Rating: 
Summary: What do you mean it's big?
Review: I read some reviews after I ordered one and some of them were just praising Apple for the Creation of life.And once I got it I was wondering what these people were talking about it being so big(maybe for a Lilapution?)It's Not large at all and it works great walking around ive yet to have it skip on me once even running across the street or up and down stairs.The Is supurb and not one problem with the software or the playback.So I've come to think (and so have some other people I know)that maybe you people don't realy own one but want to voice your opinion so that's allright but befor you do so(if this is so)actually use one.but maybe it's just me and couple of other people that just don't have a problem with the RIOT,it has good storage space(a little more than 3 times as much as the I Pod and does more)for the same price.So any body out there thinking about buying one do so you realy won't be disappointed.
Rating: 
Summary: Great Player
Review: I really enjoyed my RIO RIOT Player, there is enough storage for as many songs as you want and for the player being big, well I attached it to my belt with the belt clip and had no problems running or walking so the people that are saying that the unit is big; did they read the dimensions before they spend the $400.00 for it. Does not seem to be too many smart shoppers out there. The Backlight is a little dim but I could see it fine, maybe those people should try wearing glassess. In my opinion if you cannot say anything good about a product then do not say anything at all. I thought it is a good player and I happen to like the features. I also have a ARCHOS Jukebox and it outshines that more than once. I would recommend that people purchase this for those who really like music on the go.
Rating:
Summary: You'll love this product but requires a learning curve
Review: I'm up & running after one day of tinkering with the software & hardware. I E-Mialed support twice because I had concerns of the negative reviews I read in Amazon.com. They replyed the next day. Their assistance was very helpful. I'm happy to say that I don't see ANY problems with this unit. I'm very happy after one day of working out the complexities of the Riot. I don't need USB2.0. The transfer rates are very fast with 1.10. Beside how many users have 2.0 at this time. I don't. I use the XP OS and everything installed & works correctly. I'm stoked about storing my ENTIRE (400) CD collection on the RIOT. I thought about this purchase for a long time. I hope others out there are as pleased as I am with this unit.
Rating: 
Summary: Don't Leave Home Without the Charger
Review: This unit produces great sound but the battery life greatly limits its possibilities. I can charge it for several hours and overnight it has lost 30-40% of battery power without even being turned on. In addition, it is my understanding that the battery cannot be replaced by the user. If IPOD were PC compatible, I would have chosen it instead. It is a shame that SonicBlue could not match the functionality of this player with its high quality sound.
Rating: 
Summary: A decent design, but ...
Review: The Rio Riot is a product that, to be blunt, needed about three more months of solid testing and "fixing" before being released. One of my biggest complaints, and one that isn't addressed much in others' reviews, has to do with battery charging. To begin with, the battery doesn't charge at all unless the player is turned on. (This is mentioned briefly in one of the paper "read me" documents in the box, but not in the manual itself.) What's worse, though, is that it the player doesn't hold its charge. A fully-charged player, turned off and sitting for about a day, loses roughly 20% of that charge. Leave it for a week, and you'd better plan on doing a full recharge before taking it anywhere, because it won't last an hour. Given the big price, the terrible software it ships with, and the alternatives in the market (including the iPod and the new Nomad), I couldn't recommend the Riot to a friend.
Rating:
Summary: Major Issues, great sound.
Review: I am on the verge of returning this for the following reasons:
(All issues are confirmed with Sonicblue.) 1. Transfer does not work well. In Win2K I have had to disable the CD in my computer to get the transfer to complete with out blue-screen (a conflict with atapi driver). Also, (this is my favorite bug) Realjukebox will crash if you *open the cd tray during a transfer*(!). Since transfers can take days, this is a problem... 2. Transfers are painfully slow (days to fill the device, with crashes). Far slower than USB 1.1 implies. (It can take 20 minutes just to delete a range of songs, so it can't be just USB...) 3. Sorting software on the device DOES NOT WORK. Genre setting sorts quasi-randomly, useless for playing classical music in order. Album sorting does not work properly, it combines albums into one list based on similarities in the album name. This feature was the main reason I picked this device over the Archos. The device does not sort by file name, only by ID tag, and then badly. So if you have an album sorted by track number, the Riot will sort it by track name for you when it plays it (it will display it in the right order in the music browser, just to get your hopes up...). Various other bugs (too numerous to mention). 4. RealJukebox only way to transfer music. (It's awful. They use an old version, and do not support upgrade to RealOne, which has the same features, and in my experience, works just as well (poorly)). 5. Device-only playlists largely useless. You cannot transfer/create playlists on your PC. You cannot reorder them on the device. Since the sorting funtionality does not work, your only hope to listen to things in order is to go create playlists track-by-track. (Using a scroll wheel and one button. It's like entering your initials in a video game.) On the other hand, once you get your tunes in the device, in random play, it works great. Sounds wonderful. (This is not just my opinion, this is Sonicblue techsupport's summary of the device.) It's a little big, but I didn't buy this to jog with, so that's not an issue. In sum, great hardware, lousy software.
Rating: 
Summary: Be Careful Before Purchasing This
Review: I am so upset with this product I'm ready to throw it right in the garbage. I transferred all 20 gigs of my music from my other MP3 Player to this new Riot and now I'm [in trouble]. I deleted my music from the other player thinking that I now had it all on the new Riot. Well I do but you know what? Once it is on the Riot it's stuck and there is no way to get it off or transfer it back to a hard drive. I called their tech support and they said there is no way to get my music back. That is ridiculous considering the other 20 gig MP3 player I had was just a USB hard drive. So much better. And so much faster at transferring. This Riot is the slowest piece of garbage I have ever used. And you have to use Real Jukebox to transfer your files. There's no other choice. Whatever happened to open standards? My other MP3 Player even worked under Linux. This Riot is not worth the money at all. Go with another brand.
Rating:
Summary: Amazon, you may get this one back!
Review: I'm on my 3rd day with the Riot. It quit the second morning;
locked up solid. The power switch wouldn't turn it off. This
happened after trying to play different tracks. It only had
5 albums on it! I left it to run down the battery, but that
didn't help. Still locked solid. I was able to reset it with a paper clip in the reset hole on
the back. I then took Rio's advice to delete the bad tracks
(why bad, I don't know -- they're fine on the PC). However,
that is hard to do, since after the player flags a track as
unplayable, it removes it from the playlist so you can't find
out what it was. Plus, you have to navigate to other menus
to do the deleting. I ended up wiping the unit, so I can
start over. But, I forgot the very special USB cable, so I
couldn't do it at work today. One more try at this, and then I'm going to give up. Right
now I don't think this product was ready for release. I'll give some of my likes and dislikes, aside from the
fact that it doesn't work! Also, this is based on very
little actual time with the unit operating. Good points:
* size isn't really an issue for me. It's big, but OK.
* user interface seems OK, but I only had two hours! Down side:
* the backlight can only be set to be fully off, or to be
on for a period of time after you press any button. BUT,
when I have it set, and I press a button, the whole display
becomes unreadable to me while the light is on. Didn't
try it in the dark. I think this is going to be useless,
or worse.
* they have lots of warnings about not sticking the power
plug in the headphone hole. They are about one/half inch
apart, and similar. Is this bad design or what? I keep buying new products, and always say that you should
wait until the bugs get worked out. That definitely seems
to be the case here.
Rating:
Summary: Lots to Like, but a few design flaws
Review: The Riot seems to be very well made, and it has worked flawlessly for me for three weeks. It replaces a 6 Gigabyte Nomad Jukebox. Compared to the Nomad, the Riot is more convenient to operate (the jogwheel is nice, and much quicker than Nomad's buttons), has a better display (bigger font than Nomad) and a mostly better file management system and both loads and turns off much more quickly (a big plus). The included FM radio is a big improvement over the Nomad, which has no radio. The 20GB drive is a huge improvement over the 6GB on the Nomad or the I-pod (though Creative now offers a 20GB Nomad with similar capacity). I like the case (which has a belt clip, and permits access to the controls) and, unlike other reviewers, I am not especially bothered either by the Riot's size (bigger than I-pod but on a par with Nomad and Archos) or by its use of USB 1.0 instead of much faster Firewire. Sound quality is as good as the Nomad (which is fine), and the player may play just a little bit louder (which is better). Unlike the Nomad, this player doesn't record, and lacks a separate line out jack for use with a home stereo (though I think you can use the headphone jack as an output jack with the proper cabling). Two big gripes: The software on the player does not permit you to create a "single use" playlist of songs by various artists. If you want to turn the player on and listen to songs from multiple artists, you need to create such a list, you need to name and save it, before you can play it, and I find this a frustrating timewaster. My second (and bigger) gripe concerns the battery: it is built-in and not user replaceable, so you can't carry a spare battery as you can with the Nomad. The fully charged battery powers only about 1/2 of the ten hours of use its supposed to provide, which might not be enough for some users. Finally, the player comes with multiple warnings against (1) recharging the battery before it is fully drained, or (ii) leaving the player plugged into the charger after it is fully charged. Because the battery status display also is not very finely calibrated, I feel that I need to pay way too much attention to battery charge status. This can add up to a big problem if I know that I will want to use the player for several hours on a given day. For that much use, I need to start the day with a fully charged battery. To do that, given Rio's warnings, I must remember to leave the player on all evening the day before, to make sure the battery is fully drained and ready to charge so that I can plug the unit in at bedtime, then get up in the middle of the night to unplug the unit and guard against overcharging. The Real Jukebox software that you load on your pc for use with this player seems inferior to the Musicmatch based software that ships with the Nomad Jukebox, especially for organizing files and editing mp3 tags. I don't know whether you can effectively substitute either Musicmatch or Windows Media Player, but its worth investigating. I know that you can not use Windows Explorer to move files back and forth from the Riot to your PC, as I believe you can with the Archos. So, all in all, I'm glad I bought the Riot instead of the 20 GB Nomad. But only a little bit.
Rating:
Summary: Not Ready For Prime Time!
Review: Great concept, but poor quality. After a weeks worth of use, the battery went dead and won't hold a charge. The battery implementation is sub-par, suffering from a poor visual indicator, to a charging scenario that's designed to cause a failure. The documentation gives two different recommneded charging times (4 to 6 or 6 to 8 ) hours, and there's no mechanism to prevent overcharging. Net your bound to overcharge and eventually ruin the battery. Wait for rev 2!
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