The first thing I noticed was the clock. I hadn’t seen this before on my H140. After a little research, I discovered that the clock was only added later with a firmware update.

Now onto the rest of, for lack of a better name, I call the home screen. The four digit number in the top left refers to the ID that the player gives to a certain song, the icon in the centre (in the photo, it shows “stop”) shows the current play state of the media file and then there is the battery level indicator. I would have preferred to see this indicator be more accurate than just four bars. When the battery is charging, the bars cycle from one to four, showing that the H340 is charging and when fully charged and still on the AC adaptor, the bars are replaced with a “lighting” style symbol.

The next section of the home screen shows the total number of folders and songs currently on the player. The maximum number of folders that the player will register is 999, and the number of songs is 9999. 9999 multiplied by the average file size, 4mb, of an average song at MP3 -128kbps, is 39996Mb, or 39 GB, which almost certainly exceeds the capacity of the hard-drive once you take into account the formatting, as well as the difference between the manufacturer’s capacity rating and how Windows shows it. The true capacity is in the region of 37 GB.

Below this is the progress bar, which graphically displays how much time has elapsed. The numbers below this one also represents the time elapsed and the total length of the song respectively. The time elapsed can also be shown as time remaining by a simple change of settings.

Finally, at the bottom of the screen, the format of the file (MP3, WMA or WAV) the sample rate, bitrate and EQ/SRS setting is also shown. When a file is stopped or not loaded, the sample rate and bitrate areas remain blank.

During playback, the information on the number of files and folders disappears, to be replaced with information on the file being played back. The first line shows the folder the file resides in, the second; the name of the artist and the title of the track. If any of these values exceeds the number of characters the screen can display, it will scroll in one of several user-definable ways. Also, there is a stereo level meter viewable on each side of the lower portion of the screen.