Rating: 
Summary: A familiar tale: It's great while it lasts
Review: I will echo what seems to be a common refrain: after a while, the Rio 600 just quit working for no apparent reason. If you turn the volume up all the way, you can hear a faint clicking and popping rendition of what would be the bass line if you could hear the music.I got this unit free as a promotion when I bought some networking equipment. I thought it was a neat little gadget, and it worked as promised in the beginning. The software could be more intuitive, but it got the music onto the player. The earphones hurt my ears, so I replaced them with an inexpensive pair of Koss earbuds from Wal-Mart, and that worked great. I was very pleased with the sound quality of this little unit. 32 MB is really not quite enough memory, however; you could expect to get 30 to 40 minutes worth of music loaded. If you're planning on using it a lot, rechargeable batteries would be a good idea (although if it breaks fast enough, that won't matter). I tried it out for running and for downloading short clips to practice on my guitar, but the bottom line was that it was never quite convenient enough for me to use regularly. So it sat in a drawer for many months until my wife's portable CD player started to skip. I loaded up a playlist for her, and the first time she tried it out while running, the abovementioned problem occurred. Judging from the other reviews, this is a non-repairable problem, so it looks like we'll toss the Rio 600 and try something else. Nice try, SonicBlue, but at this point the most valuable parts of the unit are the Koss earbuds and the AA battery.
Rating: 
Summary: Good Start for S3
Review: This is an excellent introductory model MP3 player. It gives you 32MB Base memory, USB transfer and Audible support; and it also allows for future support of AAC Dolby decoding playback. The WMA is pretty insiginificant if MP3 is supported because MP3 can be encoded without any security features which is what most buyers of portable MP3 players want anyway, but it is there if you want it. Future memory capacity expansion is the most promising aspect of the Rio 600. S3 announced support for Smartmedia, Compact Flash II (including the new 1GB IBM Microdrive which should be available soon), and eventual support of the new Dataplay format (which is a cheap recordable disk about the size of a quarter that costs around $5 and can hold about 500MB per disk). If you wait the low amount of Base memory will become insiginificant in the face of how much each expansionary module for new memory formats will be able to hold for you to play back in your Rio 600 MP3 Player. The only problem left will be the need for quick and easy to use AAC encoders so you can convert your entire CD collection to AAC instead of MP3 (so you can use your Rio 600 to listen to your brand spanking new AAC collection instead of lugging around those CD-ROM's-full of your old and clunky MP3's!)
Rating: 
Summary: excellent product- rio 600
Review: I was very pleased with the Rio 600. Before recieving it, i was worried it wouldn't turn out so well because i had checked online reviews about it and said that it doesn't work, etc. However, for me it worked great! I took it on a field trip, it worked perfectly. very easy to change the battery. the battery can wear out fast, but don't keep the backlighting on so much, and remember to turn it off. by doing that, the battery lasted for three days for me. the rio-600 is a bit larger than other rio models, but yet, its still very compact. i did not use the headphones provided and the sound quality was pretty good. i didn't use the software either, but easily got mp3 files uploaded through real player. its very easy to download file from there, just add in rio- 600 as your audio device, and then copy files from there. rio-600 has little memory, but i still got it to download six files. i heard you can also add a memory card which lets it have up to 320 mb of memory! overall, i'm a satisfied owner of the rio-600.
Rating:
Summary: I Love It!
Review: I read a lot of other reviews before deciding to ask for the rio 600 for christmas. This is the first portable mp3 player I've gotten and I honestly love it. The 32 megs it comes with may not seem like much, but by recording music in the windows WMA file format I've been able to fit over 16 3-5 minute songs in it, and the reason for getting something like the rio instead of a cd/mp3 player is so that you don't have to worry about scratched discs & skipping. This is definitely the best player for it's price range. Just to inform you of the facts about some things other reviewers have said: 1.)The software upgrade purchase simply gives you the ability to burn cd's with the Real Audio Manager program, but if you have a cd burner then chances are you already have cd-burning software, so you don't need to get the upgrade. 2.)The problems many people have had with the software not finding the Rio is simply a matter of 1 setting in the options menu. By default it is set to autodetect what player is connected to your pc, that setting doesn't work, so all you do is set it to look specificaly for the Rio 600 instead of autodetect and it will work just fine.
Rating: 
Summary: If you like shoddy craftsmanship, then purchase this player
Review: I bought this player off of Tigerdirect, and it was great for about 3 months. (minus horrible battery life and small storage capacity, even w/ the extra 32mb backpack). After the first three months, it simply stopped working. Wouldn't turn on, no response at all. Wrote SonicBlue, after a couple of weeks of going back and forth and finally convincing them that it wasn't a firmware update issue, they agreed to 'let' me mail it to them (at my cost) and they would repair or send me a replacement. i guess they did replace it, but after about three months of use, i am getting the same problems again. I wish I had believed other reviews about this product. If you're into masochism, then by all means, get this thing. if not, save up for an iPod or anything else but Rio. You get what you pay for... (paid $70)
Rating:
Summary: Perfect for audiobooks!
Review: I love my Rio 600. I purchased it along with a subscription to Audible.com (highly recommeded also)and it works just wonderfully for audiobooks. Software loaded perfectly, and I get 9 hours of book playback on this incredibly light, very durable player. It comes with a little case with a belt clip, and I just clip it to my clothes at work and listen to my books. Dowloads are quick and easy, and it plays just crystal-clear. I haven't tried it for music, but it's just perfect for audiobooks. The best part is that you can load several different books at one time, if you're like me and like to listen to several at once, depending on your mood. Audible.com's software allows you to load specified times to the player, so you can load one hour of Steven King, 3.14 hours of John Grisham, and so on up to 9 hours. The backlit screen on the front is easy to use, and as long as you hit stop before you turn off the unit, it remembers where you left off and starts there again. It's also very easy to scroll between the various books you have downloaded. I highly recommend this player for audiobooks.
Rating:
Summary: Horrible battery life, cheap quality plastic design
Review: I was not impressed with this MP3 player at all. First of all, im not sure if mine was defective but it would only go 2-3 hours of playing time before the battery would flat out die. I tried upgrading the firmware or calibrating the battery beforehand. This brings me to the quality of the design, when I try and get to the battery compartment. You have to remove the entire back cover and then open this other flimsy door to get to the one AA battery. Try and squeeze the battery in the small space while so worried that the small plastic holders are going to break off. One you got that in, you have to carefully position the back cover to fit back on with the metal contacts in place. Whew. Goods:
-Nice blue backlight
-Small Light Design
-Somewhat easy menu system.
-Easy to copy songs using iTunes on mac [no experience with pc software]
-Fast/Easy USB. Bads:
-Cheap flimsy plastic case
-Extremely short battery life
-Hard to replace batteries [Afraid of breaking something while squeezing that AA in an extremely small plastic holder thing.
-Horrible customer service when trying to get it fixed. They keep saying to flash the memory upgrade firmware I have done all that with no avail!
-Doesnt use any traditional upgrade memory method [compact flash or smart media] It needs some kind of special backpack to strap on the back for only another 32MB of memory. In conclusion, I would not recommend the Rio 600, even though it was quite cheap. Spend about $20 more for a Creative Labs' Nomad IIc. It has double the memory and easy to expand.
Rating:
Summary: Most horrible thing I ever bought
Review: This was a horrible and udderly usless piece of junk. When I first got mine (the first one i got) it worked for about 3 days. Then it just stopped working and i just heard static when i wanted the song to play. Along with that, the software didn't work (i have a PC). I tried countless times to upgrade on its site, called costumer support(which was very inconsiderate and didn't care if it got fixed or not), and did everything possible to fix it. Then I got another one, thinking this one was just a bad one. I was wrong. Same problems with the software, and it worked for 5 days, then i just got static again.
All in all, don't buy this one and get an archos or something (archos work very well.)even if it is a little more money.
Rating: 
Summary: could be happier with it
Review: I was so excited to buy my first mp3 player about a year ago, however I should have done a little more research first. I was happy with all the features, the display, etc., but there are a few issues worth noting with this. First of all, the battery doesn't last anywhere near the 11 hours it says. If I leave it for any length of time without using it, the battery dies as well. Then there is the memory issue. I realize that is an issue with any 32 MB mp3 player, however, the memory backpack things are impossible to find; though the wonderful people at the store I purchased it at assured me I could order them online, that was not the case. I suspect the reason they didn't have them at the store was that this model was on its way out. The website currently makes no acknowledgement of the memory "backpacks", and while they do still have software updates for the 600 model, they don't sell it anymore. I have not been able to find them ANYWHERE. If you want more than 10 songs, do not buy this.
Rating:
Summary: A Great Niche Player
Review: A great player for those who don't want to spend a lot of money and don't have 2000 mp3's. Works well with Windows Media Player 9. Good buy, easy to use.
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