We had a chance to check out iriver's sexy new P7 portable media player and were quite taken with the simplicity and elegance of the design, both of the hardware itself and the stylish new UI. Read on for our impressions and a gallery of the P7.

The 4.3-inch touchscreen player was extremely light and easy to hold in the hand. The build quality was solid and the simplicity of the design is refreshing and intuitive. Unobtrusive volume and main menu buttons are positioned at the top right of the player, blending in to the white casing but providing button press feedback on touch. A built-in microphone handles voice recording on the fly, and a small mono speaker positioned at the lower left of the back of the unit accomodates audio playback when lacking headphones or for playing tunes or videos with a friend. A USB connector at the bottom of the devices accomodates media transfer, which can also be accomplished via the included docking station.

The user interface itself was built with the same intuitive simplicity in mind. The main menu features graphical display of the different functions including photo viewer, music player, video player, FM radio, date/time text viewer (the rep we spoke with indicated other formats such as PDF will be supported), voice or FM recording, and a settings area.

The touchscreen is transmissive like the BlackBerry Storm and not capacitive like the iPhone, requiring an actual physical depression of an area of the screen to trigger an action. Unlike the Storm which I find rather burdensome to use, the slight push required on the P7 touchscreen actually felt quite satisfying. Response time seemed fairly reasonable; the only caveat we should mention is when we first walked up to the station where 3 P7s were set up, two of the 3 units were displaying software failures. An iriver rep quickly rebooted the devices using a paper clip and restored functionality, but we couldn't help but wonder if the UI is still being tweaked and finalized.

Sound quality was decent and the screen itself is gorgeous for video playback. When the controls were minimized you're left with 4.3 inches of WQVGA display which, even at only 480 x 272 resolution looked quite nice. Even the included case wins points for style, looking a bit like a leather-bound journal and reminiscent of the popular Moleskine notebook line.

 

The iriver rep we spoke with indicated the player would be coming out first in Korea within a couple of months and on to the U.S. as soon as possible for a price point of "less than $200," which makes the 4, 8 or 16 GB capacity player sound like an attractive, well-designed, multi-function portable media device worth getting excited about.

Check out the iriver P7 gallery »