iRock 730i MP3 Player © iRock Reviewed By Kurt KnudsenThe iRock i730 is an amazing piece of technology bundled up into a tiny device that easily fits in the palm of your hand. When I first received this item I couldn’t believe how small it was. What amazed me most was the extreme quality and insane amounts of features.The package comes with the following:

• The iRock 730i
• high-fidelity earphones
• 1 AAA alkaline battery
• USB Cable
• carrying case
• CD with manuals
• PC and Mac software

The iRock comes stock with 128mb of memory for your songs. It can be upgraded with an additional 256mb Smart Media Card. This is approximately 9 hours of music. The battery life is about 8 to 9 hours, perfect for long trips and average daily use.The design of the iRock is very sleek and give it a very high-tech look. Given its small size it is perfect for comfort, you can easily change songs, change the EQ, etc with one hand.The carrying case is a small black piece of leather that fits around the tiny device. There is a small plastic shield that protects the display and all the buttons poke through small holes.The ear buds that come with the iRock 730i are very nice. The quality they pump out is some of the best I’ve ever heard on those types of earphones. I hooked up some bigger Koss headphones and was equally impressed after turning the volume up a bit. The sound is crystal clear and absolutely flawless.The display is backlit with a blue light. You can change how long it stays illuminated in the options mode. This is a step up from their older models which lacked this feature, and is a great thing for seeing in the dark.Also the iRock 730i can support any file format. If you wish to store files on it temporarily you may do so. Simply use the transfer manager and select the files you wish to backup. This is an excellent feature if you need to transfer somewhat large data between two PCs.I also connected the iRock 730i to my Klipsch 4.1 sound system to really get a feel of its quality. I couldn’t tell the difference between the iRock and a CD. The quality is simply amazing.After hooking it up to my Klipsch system I decided to try it in my car. I had a cassette that connects to a CD player so I connected it to the iRock. The quality passed this test as well, sounding CD like if not better. This iRock is truly a great music device.The many features that the iRock 730i has include:The option to add lyrics to any song, add pictures, add memos, built in microphone, support for mp3/wmv/mp3i formats, reads ID3 tags, 5 preset equalizer modes, 4 playback modes, USB connectivity, 8-9 hour battery life, Mp3i creation software, MusicMatch Jukebox, and of course skip-free music.Making your own lyrics with the Mp3i software is really simple. Once it’s installed you simply select the song, load the lyrics from a text file and then plant the lyrics in the song. It supports 3 methods for placing lyrics, by line, by word or by syllable. By line is by far the easiest, but by word is more accurate. When you sync the lyrics you can slow the song down so you can hear it better, this really helps when doing it by word or syllable. Additionally with this software you can add pictures and other text files, such as memos or bios. The pictures are simply black and white and scaled, it’s all automatic too.The song transfer software is easy to use as well. You simply connect the included USB cable to the iRock 730i and your PC or Mac. After it detects it you can just transfer songs, it’s just that easy. Unfortunately this device uses USB 1.1 not 2.0, but the transfers don’t take that long, at most 10 seconds a song. The iRock 730i has a on-screen status bar that tells you how far the song is in the transfer, as well as the speed. Speeds range from 450-500 KBps on average, and max out at 1000 KBps.The display shows the battery level and the quality of the mp3 that is currently playing. While it’s not playing a song it scrolls the selected file so you can see the full name of the mp3 file.The preset equalizer settings are really nice. There is Rock, Pop, Hip-Hop, Classical, and Flat. You can only change the EQ when a song is not playing, but these presets give you the extra emphasis where it is needed when it comes to different styles of songs.The built in microphone allows you to record anything.. It also has a slot of an external microphone, incase you want to use your own microphone. The quality received by the microphone is clear as can be. It picks up all details in the room, near and far. While recording it gives you a countdown of how much time is left. After you finish recording it lists all of your memos so you can easily pick and listen to them.Fast forwarding and rewinding is very simple, just hold the button down and that’s it. It’s all instant too, there is no split second wait for the player to catch up to the song, once you let go of the button it starts playing again. You can also lock a song with a side switch, but when you have a song locked you can’t fast forward or rewind.There are two ways to power off the iRock 730i. You can push the stop button for 2 seconds or leave it idle for 2 minutes. It’s perfect if you accidentally leave it on while it isn’t playing music, it auto-shuts off after 2 minutes.Also the iRock 730i supports a lot of various bitrates. For mp3s it’s from 8Kbps to 320Kbps, for all you audiophiles out there I think you will enjoy the 320Kbps bitrate. For WMAs it’s 64Kbps to 192Kbps, I believe that is perfect being 192 as good, if not better, than CD quality. Voice recording is 8Kbit, 16Kbit, or 32Kbit; these low bitrates allow for longer recording sessions with decent audio.A few bad things that I’ve found with this great device include that you have to select whether or not you want random/repeat all before you start playing. You can’t do this while you are currently listening to a song. In the main window the scrolling of the songs is a bit slow; it takes a bit of time to see what you have selected. Also the EQ settings have to be selected before you start playing a song, so if you have a mix of rap and rock you have to stop and change the preset.After fiddling around with this thing for several hours I decided to compare its price with other mp3 players in its category. This iRock fares pretty well for its price of about $140.00. The things that set this mp3 player apart from others are the features and quality of sound. The included ear buds are above average compared to some that other mp3 players include. Also the ability to add an extra 256mb on top of the stock 128mb is very impressive.I recommend this mp3 player to anyone; even if you are looking for a high-quality digital voice recorder you can use this. Competitive prices and lots of features will keep you happy for quite some time. The iRock does stand up to its name, it does indeed rock.Overall : 8.9