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>> Hey everyone, welcome to yet another edition of Prize Fight. I'm Veronica Belmont. And today we have a refreshing view at two flash MP3 players that have absolutely nothing to do with fruit. Apple. The Insignia MP3 player and image viewer, versus the iRiver X20. Can Best Buy's Insignia brand beat the well established iRiver competitor? Let's start off with our first round, sexiness.
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These two players look like they could be brothers, or maybe first cousins. They're the same shape, and almost exactly the same size. The iRiver has a technically larger screen, two point three inches, to the Insignia's two point two, but it's hardly a noticeable difference. I like the blue finish on the Insignia, and it doesn't show smudges quite as easily as the X20. It also has a nice grippy surface here on the sides and on the back. They're both sexy players, but I'm partial to the Insignia in this round. I'm giving it a five, and the iRiver a four.
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Yes, it's a matter of personal taste, but I just think there are enough black shiny MP3 players out there enough as it is. Up next is navigation.
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The navigation is also very similar on both devices. There are scroll wheels, and when you push down on the sides of the wheels, they have menu functions, like back, forward, and play pause here in the center. They have similar menus, although the iRiver has a lovely color menu. Even if the scroll wheel is a little bit harder to push and scroll. For these reasons I think they even out in this round with a four each.
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Oh, a nice even keeled match so far. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if they licensed the same interface for both of these players. Up next is features.
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The Insignia and the iRiver X20 both play music, videos, and have FM tuners. The ones I'm looking at here are both four gigabytes by the way. They can both record, but the iRiver has a built in microphone. The Insignia also has one feature that is almost shocking these days, Bluetooth. That might eat up a good portion of your battery if you're using it a lot, but it's a really nice feature to have, especially if you have a nice pair of Bluetooth headphones. The video and picture quality is about the same. A little pixilated on both devices, but not terrible. For this round I'm giving the iRiver a four, and the Insignia a five.
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The Insignia's pulling ahead. The next round is compatibility.
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They both play MP3, WMA, and OGG [assumed spelling], but the iRiver does not support subscription tracks like the Insignia does. They could each stand to be a little more wide reaching, but the lack of subscription drops the iRiver to a three, while the Insignia gets a four.
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One round left, sound quality and battery life.
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I used the same headphones, the Ultimate Ears, with the same MP3s from eMusic, and the sound quality was pretty good on both players. When the Bluetooth is turned off of the Insignia, it gets about twenty hours of battery life, and an impressive eight for video. The iRiver fares a little better with twenty two hours of battery life. I'm going to give them both a four in this final round.
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And that's all she wrote. The Insignia gets a twenty two, and the iRiver gets a nineteen. You know, that's not bad for a store brand player, I've got to say. That's all for this Prize Fight. [inaudible], suggestions, or comments, email prizefight@cnet.com. I'm Veronica Belmont, see you next time.
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