Rio Karma 20 GB MP3 Player

Rating:
Summary: DO NOT BUY THIS PLAYER!!!!
Review: I am very dissapointed with this player. I am now on my third player. I sent two back to Rio and I have no intention on sending a third.I was told not to go running with this player because the pounding can damage the hard drive. So I got this player specifically to use while travelling. Songs started to skip after three weeks of use and finally it got to the point where the hour glass stayed in a perpetual spin mode. I could not even shut the player down...had to wait till the battery ran out! For what I paid for this player....what a waste!!! Most likely I will end up throwing it out and purchase a player with a flash and no hard drive.

Rating:
Summary: The first player that justifies really high bit rates
Review: The sound on this little puppy is excellent. I'd not bought a digital music player because every time I listened to one, I was acutely aware of how poor it sounded compared to my CD player, and often even compared to FM radio. Then I ran into someone with a Karma. With cheap headphones it sounded way better than most units. I tried my really good traveling headphones on it and it sounded even better. I tried my very nice over the ear headphones that I use to listen to music off my home stereo (with a headphone amp) - it sounded even better.

My wife has an iPod, and the "sounds better stops at good traveling headphones. After that, the better the phones, the more you become aware of the shortcomings.

The upshot - I'm now re-ripping a lot of my music at very high bitrate ogg vorbis or wma, because the sound quality on this player is so good, you can tell. Now my crisis is that I want to wear really first rate headphones all the time...which looks kind of goofy on the subway, if you know what I mean.

Rating:
Summary: Cases are available
Review: You can find cases for this particular model (along with many others, including the creative nomad zen nx) at vajacases.com. Just expect to shell out a few to get you own customized case

Rating:
Summary: Very satisfying player, but losing the war with iPod
Review: I've had my Karma for about a year now, and have had nothing but good experiences with it. The year included a deployment to the Persian Gulf, and being limited on space it was a great help to burn my whole CD collection to my Rio and leave the CDs at home. I've got about 3500 songs on board now (mostly .wma's) and still have plenty of room for more. I do not agree at all with other reviewers' assertions that it's a fragile player. I dropped mine several times while running aboard ship, and it (literally) never missed a beat. It has very good battery life and a much more user-friendly interface than the iPod. My only beef - or regret, I suppose - is that there's very little in the way of third-party support for it. The entire industry seems to have decided Apple is the winner. I could find an iPod case in aluminum, neoprene, or ostrich skin, but I couldn't find a single case for my Rio. I wound up using a CaseLogic universal PDA case. I've likewise had no luck finding a car charger, yet in every electronics store there's a wall of support gadgets for the little white devil. So I can give the Karma a very strong recommendation, but caveat emptor. It's by far the best of the high-end mp3 players on the market, but you may be buying the next Betamax.

Rating:
Summary: Owned for over a year -- No problems
Review: I received this over a year ago for Christmas. I have had no problems whatsoever. I've even dropped it a few times. The only downsides are no case, and the front is a little scratched due to this.

Rating:
Summary: 2k5 and karma's still going strong
Review: If you're looking for a portable music player and your priority is storage, rather than small size, this is what you should buy. Aside from a few tiny things that make this player imperfect...it's perfect.

**Compatability**
Mp3 isn't the best sounding format, there are lots of others that sound better. If you have a cd you really like, you might consider converting it to FLAC or OGG which sound much better. With the Rio Karma you don't have to worry about not being able to play some of the wierd formats because it can play all sorts of formats that other players can't.

**Storage**
It has enough storage for anyone. No one listens to 20 GB of music and gets bored with it before getting a chance to return home to switch up their beats. Don't think you'll fit whatever number of tracks is advertised though, it just doesn't work out that way, what with varying formats and song lengths.

**Design and Software**
They thought of everything. Tons of features built into it. The program that comes with it to load music on is well-thought out and hasn't crashed on me yet. One annoying thing is that whilst in the docking station, the player keeps charging even after it's fully charged, you can tell because it stays warm. It's not a huge deal, but it doesn't seem great for the player.

**Battery Life**
I haven't been too good about watching the clock so I can't say for certain how long the battery life is, though I'd venture to say it's a little less than advertised. Which is still quite good considering it charges up fast and you don't have to buy batteries eva. And you can charge it up in the docking station or with just the charge cable, for travel purposes, so you don't have to pack the dock.

**Compared to the ipod**
The Ipod is nice. This is very close to the ipod that's of the same GB capacity (or nearest capacity). The main differences are that the karma can play better formats, making it sound better and that it's not as cute as the ipod (so i guess if you're a girly girl you might prefer an ipod). The karma is a little bulkier than the ipod. The ipod is sleek and fits nicely into a pocket whereas the karma is more square, and while of comparable weight (pretty durn light) a little more noticable in the pocket. Though it doesn't bother me because I wear slightly baggy pants. Yes. Slightly baggy.

**Overall**
I bought mine about a year ago when it was $300 and I don't regret my purchase. It's held up nicely and its pretty rugged, i've dropped it a couple times and it's fine. The only reason to not buy this player is if you want to use it for snowboarding or jogging or something, a smaller cheaper player would be better for that. RIP Mac Dre

Rating:
Summary: rio bad karma
Review: worked fine for 6 months then started locking up. To unlock I needed to reloaded the firmware. This worked several times but the last attempt to reload didnt work until I slammed the thing down in frustration. Somehow this magically fixed it and I was able to proceed with the firmware reload. Spend the extra money and get an Ipod unless you like frustration.

Rating:
Summary: Rio Karma Flaws
Review: I'm 26 yrs old and military, so this is a pretty adult review. I've owned 3 Rio Karma's inside of a month in a half. The good points of the Karma is like every Harddrive MP3 player, you can practically put your life's collection of CD's on it, completely eliminating carrying around CD cases in your car. I had 677 songs on my Karma and I still had 16.2 Gigabytes left on it (notice the verbage "had"). Now...The bad. This thing is about as durable as dropping a newborn, that's the reason I've owned three. One took a bump from about 5 feet, and would no longer boot up past the beginning screen, I called the Rio Help Desk and was told to take it back, it's done. The second one was a replacement from the store for returning the damaged one. This one completely shutdown on me after a morning 1 1/2 hour PT run, in about 30 degree weather, needless to say it went back to the store. The third one hasn't went bad yet, i brought it for my girlfriend and she's had better luck than me with the device. The bad thing is this device is not designed for physical activity, it's harddrive based so it needs to be stable. The device fails the durability test completely, one good drop and your going back to the store with it, the case hasn't enough protection to keep from jarring the harddrive on impact, making it lousy for all us physical activity people. Another thing is this device tends to freeze up at times, but just reset it and it's fine (hopefully you'll have a small enough pin to fit into the hole they provide). Overall I was very impressed in the beginning with the device, but now that I know the flaws, I would consider an IPOD over the Rio Karma any day of the week, I'm very disappointed considering it's a sony product and I always buy sony first. Overall:

Sound: 5
Battery: 5
Display: 5
Accesaries: 4 ( needs a carry case or something )
Durablity: 1

Recommendation: Not this player unless your a couch potato

Rating:
Summary: Here we go again
Review: Usually I check out the customer reviews before I buy a product but unfortunately have no control over those buying me Christmas presents. Evidently looking over this section of Amazon.com, my father bought a Rio Karma for me and I was certainly excited to use it upon delivery. But within a week, the device froze for the first time. Before it was a month old, the Karma froze beyond user repair. I haven't contacted customer service yet, but I'm certainly worried having read many of these reviews.