Rating: 
Summary: It's Good - but it has it's faults
Review: (...)I wanted to let people know my experiences : Like (others) I too have found the player sometimes stops towards the end of a song and jumps straight onto the next song - sometimes this happens a lot and other times it hardly seems to happen at all. This has nothing to do with motion as the unit has been on a flat surface all the times this has happened.. It's very odd... Secondly I see strange directories with names is chinese characters whenever I burn data onto a cd. They appear as directory names although there is no data within them. Maybe this is a fault in my cd burning process but as far as I can tell the CD's contain nothing other than the MP3 files. It doesnt seem to affect the unit - it just looks a bit well - messy... Thirdly, the battery does seem to behave rather eratically - being fully charged one minute and nearly empty the next. I am hoping future software releases will remedy these things - but, we'll see... The above annoyances aside this is a fantastic product, the sound is good, the unit itself is of a (reasonably) high quialty and it is very easy to use.
Rating:
Summary: Functionality great, interface opaque
Review: I had been following MP3/CD player development for about a year and a half, and I got this unit because I felt that the technology was finally "ready". I'm impressed with what it's able to do (i.e. play mp3s on a CD), but the interface is a bit strange. For example, many of the functions are on a circular "joypad", where "up" is play/pause, "down" is stop, "left" is back and so on. It's very easy to accidentally hit "upper left" or "lower right" and the player will do something you didn't intend to do. Also, there are many buttons that have dual functions- if you hit a button it does one thing (like stop your track), if you hold it down, it does something completely different (like shut down your unit, so you have to reboot again if you want to get back in). It takes a good memory to remember which is which because the labelling on the body of the player is less than helpful. Finally, the plastic lid seems a bit flimsy, but that may be because I prefer CD players with metal bodies. Positive qualities: MP3's on a CD - duh!, it plays loud, the EQ is customizable and complex, the display is large. Many settings (display, language, sound of beeps) are customizable (more so than some cell phones!)
Nice but not necessary: leather carrying case, software, 2(?) pairs of standard cheap headphones. In summary, despite my complaints, I'm glad I waited out for this unit. At this point I think the companies have the MP3/CD technology worked out, they just need to work on the interface (because, when you think about it, these units are quite a bit more complex than a CD player).
Rating: 
Summary: I've been waiting for this!
Review: I just got my SP250 today, and now I see what everyone meant about getting into that package! I think its made out of the same stuff they use for the black boxes on Commercial jets. Anyhoo.. This product is pretty slick, I am very impressed so far with the functions and ease of use (takes a minute or two to get used to the multi-function buttons on the remote, and to learn how to navigate the on screen menus) But pretty soon your playing songs like a pro. The sound quality is decent, and improves with a better set of headphones, although the two pair! provided are adequate. The fact that rechargeable batteries and a built in charger are included is a big plus. The carrying case as a good fit to, I just hope that zipper holds! (zips around the bottom, makes me nervous!) I am anxious to see how this sounds in my car, although I'm sure I will be slightly dissapointed as I am using one of thos cassette adapter thingies that never provide the best sound, but at least I dont need to carry around 40 cd's anymore!
Rating:
Summary: The best. But ...
Review: I rate this player with 5 stars because it is surely the best in the market. But .... NO RESUME !!! How come??? I bought my first mp3 player at Singapore for 100 bucks. It has no brand, but it definitely has RESUME. (that was 1 year ago).
Rating:
Summary: Great Product!
Review: First, very cool product! I burned a CD and had it playing within 6 minutes. Sound quality was OK, but aftermarket head phones helped a lot. The FM radio feature is cool, but reception (had) lots of static, especially when moving around. However, if I'm sitting somewhere, I can usually find a place to set the player down and get acceptable reception. The controls are complex, to be expected with such a feature rich player, so I needed the quick start guide to figure out what the buttons did. Now it seems fairly intuitive.
Rating:
Summary: Iam kinda feel sad for a 3 star...
Review: Well this is a good mp3/cd player but its not even 1 bit close to D-CJ01 From sony, sure, but since i own both, i did a sound quality test. heres the comparsion chart... D-CJ01: Super.Suberb. Execellent Quality. Riovolt: Good sound. The thing is that the D-CJ01 has the ablity to remove "muffled" mp3s. and songs. Giving you 1000000% Better Fidelity. Buy one and see for yourself. Iam not lieing. I would never hate a product i own. I dont hate this, iam just saying this and my test. Test Infomation~
Tested Rio::: 3/10 people say it has better quality. Tested D-CJ01 From Sony:::6/10 People say rio is nothing compared to this. I was also disappointed i toughtn rio and sony would be tied. (Test came from all kinds of people)
(Not just my freinds and family)
(LoL i looked stupid on the streets asking people to compare these devices...LoL) Well I have yet again spoken again. Bye. Live a nice life. THATS MY OLD REVIEW..... I AKSED THOSE PEOPLE AGAIN AND THEY MEANT THE RIO LOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! COOL CUZ PERSONANLY, I LOVED RIO BETTER THAN DA SONY ONE.
Rating:
Summary: Recommend to get it, but be aware of the following
Review: i don't give it 5 stars because i'm not overwhelmingly pleased by it. but it's very close to 5, just that 4 is the next lowest choice. many reviews extol the sp250, and i agree with them. but i would like to talk about some of the aspects which i didn't like as much as the good things. i wonder if these things are because of a faulty unit or is everyone having the same problems but just not willing to mention them? i can't tell because no one seems to talk about the bad things! it makes me wonder if the sp100 would have been just as good a unit for me, even though other reviewers are glad they upgraded. i would like to add one more praise to the sp250 before getting on to the other stuff. my friend has MP3s with Chinese characters in the IDv3 tags, and the sp250 showed their info without a problem. I can only guess that other languages would show up just as easily, since in the programming world, I think Chinese was one of the most difficult to design for. a) the plastic container which houses and protects the new sp250 is so difficult to open! i was almost frustrated and wanted to throw the item down to the ground. i finally managed to make a hole down near the bottom of the container, and open from that end, which seems to be easier than opening from the top (once you deform the container, that is) b) the rechargeable batteries that come with the unit are Sanyo Twicell 160 (nickel metal hydride, not nickel cadmium)...I guess that might be cut off on the battery skin, so it might mean 1600mAh, which means it would be currently very high-capacity batteries...but I would have liked more specifications on the batteries since I already have my own rechargeables and want to know if they are 100% compatible with the charger. Not only that but for an item like this, I don't want to be using batteries which might harm it in the long run(eg using my own "slightly" incompatible rechargeable batteries or the Sanyo batteries). c) when playing mp3s, it seems to jump to the next song before finishing the current one. this happens too often..and i know my mp3s are complete songs d) if the power cord was plugged in, then taken out, it seems to take a long while before the unit realizes that it needs to use batteries. during this time, it was unresponsive to the presses on the remote or the unit itself. e) the battery charger seems like a good idea..but in fact the icons on the display are not clear to me what is going on...for example, the first time that i thought i charged up the batteries all nite long, the next morning i played the unit on batteries only and it died soon after (no power i guess). plugging in the power cord remedied the situation, so i can only guess that the batteries did not get charged up. f) after a few uses i understood the battery charging system better...but that made me realize i didn't like it. when the power cord is connected, batteries are in the unit, and the sp250 stops playing music, after a few seconds (maybe 60s?) it will go to a battery charging menu. at this menu are 3 choices, Discharge then charge, Charge, or Quit. the default is Discharge then charge. So if you are not sitting there waiting for it to get to this option menu, your fully charged batteries apparently are discharged then charged up again. but the display graphics don't tell clearly which phase it is in. this explains to me why my batteries, which i thought were fully charged and i had been using the power cord, was going through this charging process again (it could have been discharging!) since these are not NiCad batteries, it seems to me that the default should have been Charge, since these batteries will not develop a memory (or at least not as bad as the NiCads). And for those who are using NiCads...well I recommend an upgrade, you'll be glad you did! g) hooking up the sp250 to some speaker using the line out, it seems like the line out was not providing enough volume. i found that i got the same volume result from using the line out or the headphone out (this should not be the case...the line out should provide a consistent volume for the user to integrate into an existing sound system). of course i could turn up the volume on the unit to remedy the situation, but i'm not totally satisified with the line-out on this unit. h) the optional firmware upgrade method may need to be better in the future..i don't have any suggestions on how other than adding unnecessary inputs/outpus to the unit, but looking at the firmware upgrades for the sp100, the upgrade is only about 300k in size. i sincerely hate to waste/burn a 650MB or 700MB CDR with only a 300k file on it. again it is optional, so i guess i could wait until a reasonable upgrade was offered before doing this. i) this next comment was in the manual, but i apparently missed it. i only learned it after going to the rio volt website looking to see if these concerns i had were already addressed. if you're like me and like to turn off appliances after you're done using them (especially if you don't want your batteries discharged and don't want to wait for the Quit menu to show up), then pressing and holding down the Stop button will turn off the unit.
Rating:
Summary: I hate to post another five-star review, but...
Review: This thing is a technological work of art. It has an unheard-of *8 minutes* worth of memory for an anti-skip buffer. That's so unreasonably large for a cdr prefetch queue, the thing actually spins-down the disc for several minutes at a time while playing, to preserve battery life. Can you dig it? It's like the Tortoise and the Hare meet CD-RW and MP3! It has a backlit lcd display nicer than my cell phone's (far nicer, actually), and it includes an FM receiver so I can listen to NPR while riding the bus to work, if I so desire. The volume control is digital, so there are no analog pots to corrode and crackle, as on every other portable audio device I've ever owned. Even the contacts on the headphone jack seem quite well engineered. NiMH batts (AA), protective leather cover, and two sets of headphones. NOW how much would you pay???
Rating:
Summary: This thing is amazing
Review: I just received my Rio Volt 250 today. Frankly, I am amazed at the abundance of features and how carefully the creators thought through almost all the details of operation, look and feel, ease of use, and the like. The two drawbacks in my mind are that the unit includes neither the car adaptor nor the LED remote. No complaints. You will be amazed and very pleased. Skip right over the 90 & 100. (Also prepare to become a regular user of audiogalaxy.com!) Craig
Rating:
Summary: Must Buy
Review: This really is a sweet player. And im pretty sure that it wont be beat for a while. Even though it is on the pricey side of mp3 cd players, i still find it a great deal. Not only does it look great and come with a carying case but the internal interface is extremely easy to use. I love how you can customize almost everything in it. I only wish that they could have shipped it out with the lcd remote instead of the regular one. I highly reccomend this to anyone in the market looking for an mp3 cd player.
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