Rating: 
Summary: poor customer service
Review: This being my first player I have nothing to compare it to. I was very pleased with the space and the controls. The size of the player is a little big for exercise, but if you can deal with that the Rio sounds good. The big problem is with Sonicblue and the customer service. I have had problems with the player not turning on whether it was fully charged or plugged into the wall with the charging unit.It now wants to continually lock up. I have tried to use the customer service and all they want to do is pass the buck and send me a link to someone that is not even pertaining to my questions sent or the model player I have. It is apparent that Sonicblue is finished with the customer after they sell their product. I wish I had read the review from the others who said they have had customer service problems. I now have to send it back and fear I will run into the same problem as the "electronics fan" from Co. Think twice if this player is what you want. Warranties are just paperwork[]if they do not live up to their promise and resolve your problems.
Rating: 
Summary: Unreliability
Review: We received our first player and it worked for about 3 days - during which time we spend about 8 hours loading music onto it. It then stopped working, so we sent it back to SonicBlue for a replacement. The replacement arrived and has never even turned on successfully. They have taken 2 weeks to arrange for us to ship it back free of charge for yet another replacement, and refuse to give a refund!
Rating: 
Summary: Two thumbs up for the Rio Riot!!
Review: This jukebox, though bigger than the I-pod, is still fairly small, not much bigger than a cassette walkman. I read the reviews about the slow transfer times, but was pleasantly suprised at the speed of the transfers. I was expecting it to be alot slower than it was. Also, the Rio DJ is an excellent feature as is the FM tuner with 8 presets. The radio pulls in a decent signal, too. The software that comes with the Rio(Real-1) is very easy to use and organizes your music nicely. Overall, I do not have anything negative to say about this unit other than the short battery life, but the rechargable batteries make this a minor inconvienence. The price is definitly right, too.
Rating: 
Summary: Rio Riot- beyond the software
Review: I have owned this awesome machine for over 6 months and I LOVE it! There were times however I was ready to throw it in the river as the software often could not find the "device" Sonic Blue has dropped the ball on getting Real Player Jukebox to find this device and All their advice has not worked. HOWEVER turning the riot on and THEN plugging the device in to the USB port will solve this glitch. One bit of advice. See if you can get the software to work THEN after you KNOW it is possible to transfer your MP3s to the Riot RIP ALL your songs at once @ the highest quality possible this may take you a week depending on your computer speed but the advantage is you can transfer all the music to the "device" (the Rio Riot) at once. Tranfering the music may take several hours to do so just set it up to transfer overnight, go to bed, and in the morning with any luck, all your music will be loaded and ready to play! Once you have your MP3s transferred the Riot really shines and finding and playing songs/artists/Genre/or a complete random mix of tunes is user friendly and performs flawlessly. The only reason I do not give this a 5 star rating is the glitches in the Real Software But once you get the music on the Riot you are home free. I highly recomend this player. The only other down side I feel is the battery life is not nearly as long as advertised and when it's dead it needs to be plugged in. The manual states it should not be left plugged in "for an extended time" How long is that? I charge mine up overnight and it is good for 5 or so hours but I wish it just had a replacement external clip on type power source where you could by another battery pack and clip it on when the other goes dead.
Rating:
Summary: Good value for money
Review: I bought my Rio Riot about 4 months ago for 170 dollars and I am very satisfied with it. A good value for money, considering that other MP3 jukebox at that time with 20gigs capacity costing way more than 250 dollars. There are currently around 800 songs in my Riot and I am using about one fourth of its capacity. I don't find the transfer speed terribly annoying, but that's probably just because I have always uploaded not too many tracks at one time. The sound is very nice, and the playing features are very useful, provided that mp3 tags of yours songs are correctly maintained. The bad thing is that the songs you put into the device cannot be retrieved back to your PC. Other weakness is that some songs suffer glitches (or even stopped abruptly, yes, this can be very annoying) after downloaded. But I can always re-download these erroneous tracks. In conclusion, if you just want a machine to store all your mp3 collection and you don't put too much attention on transfer speed, you have time to re-check the downloaded songs and you don't mind re-uploading some tracks, then this device can suite you right.
Rating:
Summary: A Good Buy
Review: The Rio Riot is an excellent player. It's 20 GB storage is massive. The sound quality is great-- and I rip my CDs to WMA at just 96 kbps. The FM reception here in NY is very good as well-- I have been able to recieve all the strong stations clearly. While it takes a while to download hundreds of songs to the Riot, once the files are transferred they are very well organized and easy to find. The backlight could be clearer, but not as bad as some of the other reviewers say it is. It comes with Real Jukebox to rip and transfer songs, but Real has released a new driver that makes the Riot compatible with Windows Media Player 9.0-- making it much easier manage and transfer your music files. I have always hated Real Jukebox/Player. All in all, the Rio Riot is a great bargain.
Rating:
Summary: Mixed Nuts
Review: The actual player works like a dream. Very intuitive menu set up and the software works with little problems after the upgrade is installed. On the other hand the support on the website is horrid. The downloads dont work and the site seems more interested in selling their stuff and setting you loose for better or worse. I got an error each time i tried to download any file from the website. The only bad part of the player itself is that it is very large for an MP3 player. This isn't really too much of a problem when you consider that the massive hard drive holds more than many computer hard drives. I would reccomend this purchase only if you consider yourself good with computers and dont feel that updates are very important.
Rating:
Summary: Rio Riot better than expected...
Review: ...after reading reviews even from amazon.com I assumed that the Rio Riot that I had just purchased was going to be a piece of junk. I thought the size would be entirely too bulky for me to handle and I thought the menu would be terrible. I'm glad I made the purchase despite the reviews. The menus are great... I love the Rio DJ that allows you to play favorites and even songs by decade. I also thought the software would be terrible. I've used Real Jukebox before and didn't like it, but I didn't use it to transfer files to a portable device. I still use Winamp to play my MP3s but I, from now on, will use Real Jukebox (included) to transfer. If i could change only 2 things about the Riot they would be: 1.) The enternal battery... I would much rather have external batteries that you could replace rather than the internal, rechargable ones in the Riot... 2.) I would also change the quality of the included headphones... they're ok, but they aren't the greatest... Other than these 2 minor things, which you can work around, the Rio Riot is the greatest thing I've seen for the money...
...And for those interested in playing your Rio Riot in your car's stereo, I strongly urge you to buy a cassette adapter to run through your tape player rather than the iROCK! and similar wireless devices... the quality is very static filled through the iRock... I bought one through Amazon, but wound up going to my local Walmart to buy a cassette adapter for my car.
Rating:
Summary: Basic MP3 player, limited features
Review: I bought this MP3 player to Rip and play audio books for my long commute to work. The bulk doesn't bother me, not even at the gym. The price per gig was the main attraction and the FM tuner sealed the deal. My previous 2 mp3 players were both Rio's the 800 and the 600. Both had severe problems but I got them very affordably and was able to use my 64 meg backpack for both. I decided to give Rio one more shot. At first I was in awe of this player, the little dial used to scroll through music was neat, nice protective case Sweet, actual earphones instead of those uncomfortable ear buds. Large readable screen. Advanced player options. Then I started transferring music. I hate Real like everyone else. The constant bombardment of advertisement [stinks]. Why can't you just attach it as a drive damn I got a usb pen drive that does that and I had sort of hoped this would.
My first book I transferred was about 650 megs. 400 Files. It took about an hour. A little slow but I don't really care about that. I was very concerned about playing the files in order as you can well imagine. It was a nightmare to make Real player put the damn files in order. Then I upped my small collection of mp3's for the gym. At this point I was totally dismayed with the lack of bookmark functions... A 20 gig mp3 player that can hold thousands of files with out the ability to bookmark????? My rio 800 and 600 could bookmark. I was also disappointed that I could not create and upload a playlist from my pc. So many files to manage, that feature would have made so much sense. So I spent an hour or so making a play list and getting everything organized... Every time I switched from my music play list to my audio book (having to remember exactly what file I was on because there are no bookmarks) I had to scroll through hundreds of files (your thumb gets tired as hell spinning that dial) to pick up on the file where you left off.
My next book I uploaded was only 20 files (yay don't have to scroll through 400 files). This is when I discovered the players true flaw, long playing mp3 files! If you have a 38 minute mp3 and you want to get to the 35th minute, you are in for a very frustrating experience. You have to sit there and hold the fast forward button in. It will stop every few minutes and play at normal speed. Then pick up and fast forward again, then it will skip to the next track so you have to start all over again. I sat there for about 10 minutes this morning trying to get to 37 on a 39 minute spoken word audio track. As a side note, the backlight totally sucks, no matter how I played with the contrast it still looks like crap is very hard to read. On the other hand, the battery has been very reliable. I have got my 10 hours and then some, also the power save mode actually works and hasn't locked up the player once. (like it use to on both my other Rio's) I guess for basic users this is a good, reliable mp3 player with 20 gigs of space for your listening pleasure. If you want books on mp3 or tag editing, song organization, or some advanced features that may seem like common since you will be pretty frustrated..
Rating:
Summary: Great Product
Review: This is a great product. You can access your songs rapidly because of the scroll wheel. It is very fast to transfer the music files. Im really pleased with it. If you want to spend the money, get it, it is worth it every penny. Good Luck
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