Rating: 
Summary: Good sound....Very flawed design
Review: I have purchased quite a few mp3 players. They all have a few qualities that separate them from the rest. The Rio Nitrus seemed to be a good mix between the larger hard drive players, and the smaller chip players. It has a nice 1.5 gig capacity in a very compact design. The sound quality is very good with some of the best earbuds I have seen in an mp3 player. The biggest problem (and it is a biggie) is the menu system. It gives you plenty of options such as Artist,Album,Tracks,Playlist, however it does not list the songs under the particular artist or album. It only gives you the choice to play all. This makes it very cumbersome to locate certain songs you wish to play. With the capacity to hold 375 songs, they should have a better way to locate them. Most mp3 players on the market give you the ability to find songs through Artist or Album. What should have been a top rated player is below average for something so simple.
Rating: 
Summary: Tiny, light, great soundings Player
Review: I've been previewing the Nitrus (pronounced: Night-russ) and have been playing with it for close to two months, now. I should also note that I'm not an employee of Rio. For really good unofficial tech support from other users, go to rioworld.org or riovolution.com. Nitrus is about a third of the weight of an iPod, small and very thin. When it's in your pocket, you forget it's there. I'm not joking! This isn't the case with the iPod or the Karma. If you want storage capacity, you'll be buying a Karma. However, that's not the market for this player. The form, size and weight, combined with about 400 songs capacity (1.5GB) is the combination that will attract certain buyers. So, you can't really compare it with the iPod/Karma's of the world, or the flash players. Totally different market segment. It's not designed to be a sports player, but I, and many others, have been using it for athletic activities and it's sweet!! You forget it's there. It also has the standard Rio stopwatch functions. It has a bookmark feature, which is great on my audiobooks! Runs off USB 2.0 or 1.1! There's an intermediate lock selection that allows you to hit the joystick to move between play/pause. Perfect for snowboarding or exercising. Plus, with about 400 songs, you don't have to move songs on and off the player like a flash-based player. So, it carves out a nice (and new!) middle ground. Most consumers wouldn't want more songs on a player (unless you're a capacity freak, as I can sometimes be). It's not as feature rich as the Karma, but NOTHING is! Karma beats iPod, hands down and everything else in features. With Nitrus, you can create playlists, sort by ID3 tags, it has a customizable five-band equalizer and the sound is great. With the Sennheiser earbuds and customizable equalizer it will be a market leader in sound quality. Firmware is solid, right out of the box. If you've owned a Rio before, you know the developers are dedicated to constantly upgrading the firmware. Rio Music Manager (RMM2) The desktop software RMM2 (Rio Music Manager) is a huge leap ahead from the last RMM. It is being used for the whole Rio line. You can create playlists, to auto-DJ mixes and rip CDs. You can play music within the player, create auto-synch profiles between your player and RMM. It also has Gracenote CDDB, an on-line database that fills in all the album info for CDs you rip! RMM is user-friendly, intuitive and a solid piece of software. Rio Taxi: Nitrus also has Rio Taxi, like Karma, which allows you to move any type of file. I've been using it to transfer docs between work and home without issue. Taxi is simple and clean and works without issue. Battery Life: 16 hours listed, soon to be officially 19 hrs, but I'm getting longer than that. About Karma, people should note that Karma is slightly thicker than the iPod for one main reason: battery life!!! latest generation iPod = 8hrs (cut from 10hrs of 1st generation, which is how they shaved thickness). Interesting priorities at Apple, eh? Karma = 15 hours Nitrus = 16 hours (I seem to get longer play out of mine, but that's what Rio is advertising, so I'll stick to that). This is based on 128 bit MP3's. Note that many other MP3 players advertise battery life based on 64 or 96bit WMA's, as lower bit rate files consume less power! As well, you can adjust backlight length on these players, or turn it off completely, which greatly extends battery life beyond 16 hours. Really nice indigo backlight on these players and clear text display. So, that's a basic overview. Nitrus is going to be the surprise hit of the Rio line. Given that Denon & Marantz, a very high-end audio company, now owns Rio, combined with listening to Nitrus while previewing it, I think the whole Rio line will become the audiophile's digital music player!!
Rating: 
Summary: Add me to the list of DEAD RIO NITRUS
Review: 150 days and the hard drive failed... click of death!! Andy at RIO support said "1 in 100 HDs fail" and offered to fix it for $125 (after 90 days you are out of warrentee!). Guess I'll look into ram drive players next, they don't have the HD technology perfected yet. Too bad Rio.Also the plastic over the screen is almost unreadable from scuffs.
Rating:
Summary: GREAT MP3 PLAYER!!!
Review: I got this for my birthday about a half a year ago, and have been using it every day since. Even after all that use, its still working fine. Once you get the songs onto your computer, it takes less than a minute to put an entire cd onto your player.I have about 15 hours of music on it, and plenty of space left. The only bad thing i've seen, is that you only have 1.4 gigs. The other .1 is probobly used up by the stop watch and all the other features, which is not all that big a deal. There were a couple of things wrong in the product description...(the part where it says batteries required), it has a rechargable internal battery that lasts 16 hours every time you charge it, and i belive it also said that it weighs 2.0 lbs, DEFINITELY NOT RIGHT!, its more like 2 ounces. IT'S A GREAT MP3 PLAYER, AND YOU SHOULD DEFINATELY BUY IT!!!
Rating:
Summary: BUYER BEWARE!
Review: I had gotten this player as a Christmas gift and about 6 months later (after the warranty ended) it started acting up. Then I couldn't even use it any more because the hard drive had gotten stuck on something. I never abused it in any way. I don't recommend this product.
Rating:
Summary: GREAT PLAYER!
Review: I got the mp3 player as a graduation gift from my sister about 8 months ago. I've been using everyday since. It's easy to use, convenient, light weight, user friendly and enough memory. Unlike the iPod where you have 20GB which no one could ever use up the Nitrus has enough memory to fit your personality use. I just went recently on a road trip that lasted more than 12 hours and i had my Nitrus on the entire time! so the battery is great too... i definitely would recommend this to anyone.
Rating:
Summary: 50% of all units are faulty
Review: I work for a company in Clearwater, FL. We bought 4 Rio Nitrus - new in the box. Two of them had the notorius "Uprader" error within a few hours. That's 50% failure rate. That's unacceptable. I can only hope that Rio will have to pay the litigation piper! Have you seen the price on these things? Dear God! How many faulty units has Rio sold? How many millions has Rio pocketed by selling worthless players?
Rating:
Summary: A REALLY REALLY REALLY BAD CHOICE
Review: Yes it is true. Mine only lasted 4 months. Stay away from this product.
Rating:
Summary: I wished I had read the reviews before I bought this junk
Review: Rio Nitrus is an expensive junk that should be taken off the market. Do not plan to work out with this machine, stick to flash memory. My Nitrus worked okay for one year and then it just died on me. I have spent hours trying to figure out how to bring it back to life with no success. There are multiple websites dedicated to discussing how bad this device is. I am never getting a Rio again. If you don't believe me, just type in Nitrus in google and see what get.
Rating:
Summary: Junk
Review: This product is a piece of junk (ZERO STARS). I got it for a gift < 6 months ago, it no longer functions at all! Their customer service is worthless. Do not waste your money on anything from this manufacturer.
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