehe :p

Ath said...

I bought it for my girlfriend :)
Must show me your 'screensaver' lol

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