Nowdays, a digital audio player isn't enough. People are looking for a player that can do so much more than churn out music. As a result, manufacturers are in stiff competition with each other to come up with the latest innovation. As of this moment, the latest is the video player. iPod has one, Creative Lab has one. iRiver also jumped on the video player bandwagon with it U10 video player. iRiver's U10 is a bundle of contradictions. Sometimes, it seems to be the perfect choice for all digital media lovers; sometimes, you just don't have any idea what iRiver folks were thinking when they were designing the player.

Let's begin with the positive. iRiver's 2.2" screen, though smaller than those of iPod video (2.5") and Creative Zen Vision (3.7"), has a higher resolution and quality. The battery life is also something to rave about at 28 hours. That in itself is a good thing, but it's made even better by the price--$199.99 and $249.99, depending on the disk size.

Now let's move on to the negative. The U10 come in two sizes--512MB and 1GB. For music files, these sizes are adequate, but for video files, they mean nothing. Unlike Apple and Creatice, iRiver does not offer video players with a disk size of around 30GB.

Aside from the dismaying disk size, iRiver also has a hard-to-use navigation system which can't hold a candle to iPod's clicking wheel system. You need to have a bit of a techie in you to find your way around iRiver U10. However, most people don't want something that's hard to operate, so in this aspect, iRiver fails to appeal to the pop culture market.

As of now, the iRiver U10 feels like an experiment, something which iRiver will use to decide what the market really wants--is it disk space, battery life, or extra features? Perhaps iRiver is just biding its time, waiting for the perfect moment to release a player that can surpass iPod and Creative. This remains to be seen.