i haven't owned a traditional mp3 player since the original Diamond Rio, which some of you are *too young* to have even heard of. however, i have owned a PDA since then that was able to play mp3s.

but my question...dedicated mp3 players like the clix2, can you adjust the brightness of the screen or set it to turn off after say 5 or 10 seconds of non-use?

my second question is, if this is possible, how many hours of music can the clix2 play if the screen is off the entire time?

Well, as you can see from the specifications, it is possible to turn off the screen, so that the player will have longer battery life. The exptected battery life of the Clix2 is very similar to that of the Clix 1st generation, which was 25 hours of continous playback (with the screen turned off, and with 128kbit 44.1KHz mp3 audio), real life battery life expectancy can vary according a number of factors, the most important one being habits of use, i.e, for how long does the screen remains on, etc.

Unlike the Clix 1st gen, the Clix2 features a much better screen, both in terms of brightness/colors and in terms of power performance. I'm not so sure you can adjust the brightness of the screen of the Clix 2 (I'd be very surprised if you couldn't), but the new screen consumes only a fraction of the battery power the old LCD screen does, this must play a key factor (in terms of added bonus features, like the moving backgrounds, which consume more CPU cycles, hence more battery), but if the screen consumes less battery juice than the previous generation, and has much better performance (in terms of image quality, etc), then it is only logical that iriver added as much features as they could while preserving at least a comparable battery life to the previous generation.

In my opinion a dedicated player is much better than a device such a PDA which is a bunch of things (calendar, organizer, on-the-go text processor, spreadsheet, etc), as the device is dedicated at doing one thing, and do it "perfectly": Playback music. Modern players, though fall into the category of PMPs or Portable Media Players, which not only play back audio, but also video, and like in the case of the Clix, Flash games too.

In terms of features the Clix blows away the Shuffle and Nano players from Apple, and fairs quite well against other comparative products. Bottom line is: the Clix is one fine player, and the Clix2 will only improve on that.

gmureddu, thanks for the post. i am glad to hear that i will be able to turn off the screen when just the music is being played. it would be doubly cool if there was a feature that did that automatically, as i mentioned, after 5-10 seconds.

i think you might be overestimating the energy efficiency of the screen - AMOLEDs are on average only 30-35% more efficient than a modern LCD. This is a big improvement, but clearly it is still a big drain on energy.

As to the quality of the screen and it's images, this is a big reason of why i am buying a clix2. It's clear from the photos and videos that you are correct, the colors/brightness/viewing angles are far superior to high-end LCDs which are already pretty impressive.

I heard some people complaining that the Clix2 doesn't have an SD slot, i wonder if the lack of this feature will stop people from buying the player or not. What is your opinion?

about the screen being turned off - yes, clix does this automatically (and you can choose after what time it turns off).

about the sd cards - well, cowon d2 has this option, but i think that clix2 is probably a more superior player. an 8gb version should suffice. i have a 1st gen clix, 2gb version, and i'm very very pleased with it. i wouldn't mind more space, but in no way do i find it lacking the sd card support.

clix2 is/will be probably one of the best flash players there are.

you can have the screen turn off automaticaly from 5 10 seconds 1 minute 5 minutes and 10 minutes. Sd card isnt a big deal. 8gb is pretty big enough....

Birghtness is Low Medium High. not going to affect you much if its on high and you have the screen turn off at 10 seconds..