5. Voice Recording And Line-In Recording

Students will love the voice recording feature of the iAUDIO5. Bitrates for recording can be set at various levels, with the highest being 128 kbps at a 44 kHz sampling rate. Every minute at this quality consumes almost one MB of space, which would give you about 15 hours of recording time on this 1 GB unit.

The internal microphone is decent, but for best results you can plug a powered microphone into the line-in jack. Line-in recording features the same bitrate settings as the voice recording settings.

Battery Life

The battery life on the iAUDIO5 is amazing. We ripped all the tracks from Coldplay's 2003 album "Clocks", converted them to 128 kilobit MP3s, and transferred them to the player. The unit was then set on continuous looping play and no visual effects were used.

A webcam was aimed at the iAUDIO5 player and set to capture one picture every minute. Well, we could have used our intern to baby-sit the player, but he would probably have fallen asleep. With the included generic AAA battery, the iAUDIO5 lasted 14 hours and 15 minutes.

Conclusion

The iAUDIO5 has enough features to satisfy most consumers. The FM radio is nice - when you can receive a good signal - and the voice and line-in recording features are great for students and interviewers. Finally, the light weight and long battery life make this player a very good portable choice, if you can get used to the quirky navigation.