Initial Impressions: Pioneer Inno (portable XM/MP3 player)

[Tones]

A few days ago, I received the Inno as a gift, and have been messing around with it ever since. While I haven't used all of the features (I haven't yet loaded any of my own music onto it), it shows where the future of satellite radio lies, and believe me, the future looks good.

What's in the box:

• The player itself with a rechargeable battery
• Earbud headphones
• USB cable
• charging dock (which also has an A/V outlet for use with a home stereo)
• home antenna
• belt clip
• travel adapter (which allows the use of the A/C adaptor without unhooking your home dock)
• XM+Napster software

First, I'll start with the bad. There isn't much, really; it's just that the reception indoors can be sketchy when using the player's antenna. It is much better outdoors, where it's usually pretty seamless. However, I've read a few reviews for it, and apparently these headphones improve upon the indoor situation dramatically. Also, depending upon the budget, the price, at $399, may be steep. However, I think that it's justified, considered what all you get, and what all the player is capable of.

The good: I love the design. It feels very solid, as the front has a brushed-aluminum look/feel, the screen is great looking (for a portable), with vibrant colors, and the blue outlines shown in the picture above are actually illuminated. It feels like a premium product; it feels like something that costs the retail price.

The menu system is quite simple. You can either scroll through all of the channels to choose a new station while you listen to a single station, or you can type in the number of the station that you would like directly. The player sits horizontally in the home dock, however, the screen automatically flips 90 degrees, and the button mapping changes so that up is still up. Artist and title information can either be stagnant or large-type scrolling, which is useful when the player is across the room.

The inno also has the ability to show stock options--up to 25 of your choice. They scroll at the bottom of the screen. The inno also has the ability to scroll your team's scores: There are team-specific options for NFL, NHL, NBA, and MLB. There are also options to show general scores for college basketball and football, as well as tennis, gold, and NASCAR.

Recording is quite simple, either press the XM button and choose "record", or simply hold the XM button. If you start recording the song after the song started, the player still records the whole song. You can also set a record timer, if you're looking to listen to a game or talk show, and you're away from the player. Up to 50% of the recording time can be used by your own uploaded MP3's, which translates to 25 hours, as well as 25 hours of XM content. The partition can be set to be either 100% XM or 50/50 between the two sources.

Whenever I connect something to my stereo with a headphone jack-->RCA jack, I always have problems with volume, because the volume level is quieter than all of the other sources (satellite, XBOX, DVD player, etc.). However, the inno solves this issue, as it has a setting for the line-out level. It also has provisions for changing the bass and treble output levels. I'm not very familiar with any other portable players (Ipod, etc.) so I'm not sure if this is common or not nowadays.

The home kit works beautifully. The antennae included has a cord that is at least 20 ft long, so if you need to position it in a place that is unobtrusive, or if you have trouble finding a signal, there is plenty of leeway on where you can place the antenna. my only complaint is that the headphone jack-->RCA cable is pretty short, at about 2 ft. long. It's long enough for me, though, and replacements are pretty cheap and common at places like Radio Shack. I bought one a few years ago that's about 6 ft long for about $8.

I plan on getting an audio kit whenever I can find one. The inno has a built-in FM modulator, however, it cannot be used without plugging it into the car dock.

I am extremely happy with the inno. My only qualm is the indoor reception with the internal antenna, a problem I hope to solve with the the antenna headphones. The sound quality is basically what you get on XM; a bit compressed, but not at all bad. The sound quality of non-XM content is supposed to be dependant upon what bitrate it was saved at. There isn't much it can't do: It works great on the go and on the go. It has an expansive amount of storage, and the recording options are versatile enough that XM is being sued about how much it allows users to modify their music. I would definitely reccommend it, even though the price is a bit steep.

[Rich]

Hmm, I'll have to give this some consideration. I've wanted a portable XM player for a while, and doubling as an ipod substitude, this could be a good purchase.

How big is the HDD?

[Tones]

The HDD is 1 GB (I'm not sure if it's an HDD... may be flash?). Either way, it is enough for me, who doesn't have a lot of music stored on my computer, but yeah, others may find it too small.