There are some functional, and price, differences however. The iriver H10 carries an MSRP of $279, which is $80 more than the 4GB iPod mini and $30 more than the larger 6GB version. It's also only $20 less than the standard 20GB iPod or iriver's own H320, so its cost sort of places it between the mini and 20GB player markets.
The functional difference though is that this player packs a lot of features into a tiny device, like an FM tuner and recoder, photo options, a voice recorder and more. So considering that it's a feature-packed unit in a pint-sized case, its pricing begins to make a little more sense.
The coolest and most immediately noticeable thing about the H10 is its interface, or at least how you interact with it. In what's essentially a modification of the iPod's touch wheel, the H10 uses a touch strip and two main buttons to navigate through menus and select options. Using your finger, you slide up and down on the strip to move up or down through menu selections and options. It's actually more intuitive than the iPod's wheel since you're going up and down rather than clockwise and counter-clockwise.
As well, you can tap on either the top or bottom of the touch strip to move up or down menu items, which actually works better when you're moving up or down a single selection. To select and option or folder, you press the O (circle) button to the right of the touch strip; to go back, you press the back arrow to the left.
Working through the interface with this setup is extremely easy and very fast. Like the iPod's jog wheel, the touch strip is speed-sensitive so you can easily scroll through a bunch of albums. As a reasonable guesstimate, while scrolling my finger at somewhat quick speeds, I could scroll through about a dozen folders in a single swipe of the strip. Obviously, you can't really just keep moving your finger like you can on the iPod since you need to pick up your finger and move it to the top of the strip again, though if you hold your finger at an end of the strip, folders and menus will continue to scroll.
In order to play songs you use the player controls on the right side of the H10. There are play/pause, forward and reverse buttons located on the side. Once a track is playing, using the touch strip will change volume, pressing O will bring up the EQ menu and pressing the back arrow will take you back to the song list, though it doesn't pause the current track, which is nice.
Speaking of EQ settings, there are a literal ton of presets that come with the H10 as well as SRS WOW, the 3D-scape sound processor. Some of them sound reasonable, some not so reasonable, depending on what you're playing obviously, but I found myself setting the five-band EQ myself.
I personally like to have the EQ set up in a perfect "V" shape, with the center mix in the center, the bass and high-end all the way up, and the two remaining settings in between those. I listen to a lot of alternative-metal-type stuff (oh, how I hate classifying music), like Tool, The Mars Volta, Dredg, Deftones, etc. I like to really hear the kick drum and bass guitar rolling along while also getting plenty of bite from the upper registers.
And the iriver H10 delivered this aural treatment in spades. The unit sounds fantastic, and though a few online sites are claiming that the audio becomes distorted at high bass levels, I never found this to be the case. Actually, that's not entirely true; things can become distorted with the included Sennheiser MX400 headphones, but that's because they're crap. Included headphones are crap 99% of the time and any self-respecting music fan will pick up a decent set of cans anyway.
With my regular Sennheiser 212Pros, the H10 sounds excellent. Bass is deep and tight, highs are crisp and everything sounds well-defined. Again, unlike I've seen mentioned elsewhere, I had no problems whatsoever with bass distortion and as I said before, I crank the bass EQ all the way up. I listen to my music at a reasonably loud volume, a setting of 30 out of 40 on the H10, and it was flawless for me. Along with the touch strip, the H10's audio quality is one of my favorite aspects of the unit.
Now, Mac users and old-school PC users beware: the H10 requires a Windows XP PC with Service Pack 1 (or greater) installed running Windows Media Player 10. The device doesn't include its own software or even drivers; everything is handled through WMP 10, for better or worse. I find its simplicity nice so I much prefer using WMP 10 to manage files rather than having to use a proprietary piece of software, especially since I already have Windows Media Player installed anyway.
The H10 supports mp3 files from 32Kbps - 320Kbps and WMA files from 32Kbps to 192Kbps. DRM and subscription files are supported as this is a "Plays for Sure" device. As well, it also supports JPG files for photos, though as the unit doesn't feature any sort of video output then you can't view them on a larger screen. The color screen on the H10 is fine for what it is and photos look reasonably nice on it, but still... It would be nice to display them on a TV during family vacation photo extravaganza weekend.
So far as connectivity goes, the H10 features a singular proprietary input that provides both power and its USB 2.0 connection. It's an odd setup in that the cable that it ships with splits into two parts, one USB connector for your PC and a power input, to which you can connect the included AC Adaptor. It sucks that it's a proprietary cable, so if you want to manage files both at home and at work or some such, then you'll either need to buy a spare cable or carry the thing with you everywhere.
Lastly, battery life. iriver says that the H10 should last up to 12 hours on a single charge while playing a 128Kbps mp3 file, 20 volume level, the LCD off and the EQ normal. Obviously, most people won't be doing this. As I mentioned, I "V" my EQ, listen at 30 and play a mix of 128Kbps and 192Kbps music (mostly 192Kbps). Since the LCD shuts off automatically, that shouldn't be an issue. At these settings, I was able to get up to about 8 hours of listening in before the H10 needed a recharge. It's certainly not the greatest battery life in the world, but on a plus the battery is removable, so if you're taking an international flight or some such you could pick up an extra battery pack and swap them out.
Conclusion
I really like the iriver H10 quite a bit. The audio quality is excellent and the touch strip works very well. The whole interface is simple to navigate through with this setup, making for a quick and easy track selection process.
The battery life isn't the greatest thing, the lack of video output limits its photo capabilities and the FM Tuner/recorder and voice recorder will likely just be toss-ins for most people. So what you wind up with is a bunch of extra features that are sorta neat, but not great.
Still though, the basic functionalities of the player are excellent. If you see fit to fork over the extra cash for the H10, you'll find yourself with quite a player.