Rating: 
Summary: Should I keep this puppy?
Review: ...Well, I am pleasantly suprised with this player. Its display, UI, FM and sound are a very nice surprise (believe it or not, I find myself listening to FM more that I would ever have thought -- when in sitting at PC).Because it was so cheap I think I will keep it...
Rating: 
Summary: Rio Riot Bites
Review: After only two months of use my Rio Riot appears to have severe battery problems it will appear functionless for days and then revive itself. Rio has generously offered to replace the device, but there is no way for me to transfer my songs into the new device. So hours of work downloading and transfering has been lost.
Rating:
Summary: Great player. not perfect, but then again nothing is.
Review: Ok, here's the deal. This was my first ever mp3 player and i spent a very long time researching what mp3 player to buy. I was about to shell out 350 bucks or whatever the price of the 5gb ipod was until i saw the dramatic price drop of this player. Right away this player was back into consideration. I bought this player and i love it. The biggest concern I had was how heavy and bulky was this player going to be. Myself, being a high school student wanted something that would fit in a cargo pocket. Sure enough, it did. My next concern was that I saw alot of other people who bought this item and were ticked off on how slow it took to download alot of songs. Me not being used to things going fast for me (i have 56k) found that it wasn't as slow as I thought it would be. It took me about 5-7 minutes to download 50 songs on to the player. I am extremly happy with my player BUT the only flaw i noticed was that my screen sometimes froze and would not shut off. I had to wait a couple hours until it shut off automatically and I had to recharge the battery all over again (even if it was fully chraged before). This was the only problem i have had so far and it is very minor to me. Personally, i would rather my screen freeze then have to pay more than twice as much for an iPod. If anyone wants to hold a good amount of music but doesn't want to pay alot of money. GET THIS!! IT IS SO WORTH IT
Rating: 
Summary: Fun and Convenient
Review: This is a great MP3 player!! I read many reviews before purchasing the Rio Riot. The positive reviews far outweighed the negative, so I took a chance. And I am glad that I made this purchase. The Rio Riot is wonderful. The sound is great and it holds ALL of my 250 CDs with much room to spare. I use Windows XP and at first I did have some problems with the USB connection, but no longer. The only negatives I found thus far are the headphones, they are pitiful and the software is even worse. I have replaced with the headphones for better sound and I have to just live with the software until there is something better. I love attaching the Riot to speakers and listening to a great mix of music anytime. The Riot is awesome!
Rating: 
Summary: Here's the URL for the latest drivers
Review: ...I like it, bulky as it is. This isn't a shirt pocket player, but it's tolerable on your belt or in a coat pocket. The sound quality is very good, and the headphones are _excellent_. The menu system and controls take some practice, but are adequate once you get accustomed to them...
Rating:
Summary: objective review!
Review: OK I was real worried about purchasing this product after reading very mixed reviews about this unit. Not having the cash to spring for a iPod, I broke down and decided to give this a chance.
First impression was that it is bigger then I thought it would be...can bearly fit in the inside pocket of my coat. The menu system is great, much better then iPod's bland look. Sound quality is pretty solid...had a problem with a couple tracks having background noise...but I deleated them and re-installed with no other programs running on the computer while transfering them...the result was much better. The over all design is good except for the select and menu button. You press menu to bring up the menu then you use select while you navigate through the menu options...which is fine but if your like me you'll get used to using select and try to bring up the menu by pressing select which will start playing a track...kinda annoying but got used to it.
The major negative is the software...it does .... I've heard bad things about ripping cd's using Realjukebox so I used MusicMatch instead. Unfortunately you have to use Realjukebox to transfer the mp3 tracks. I have had a few problems with it...namely when some songs transfered, the file names becomes causing me to delete them off the player and retransfer with no further problems. There have been times where while its transfering it will say "unable to transfer specific file" and stop...causing me to have to redo the transfer list and retry...again with no further problems. The worst was when during transfering it stopped and locked up for whatever reason and had to reset the Rio player.
To whomever said you have to listen to album tracks in alphabetical order, your wrong. I'm able to listen to my albums with the songs in the proper order...maybe you don't have the track sequence numbers on your mp3 files...who knows.
As a player I think its top notch....you can find any song very easily and the display is awesome. It may sound like I have had a lot of problems with it...but I'm very happy I purchased it. I'd rather save a couple hundred bucks and deal with the ... software, which is the only reason why I'm not giving this 5 stars.
Rating:
Summary: Good mix of features; great price...
Review: One size does NOT fit all; especially in the market for digital music players, where every available product has a matching set of disadvantages to accompany its desirable features.Whether the RIO RIOT meets a given buyer's needs will depend on just what that buyer's needs and prejudices are. For me, the RIOT works beautifully. Other people might differ. The RIOT's three best features are brain-dead obvious:
- Low Price (as of Feb, 2003)
- Large storage capacity thanks to its 20GB HD *and* its support for WMA files
- Very good user interface thanks to a large, clear, 3" diagonal screen, good screen layout, and simple controls The less-desirable features are equally obvious:
- A less than pocketable size of 5"x3"x1.3"
- USB 1.1 data transfer
- A very poor choice of music management software in Real Jukebox, the most annoying piece of nagware this side of pop-up ads. For me, the RIOT works out just fine because its pluses meet all my needs and its minuses are mostly irrelevant to my situation. For example, the size of the RIOT is a non-issue since it fits in my pants pocket just fine, the carrying case has an excellent belt clip, and I do most of my music listening either at home through my Stereo or in my car, anyway.
The USB data transfer speed? Yes, it's relatively slow, but one should remember this product was designed in 2001 and that adding either USB 2.0 and/or FIREWIRE support would've increased the cost. Notice that comparable products with higher transfer rates cost about double what the RIOT costs? Faced with the choice, I'd rather save the money.
And as for the REAL JUKEBOX, well, the less said about that the better. The good news is that you don't *have* to use it to download music to the RIOT. The first thing to keep in mind if you buy a RIOT is to forget about the included CD; just go straight to the RIOHOME website and download three files:
- the latest drivers for the RIOT; as of Feb '03 that would be the beta drivers for windows 2000/XP, last updated April 2002 (Officially unsupported but they work flawlessly)
- the latest version of firmware for the RIOT; as of Feb '03, that is version 1.25, dated Jan, 2003
- the latest version of the MOODLOGIC application; as of Feb '03, that would be version 2.5
Once you install the three downloads, you will be able to archive your CD music using whatever tool you prefer (for me that is Windows Media Player 9) in your choice of MP3 or WMA formats (I prefer WMA 64kbps for everything except classical music). I deposit the newly-created files in a dummy directory and then I use MOODLOGIC to download them to the RIOT before moving the songs to my permanent hard drive collection. Ideally, I would prefer for Windows Media Player to support the RIOT directly, as it does most other RIO players, (its listed on the Windows Media Web site, so such support *may* be forthcoming) but the MOODLOGIC application works fine and its playlist-generation features are intriguing. Maybe I'll explore that later. For now, I'm busy enough moving my full music accumulation (500 CDs, so far) to the RIOT. Next, I'll start on my old cassettes and LPs. Right now it looks like the RIOT will hold every piece of music I own with a few hundred megabytes to spare for future purchases. Other features of note?
The RIO DJ feature is very nice and once I teach it which music is my favorite (by playing it) I expect I'll be using it a lot.
The menu system is simple; you invoke it with a dedicated button and navigate it with a scroll-wheel, a select button, and a cancel button.
The RIOT does a very good job of sorting songs by Album or artist based on the ID3 tags, but it does *not* seem to retain the track number info, so the albums are *not* played in order. I'll have to use playlists for the few albums where this is critical. (Like I said, it is not a perfect product; maybe future firmware updates will fix this, maybe not.)
Sound quality? It depends on the playback medium, but when I pipe the signal through my stereo it sounds as good as the original CDs. With a pair of quality headphones it sounds better than my stereo.
Oh, yes, the equalizer functions are limited to BASS and Treble. Of course, I have external equalizers both at home and in my car so, again, it is a non-issue.
Battery life? I haven't timed it but I seem to be getting about 8 hours of continuous playback time in between charges.One thing that everybody who has seen it has remarked on is the display.
It is just plain superb.
Very readable and, with the 1.25 firmware, it displays exactly the information you need during playback.
Faced with a choice between a smaller player with a lesser screen, I'd go for the RIOT's "bulk" every time. Not that its *that* big. (Its about the size of two stacked PDAs, definitely smaller than a paperback book.) All in all; the RIOT works for me because, first of all, it supports Windows media so I can store double the music I could on an MP3-only player (otherwise, I couldn't get all my music onto it without sacrificing quality). Second, the onboard screen and user interface are excellent. Third, the sound quality is excellent, as far as my ears can tell. And finally, the price. Gotta love that price... Bottom line: a good quality, hard-drive based player for anybody who wants to save money and doesn't insist on shirt-pocket size.
Rating: 
Summary: What about support?
Review: This player is OK at best. Yes it holds 20 gb of songs, which might be great if it had a useful search function, say to play all songs with "Tricky" in the filename or if it would play album tracks in numerical order. Imagine hearing the songs from Abbey Road in alphabetical order only. It's (stupid). If you run Windows 2000, the only software that will load songs into the player is a horrendous MoodLogic. Why wouldn't Rio's own RioPort Audio Manager work? Find something better. Good luck ...
Rating:
Summary: 20 Gig Paper Weight
Review: I bought this particular MP3 player for several reasons. One was that I was going on deployments and was tired of carrying books of CDs that could get scratched, lost, or stolen. The 20 gig HD was perfect. The FM radio was an added bonus. And for a while, I loved this thing. However, when I had a problem with the battery, SONICBLUE would return my emails until I sent them 2 more. Then for no reason, the machine got stuck in a loop and would not come on. When I emailed SONICBLUE 3 times about this, they didn't even respond. I downloaded firmware, software, drivers and everything from the web site with no succes. It's been about 2 weeks since my last email and still no reponce. DONT BUY THIS PAPERWEIGHT. IT WILL CAUSE YOU GREAT FRUSTRATION. If nothing else I have said has convinced you, look at this. This unit first went on the market at almost $$$. Now, you can get for almost half that.
Rating:
Summary: XP works fine
Review: This is one of the greatest affordable mp3 players out there. And sonicblue has made a file which will stop the complained about glithches that many people speak of having in windows XP and 2000. All in all, this was definitely worth the money i spent on it.
|
