Rating: 
Summary: For a cheap player, this is pretty decent
Review: I purchased one of these for significantly lower than the manufacturers price and given my investment I am pretty satisfied. This unit is suprisingly small and lightweight and will clip easily to a pocket when excersizing. I found the controls and screen to be adequate, but not at all special. The design is nice, but the actual construction of the unit is very cheap (battery door feels like it will fall off, as does the headphone jack) At 32MB the memory is insufficient, but the Rio One can be expanded with small and very inexpensive smartmedia cards to 160MB which is nice. I've been using this player with iTunes 2 and Mac OS X and it works great, my only problem was when I accidently dropped a file onto the MP3 players icon on the desktop and had to reinstall the firmware (oops...). In short your getting a good deal with this player, though.... Don't expect very much though, if you want quality get an iPod or a Nomad.
Rating:
Summary: Things you should know before you buy
Review: 1) MP3's are only as good as you! Don't complain about the quailty of the mp3 player when the odds are your mp3's aren't of a high quality, or were ripped by someone other then you. If you play songs at a high bit rate then this player sounds fine.2) 32mbs is not enough for decent quality music. 128kbps will give you a little less then 32 mins of music, buy more cards, because they are very cheap, and you can listen to more music then a cd player will give, and HIGHER QUALITY TOO! 3) This is a beginners mp3 player, or a very frugal persons mp3 player. If you know how to rip, edit formats, and enjoy music of high quality, get a more expensive player. 4) THERE IS NO BASS BOOST, if you are used to that on other players, you well be dissapointed with this. Also there is no text display of the ID tags on the player either. 5) Battery life goes pretty fast, but it only takes on AA. I like it cause its cheap, expandable memory is cheap.
Rating: 
Summary: The door is flimsy and will break easily
Review: My sister got this model for me-however if you leave the battery in even with it being powered off it will drain the battery and then it gets a little stressful thinking that it won't ever work-and definitely get a SmartMedia card for it if you do get one (as a gift don't buy one).
I read that the battery door breaks on these models but it was a gift so I was very careful yet it DID break-a small little plastic bit came off on the closing end when I was putting in the battery before use-I can use it if I tape the door and it works fine but it's an inconvenience-and considering purchasing a non-RIO product that does use a Smart Media card-
Rating:
Summary: Mine just died (it is the third time)
Review: I bought one when it first came out and it never worked right. Since it was under warranty they sent me a new (refurbished) one and it had the same problem. Then after a two month battle they sent me out a brand new one and it worked great for about a year but then it just died. Actually it isn't totally dead but all it does is blink the amount of memory it has until the battery runs down. I can't turn it off or play any thing.
So the support people do the best they can but I don't think the player is designed very well.
Rating:
Summary: Not great, but not horrible either
Review: I wanted an inexpensive MP3 player that was expandable and chose this one. It has worked fine for me. It doesn't have as many features as some of the other players, but i didn't want to pay for all of that. I already had the realnetworks player installed on my pc, so i used that instead of the included software; and it has worked fine for saving, organizing, transferring songs to and from the rio one. At 128kbps, music sounds very good. (I have not tried lower quality settings.) (My PC runs Windows XP home edition.) I have replaced the included headphones ... I've also added a 128 Mb smartmedia card which the player recognized correctly and it works fine. The player turns off to save power if you leave it in "pause" for more than a few minutes. This is nice, but I wish it would start up again where you left off. When you turn it on, it always starts back at track #1. You can get better MP3 players, but if you want a basic player that is expandable but has few other frills, this is a good buy.
Rating: 
Summary: Worked for a while, then completely died
Review: I bought this product , because it was my first mp3 player, and I wanted an inexpensive one. It worked fine for about a year, then one time when the batteries ran out, it just stopped working, and complety died. Now, with better models with more memory and durbility on the market, I'd skip over this one.
Rating:
Summary: Small and easy use, but built very poorly
Review: I wanted an MP3 player that was small and skip-free, so I bought the Rio One in December 2001. At first it was great. I was very happy that it fit in my pocket and was skip-free (great for working out). Soon after, I bought a couple of 128MB SmartMedia memory cards to hold my music, and I was able to swap them depending on what kind of music I was in the mood for. The battery life was not very good, but I bought rechargeable batteries (and a charger for about $15) and it was not a problem anymore. The only thing I really disliked was that it does not display the song (just a track number, which is useless when you have 100 songs on the memory card), and also that it has no radio (which would have been useful on September 11 because I live in New York City).
I was happy, just like the people who have written 5-star reviews about this player, but then it all went downhill.
Less than a year after I bought it, the battery door (which is a cheap tiny piece of plastic) broke off, so it was useless. Tech support was a pain, but I did manage to send it back and they sent me a new one. However, soon after, the same thing happened. I don't abuse my player, I don't drop or bang it, and it always stayed in my pocket; its just built very poorly.
The best thing about the Rio One is its small size and no skipping. The sound quality is only fair. Rio customer service is even worse (or should I say nonexistent), because they ignored my emails until I called up screaming to the supervisor, and I had to pay for long-distance call just to get nowhere with them (they have no 800 number). I have a couple of friends who own the Rio SP150 or SP250 (this plays regular audio CD's and CDRW discs with MP3 files and it has a radio and remote control) and they are happy with it. The reason I did not buy this model is because I wanted something smaller than a CD player.
After my experiences with RIO's products and service (or lack thereof), I will never buy any RIO product again.!!!
I am looking at several new players I may buy.
Feel free to ask me any questions you may have (Jmendelson@clarku.edu)
Rating:
Summary: nervous wreck it'll break again...
Review: I bought the RIO ONE 32mb for my son for Christmas 2001. It stopped working about 2 weeks later. We had to download new firmware. Then about 3 weeks after that it died completely. We did nothing for months because the store we bought it from said "too bad, call the manufacturer." Then in Nov. 2002 I decided not to throw away a hundred bucks and I sat on hold for about 45 minutes until a tech answered the phone. It was pretty easy after that, I guess there are a lot of problems with these things. They gave me instructions to return it for a replacement, which I did and about 2 months later a new remanufactured one arrived. We still had to download something for it but we have had no problems since (6 weeks or so now). Wish us luck.
Rating:
Summary: The worst case of customer neglect I have encountered
Review: Normally, I don't write reviews of products but with this product I will. The Rio one has got to be the worst poduct I have encountered for MP3 technology. To begin with, I have been through two of the Rio ones in the past month. When I first encountered the problem, the rio one basically dies if you let the battery run down on it, I tried, much to my frustration, to contact the costumer support and technical support service to no avail. First it is a toll number and second I waited on the phone for about an hour with no response to my call. I was on hold for an hour! I finally gave up and took it back to the store from which I purchased the Rio One. Rather than deal with technical support, they just gave me a new player no questions asked. Guess what? Within a month the same scenario was played out again with the tech crew at SonicBlue/RIO. As of January 17th, 2003 only one month after I purchased the first one, I have gone through two players, Spent about two and a half hours on the phone trying to get through to tech support, had no contact with anyone from RIO and am still in the same boat as I was with the first one. This product has got to be the worst I have encountered in a long time.
When you take into account the poor custumer/technical support, the continued experience of all those who have purchased it, the no frills package and the large bulky design of the RIO one it adds up to be a poor quality product. You would probably be better off buying a tape player than this MP3 Player if you wanted uninterrupted music when working out, running, or just simply enjoying the fine musical talent of the plethora of music icons available.
Rating:
Summary: A COMPLETE WASTE OF MONEY!
Review: To make a long story short...it was purchased as a birthday gift. Worked for less than a month and completely died. Does nothing, nada, zip! No support - no replacement! Cheaply made piece of junk! PLEASE read all reviews on this product before purchasing it. Recommendation: Buy an MP3 player from another company!
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