On paper, the E100 almost has everything you'd possibly want in an MP3 player with sleek styling at a cheap price. Sadly though it falls just short of delivering a great MP3 player.
The E100 is a small and lightweight MP3 player coated in a silky matte black finish with gentle curves that make it comfortable to hold when in use. Control of the E100 is via some well placed minimal buttons. Located below the screen is the directional pad with a slightly indented selection button placed in the middle. Volume and power are on the right and a hold switch is on the left.
Files can either be transferred via drag-and-drop (UMS), with the bundled iriver plus 3 software or by using Windows Media Player (MTP). The E100's mini USB port located at the bottom of the player connects it to your computer. Once the player is connected you also have the ability to charge and play at the same time. If the capacities of 2GB, 4GB and 8GB are still too small for you, additional storage is available in the form of a microSD memory card slot at the top of the player.
The directional pad on the E100 was responsive with enough room for even the biggest fingers. However the quality of the 2.4-inch display with a resolution of 320x240 was disappointing. While song information was easy to read, album art was pixilated and lacked clarity. Supported video formats on the E100 include WMV9 and MPEG4. Trying to play back video requires a lot of effort as we could not get some WMV files to play despite being within the compatible specifications. We eventually got it to work by converting the video file using the iriver plus 3 software. Once the video was running, performance was laggy at times with some pixilation present. Sadly not worth the effort it took to convert the videos.
