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RioVolt SP100 Portable CD/MP3 Player with 120 Second Anti-Shock

RioVolt SP100 Portable CD/MP3 Player with 120 Second Anti-Shock

List Price: $169.99
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Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Worked great -- until it died
Review: Loved it, used it everyday, had only nice things to say about it. Until about the four-month mark, when it just up and died for no apparent reason. Loved it enough that I'll get another one -- and recommend you do the same -- but this time I'll keep the receipt and register it so I can invoke the warranty.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: absolute [junk]
Review: initially, i was very excited about purchasing this unit. I did extensive research and the rio volt came up time and time again. I decided to plunk down the [money] at [a local retailer].

Initially, it worked great with no problems. That was about 3 months. Afterwards, it was nothing but annoying to say the least. The unit seems picky when it comes to the brand of blank cd's you use. i used memorex cd's and it worked fine, but with any other brand, it wouldn't even spin up the cd and the words "NO DISC" continued to come up. Later, the unit wouldn't even load up the Memorex CD's. Sometimes i'd have to restart the unit 10 times before the unit would load the MP3's off of the cd. Then, it would skip like crazy. I actually let it skip and try to play through one song... a 4 minute song took about 27 minutes to play because it skipped so badly. I did make several attempts to clean the lens with a good cd lens cleaner, but it made absolutely no difference whatsoever.

The battery life dwindled considerably over the course of a few months. It started to give me 14 hours of life from 2 AA batteries (as promised at the website), but soon, i was lucky to get 4 hours with rechargable nickel hydride batteries.

I live in a cold climate and they player just seemed to never want to warm up sometimes. I would never leave something so expensive in my car... but when i would use it in my car after warming it up, it continued to give me problems. I'm not sure if the problems with the unit are caused by the cold or by terrible construction. Either way, it's a piece of junk.

I did like the remote control on the headphones, but the earbuds that are included sound terrible which meaned that i had to purchase additional headphones. The carry case that comes with the unit is absolutely useless and hardly seems worthy of using. How much does someone have to spend to get a protective carry case that isn't as thin as a piece of paper? i think [the cost] is more than sufficent to justify a real "protective" case.

If you're looking for a portable MP3 player worthy of your time and your hard earned income, i would highly recomend the Creative Labs Jukebox any day over this. I replaced my Rio Volt with one and i have been in absolute MP3 heaven ever since.

Do yourself a favor... walk right past this unit at the store and pick up a Creative Labs Jukebox. Rio needs to serriously rethink the way they do things and treat their customers because they've completely lost me as a customer and more are sure to follow if they buy one of these overpriced paperweights.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Outstanding!
Review: The SP100 represents for me a quantum leap in personal music management. With the help of the new iMac and iTunes, I've been able to rip and burn twelve hours worth of wildly diverse music from an endless source: my own CD collection, MP3s downloaded from the internet, and the large collection of CDs from the public library. Everyone from Phillip Glass, R.L. Burnside, and Marshall Crenshaw, all on one CD-RW. So far, the unit has worked flawlessly.You must, however, prepare your media carefully before burning. That means properly tagging each title with the .mp3 suffix and arranging music by album, artist, and proper song numbering sequence. If you simply throw a jumble of songs onto a CD-R disk the result will be less than satisfactory. Battery usage was okay with regular alkalines but spend a few extra bucks on long life lithiums or better yet a good nickel-metal hydride rechargeable battery kit. Yes, the ear buds are [POOR]. The Koss KSC50 Sportclips are an good substitute. The sound quality is excellent and user defined playback options are plentiful. Having the freedom to burn some 100 or more songs and listening to them at random in shuffle play is a new experience of pure delight! This is truly a consumer empowering tool - the musical possibilities are endless. I congratulate SonicBlue on an outstanding product.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Great value, way cool
Review: First off let me say that ... this is a great deal. I use mine at work, then I plug it in my car (with the Koss car kit) then I plug it in at home to my Denon receiver. The sound is great, unless you have a (expensive) stereo system at home. But then again, if you have that, why are you listening to mp3s?
The good:
-remote is cool. I keep the player in my glove box and I glued my remote to the dash. Out of site and easy to get to.
-good sound
-I love mp3s
-you can put mucho grande mp3s on a CD - no changing discs!
-it reads directories
-it displays song title, band and track number
If I had some complaints, this is what they would be:
-it reads directories, which is cool. But it doesn't read 2 directories down. For example if I have \Pearl_Jam\10\ on a CD, it will show nothing in the "Pearl_Jam" directory and all the songs will be in a directory called "10". So if I don't remember what band "10" belongs to, I have to guess. Now I just name all the directories with the band name in it (Pearl_Jam-10)
-the battery door doesn't stay shut worth a damn. The batteries never fall out, but I'm always worried they are going to.
-the display is so small, you can only see the words "[MP3] 01 TE" and you have to wait for the display to start scrolling before you can see what the band and song is (by the way the full line would say "[MP3] 01 TEN Pearl Jam-Jeremy" that would take about 5 seconds to scroll across.
The FM receiver wasn't worth it to me and the shock protection has been plenty so I think this model is the best value.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Great value, way cool
Review: First off let me say that for [price] this is a great deal. I use mine at work, then I plug it in my car (with the Koss car kit) then I plug it in at home to my Denon receiver. The sound is great, unless you have a $1500 stereo system at home. But then again, if you have that, why are you listening to mp3s?
The good:
-remote is cool. I keep the player in my glove box and I glued my remote to the dash. Out of site and easy to get to.
-good sound
-I love mp3s
-you can put mucho grande mp3s on a CD - no changing discs!
-it reads directories
-it displays song title, band and track number
If I had some complaints, this is what they would be:
-it reads directories, which is cool. But it doesn't read 2 directories down. For example if I have \Pearl_Jam\10\ on a CD, it will show nothing in the "Pearl_Jam" directory and all the songs will be in a directory called "10". So if I don't remember what band "10" belongs to, I have to guess. Now I just name all the directories with the band name in it (Pearl_Jam-10)
-the battery door doesn't stay shut worth a damn. The batteries never fall out, but I'm always worried they are going to.
-the display is so small, you can only see the words "[MP3] 01 TE" and you have to wait for the display to start scrolling before you can see what the band and song is (by the way the full line would say "[MP3] 01 TEN Pearl Jam-Jeremy" that would take about 5 seconds to scroll across.
The FM receiver wasn't worth it to me and the shock protection has been plenty so I think this model is the best value.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Great Player...sounds great, GREAT overall
Review: I love the RioVolt SP100 . I do not know much about the difference between the 90 and the 100 models except that the 100 model is upgradeable and has a backlight. The backlight is a great advantage. If you can afford the SP100 model, go for the upgrade...

The player has a pretty cool feature where after reading the song, after about 10-15 seconds, the CD stops spinnig to save battery power. The player reads both MP3 formats and also WMA (Windows Media Format).

Controls are easy to use and you will learn what does what very quickly. It has a built in +10 song skipper (skips 10 tracks) and an pre set EQ modes for better sound quality (Rock, jazz). Key hold on side (Prevents buttons from being pressed involintarily. Takes 2 AA bateries ( Im still on my first 2 which came with the player)

Overall, its a great player for your money (if you get it from Jandr.com) Buy this one over any other one.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Nice features, but its not durable
Review: The SP100 has good features, and works pretty well but it not built very sturdy. While inside my padded case logic cd-carrier it fell down and broke. I have read other reviews where the same experience has happened to many other people. I just bought the Sony CD-MP3 player and it is a lot better, much more durable, and much better skip protection.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Overall I am well pleased
Review: Overall I think this is a very good product. I cannot give it 5 becuase there are a few things that bug me.
1- Battery life is short.
2- It does not hold the mode you are in (so if you are in random and turn it off it does not start in that mode agian, a feature that is hard to find anyway so).
3- The case it comes with is useless.
4- Anti-shock is so-so. I use it at the Gym and it works great for everything but jogging. I got a gym belt for it and on 40sec anti skip normal audio CD's don't do very well. MP3's do ok. I have to take the belt off and hang it off the tredmill then it is fine.

Over all though I am pleased I bought it.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: I'm quite happy with it.
Review: It's so hard to buy an Mp3 Player, because there are so many flavors, so it took me a while to choose one and even longer to buy it online.

One thing that surprised me the most was that you can update it's software from their website. This gave my RioMp3 so many new functions that it didn't have before.

I haven't tried it with WMA but it's been working fine mainly with mp3's. I've used it almost for 1 month without any real problem.
I tried to play UDF Mp3CD's and it worked well, i tried it mixed (Data & Mp3s) and no problem neither.

A Mp3 Cd player is better then a memory card or a huge hard disk player so I can say i recommend it.
It has really nice features and it's not that expensive for what you get.

It's very nice although it could be better. I dont like the non stop moving song title nor the dancing guys in the LCD screen.
The memory button allows you to isolate a section of a song to play over and over again but it's not a big use.

And I've been having some lecture problems with some Cd's but it might as well be them and not the Player.

Good luck!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Everything included!
Review: Tihs product is one of the best i have seen out there. I spent many hours researching these cd/mp3 players and couldn't decide. They all have one thing or another. I decided to go with my gut instinct, and i was right with getting this one. It is a great product. It has so many featues, that it can even get a little confsing with what is what. It has a remote that enable you to control it in your bacpack or on your desk with out looking down at the controls. The player is uupgradable to any possibilities. All you do is download a file from sonicblue's website, burn it to a cd, and play it. It takes 5 seconds to play, and upgrades to wahtever new features there are. THe carrying case that comes with it is a tight fit for it, but is not made for keeping all of its supplies in. It is made for holding the player only. You attach headphones through a slit in the side of the case. One of the biggest advantages it that it comes with baterries. Your saving 4 bucks there. One other great feature is that it is back lit, with a great indigo light to see. THis is an awsome product, that looks great, and is a reasonable price. I bought one before this that made all sorts of noises. THis player was sold out everywhere and was reserved by at least 30 people at each store. I was tld i would have to wait for 2 months to get it. WIth amazon it came in 4 days plus free shipping! Awsome product, get it. There is no better.


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