Latte iVu Portable Media Player

Portable media players come in all shapes, sizes and flavors. From the iTouch to the iRiver to Cowon, there is a media player for all tastes and price ranges. Unfortunately many players are too costly, or too complicated to use. This isn't the case with the inexpensive Latte iVu portable media player from Latte – a feature packed media player than comes in at under $150 USD. Read on for the full details on this portable media player.

Design and User Interface

After opening the box and getting the iVu powered up, I was mostly struck first by the simplicity of the device. Four buttons and one switch make you wonder what all it could possibly do. My first reaction was to expect a touch screen experience, but this device does not utilize a touch screen. The buttons are your only method of navigation or control. Most of the button functionality is straight forward with a set of right/left buttons, a select button, and an escape or go back button.

The menu is very straight-forward to use. Basically a simple repeating list of the different possible functions of the device as well as a settings item for device configuration. Navigating to the audio player for instance shows you a folder structure of your audio files on the device. This folder structure is similar to the tree view seen in Microsoft Windows Explorer, and is consistently used anywhere a user can select a file. When playing files in a folder it will continue down the list of files in that folder to play them in order.

The main complaint I had with the user interface is that adjusting the volume while watching video is counterintuitive. First you have to hit one button then use the right/left button adjust the volume. If you fail to hit the button first, you will accidentally switch to the next movie or song. It seems it would have been somewhat more user-friendly to reverse the buttons so the volume is always ready and you have to push a button first to switch tracks.

Features and Specifications

The iVu mixes the most popular functions available from more expensive media players into one easy to use device. The features include:

• Display: 3.0 inch WQVGA (400 x 240) TFT LCD (16:9 Wide screen)
• FM Transceiver: FM transmmiter
• Camera: 2.0M pixel camera
• Speaker: Amplified Dual speakers
• Memory: 8Gb / 16Gb
• Dimensions: 98(W) x 10.8(D) x 51.6(H) mm
• Playback Time: Music : Approx. 8~10 hours , Video : Approx. 4 hours
• Connection Type : USB 2.0
• Audio : MP3, WMA, FLAC, AAC, APE
• Video : AVI, RMVB, RM, FLV
• Picture : JPEG, BMP, GIF
• TEXT file viewer
• Digital voice recording
• Multi language support
• 7 Mode Equalizers

Display

The display is a real highlight on this device. It's 3.0 inch 16x9 widescreen display was beautiful. The video playback abilities include MPEG4, AVI, RM/RMVB, and FLV. This is impressive for a device to support all four major mdia formats in a single device.

Having never watched video on a device this small, I was worried that the experience would suffer from the small size. However, I was pleasantly surprised. The vivid colors and brilliant contrasts really involve you in the show and full length movies are no problem to watch on this display. It is important to note that the bright contrast dims quickly when you angle the display away from your face. While the picture remains very clear, the lighting seems to dim when the device is angled.

The one add on that would be nice would be a special holder to hold the device for you while you watch. Another missing feature is an external video connector. Most portable media players can be connected to external displays for viewing media, but this isn't available on this device.