RipFlash TRIO 128MB MP3 Player/Recorder

Rating:
Summary: ALL GREAT PRODUCT but has low sound volume
Review: everything that the other reviewers wrote is correct: the trio is really amazing, smallest, and has all features found in more expensive and bigger players.

but one thing is not good about this player: the volume level is somehwat low - and it is probably because the maker of the trio wanted to save the tiny battary' power.

so if you like to blast your ears with music, go somewhere else.

Rating:
Summary: Great Overall Product!!
Review: I received the RipFlash Trio about 2 weeks ago and absolutely love it. There are many pros and a few cons, but overall, this is a great product.

Background:
I bought this player specifically to take with me to the gym. I needed something that could last at least 3 hours and play about 20-30 songs. I also needed something that could just fit in my pocket, and able to take some abuse.

Pros:
-Versatile: this player allows you to do anything you want. Record your voice (which I never really use), record from an external source, am/fm radio, and download from your computer.
-Easy: this player is really simple. It took only a few minutes for me to get used to the menu set-up.
-Options: this player allows you to change the eq, shuffle, hold, etc.
-Design: the design is great. It is actually about the size of a credit card (as opposed to many descriptions of it being "business card sized"), and is light weight. It could easily fit into a shirt pocket or even your wallet.
-Software: the software is easy to use and hassle free.

Cons:
-Battery: the battery life is ample for my needs, however charging the unit is kind of an inconvenience. If you want to charge the unit without a computer, you must take the battery out of the unit and charge it in an adapter which plugs into your wall. Personally, I feel that a recharchable battery should be almost fixed into a unit eliminating the possibility of the battery acidentally coming out. The thing about the battery charging from the computer is that there is an adapter that is connected to the usb cord to allow the battery to be charged from the usb port. However, I was unable to load files onto the unit with the adapter attached. So, if you want to load files, you must detatch the adapter and plug in the usb cord directly into a port. It is just more of an inconvenience than anything else.
-Options: ealier I talked about the great options, however there is one option that I wish it had. It does not have any sort of program or selective option to play selected songs from your playlist. So, there are certain songs I enjoy listening to while I am at the gym, but not necesarrily all the time. I am unable to pick and choose the songs I want to listen to at various times.
-External Recording: if you don't have a computer and want to use this unit to record from an external source, I would not reccommend it. Basically the unit records directly from your headphone jack. That means that any sort of feedback or distortions (which can happen through headphone jacks) are picked up onto the unit. The quality and sound just isn't the same as recording from a computer.
-Quality: overall this unit is great, but I'm not sure as to how much abuse it can really take. I have already dropped it once and the battery popped right out.
-Jack: well, the jack for your headphones is a little odd. The unit comes with an adapter for your headphone jack because the unit's headphone jack is smaller than normal. The adapter actually increases the bulk of the unit substantially wich is kind of a pain.

Conclusions:
This unit is an inexpensive mp3 player with great options. It would be nice if it had expandable memory, but I can't complain because I knew what it came with before I purchased it:) 128mb is ample space for my needs anyhow. The batterly life is around 4 hours plus, and is perfect for what I use it for. I did not try the headphones because I use my own set of bang & olufsen headphones with the unit. I would definately buy this product if you want something small, easy, and affordable. I purchased mine for about $.... It has everything you could want, and even things you may never really use. Overall, I would highly reccommend this product.

Rating:
Summary: Great Overall Product!!
Review: I received the RipFlash Trio about 2 weeks ago and absolutely love it. There are many pros and a few cons, but overall, this is a great product.

Background:
I bought this player specifically to take with me to the gym. I needed something that could last at least 3 hours and play about 20-30 songs. I also needed something that could just fit in my pocket, and able to take some abuse.

Pros:
-Versatile: this player allows you to do anything you want. Record your voice (which I never really use), record from an external source, am/fm radio, and download from your computer.
-Easy: this player is really simple. It took only a few minutes for me to get used to the menu set-up.
-Options: this player allows you to change the eq, shuffle, hold, etc.
-Design: the design is great. It is actually about the size of a credit card (as opposed to many descriptions of it being "business card sized"), and is light weight. It could easily fit into a shirt pocket or even your wallet.
-Software: the software is easy to use and hassle free.

Cons:
-Battery: the battery life is ample for my needs, however charging the unit is kind of an inconvenience. If you want to charge the unit without a computer, you must take the battery out of the unit and charge it in an adapter which plugs into your wall. Personally, I feel that a recharchable battery should be almost fixed into a unit eliminating the possibility of the battery acidentally coming out. The thing about the battery charging from the computer is that there is an adapter that is connected to the usb cord to allow the battery to be charged from the usb port. However, I was unable to load files onto the unit with the adapter attached. So, if you want to load files, you must detatch the adapter and plug in the usb cord directly into a port. It is just more of an inconvenience than anything else.
-Options: ealier I talked about the great options, however there is one option that I wish it had. It does not have any sort of program or selective option to play selected songs from your playlist. So, there are certain songs I enjoy listening to while I am at the gym, but not necesarrily all the time. I am unable to pick and choose the songs I want to listen to at various times.
-External Recording: if you don't have a computer and want to use this unit to record from an external source, I would not reccommend it. Basically the unit records directly from your headphone jack. That means that any sort of feedback or distortions (which can happen through headphone jacks) are picked up onto the unit. The quality and sound just isn't the same as recording from a computer.
-Quality: overall this unit is great, but I'm not sure as to how much abuse it can really take. I have already dropped it once and the battery popped right out.
-Jack: well, the jack for your headphones is a little odd. The unit comes with an adapter for your headphone jack because the unit's headphone jack is smaller than normal. The adapter actually increases the bulk of the unit substantially wich is kind of a pain.

Conclusions:
This unit is an inexpensive mp3 player with great options. It would be nice if it had expandable memory, but I can't complain because I knew what it came with before I purchased it:) 128mb is ample space for my needs anyhow. The batterly life is around 4 hours plus, and is perfect for what I use it for. I did not try the headphones because I use my own set of bang & olufsen headphones with the unit. I would definately buy this product if you want something small, easy, and affordable. I purchased mine for about $.... It has everything you could want, and even things you may never really use. Overall, I would highly reccommend this product.

Rating:
Summary: Not as Advertised
Review: I returned the RipFlash TRIO 128MB MP3 Player/Recorder
by PoGo! for two reasons:

1) Amazon states under the Features section for this product that it "Uses Smart Media Card." Guess what--it doesn't.

2) This product doesn't come with a belt clip or any other way to secure it. I know that if I put it in my shirt pocket, it would fall out in no time. If I put it in my pants pocket, it would get scratched up, or its buttons would get pushed inadvertently. I don't want to spend this amount of money on something that doesn't have some protection from damage of this sort while it is being used.

Rating:
Summary: Not as Advertised
Review: I returned the RipFlash TRIO 128MB MP3 Player/Recorder
by PoGo! for two reasons:

1) Amazon states under the Features section for this product that it "Uses Smart Media Card." Guess what--it doesn't.

2) This product doesn't come with a belt clip or any other way to secure it. I know that if I put it in my shirt pocket, it would fall out in no time. If I put it in my pants pocket, it would get scratched up, or its buttons would get pushed inadvertently. I don't want to spend this amount of money on something that doesn't have some protection from damage of this sort while it is being used.

Rating:
Summary: What to buy? Hard drive or Flash Memory? A review of both.
Review: Okay. Here is a write up, that I did, on the comparisons/contrasts on MP3 players. Mainly, the Harddrive versions (I.E. Rio Riot/Apple IPOD -both of which I own) and the flash memory type... (I.E. Memorex 3642 Mp3 Player, of which I own as well).
What prompted this little jaunt (of which you may send to as many people as you like) My (expensive) Apple IPOD died during a sync last month. Just me copying files over to it, and the battery ran out of juice. I would have not attempted to copy music had I known the battery was low, but the battery read FULL STRENGTH. Anyhoo, I called Apple, they said return it for maintenance.
I did. Sent it back.
They returned it, still broke.

To my suprise, there is only a TEN DAY return policy.

TEN DAYS.

I did not realize this at all... and will not ever buy another apple product.

So, after a month or so of messing around trying to find another MP3 player... I decided to go with a flash memory MP3 player, the ones that use memory sticks.

SO, here are the pro and cons of these devices.

Pro's for the Memory Stick Mp3 players

-Cheaper. WAY CHEAPER than Hard drive types.

-If you go into music match and file convert to MP3 Pro and shrink the size of your MP3 to like, say 3o percent... you can really make a good Kompression. Example. My Memorex MP3 player has 32mbs of memory on board. It is expandable to 256mb. 32 mb will basically let you put one cd's worth of music. It is easy to put music on and off of them, due to your computer reading the USB as just another hard drive, so you drag and drop to put on, delete them to take them off. But, after you shrink your files to MP3 Pro 30 percent, you can put twice as many. So, basically a 256mb chip will allow me to put 208 songs on my little less than palm size MP3 player. And it wieghs like 3 ounces.

- More on memory. These little chips are the size of the upper part of your thumb, at least my thumb anyway. They come in 128mb, 256mb, 512mb and even though there aren't any MP3 machines out there to handle them YET, you can even buy a 1.5gig thumb size chip thingy. Considering the size of the chips and the shrinking kompression I told you about earlier, I could shrink my whole KOLLEKTION down to 10 of those 1.5gig chips. At the current shrink rate I am at 5 DVD's, which are way bigger and more fragile than these little chips.

- Not as fragile as hard drive type. You can drop one of these chips and not scratch it. I wouldn't stomp on one with my foot, nor get one in water, but they are encased in plastic. Ruggedish.

- Batteries last for like two days. There isn't much going on here, no moving parts, no laser or hard drive to put power to. Most of these flash Memory types have a single AA battery. I use a rechargeable type, so we are talking very low cost here.
In comparison to the hard drive types, where you will get a solid 8 hours of playing, this really whupps up.

- Size. Small. Very small. Mine is three inches by three inches. A square. But, you can get smaller ones. And the memory chips that go in them are the same ones you use for your camera. And you can put files on them. If you want to put a word doc on your memory chip, you can. Your Mp3 won't recognize it, but it is nifty storage.

COMPARISON/CONTRAST

- Size does matter. In the case of hard drive Mp3 players... lets face it, you can, if you so chose to, put a library of congress on these monsters. They are the caddilacs of the hand held devices, and guzzle batteries like gasoline. But when it comes down to it, size is the only thing they have going for them. I don't mean to downplay the hard drive types, but don't drop them, don't shake them, and after shelling out $499 to Apple you might consider insurance. Apple doesn't care about you or your apple after 10 days of ownership.

- Price/Komparison. IPOD ran me $499 bucks. My memorex MP3 player ran me 45 dollars. The 128 memory chip runs you 50 bucks. Owch. There really isn't a comparison to the two. The memory stick Mp3 players just kick ? on this issue. And, you get MORE than a ten day return policy, since you buy these things at Target/Wal Mart etc...

So, that is my review in a nutshell

Rating:
Summary: U have to take it in ur hand to believe it!!!
Review: POGO's TRIO Slim Series MP3 Player/Recorder is truly amazing... I got mine today and it hardly took me fifteen minutes to get it loaded with couple of mp3's. Its a 3-in-1. It has an FM tuner, MP3 player & Voice recording in MP3 format.
It is soooo thin & small that u hardly feel that it is in the palm of your hand... weighing almost an ounce, its unbeleivably the lightest recorder/player in the market.
The sound output quality is terrific and it has 5 pre-set sounds in its equalizer.
The menu is neat & user-friendly except for a few glitches here and there...
The firmware upgrade feature is very cool & I was able to load the latest firmware from their website very easily.
Limitation is its memory. Its just 128MB, but it suits my needs.
With USB 1.1 & their proprietary VR Manager software, upload/download of voice/mp3 files is very easy.
Another key feature is their PC-free mp3 encoding. U just hook up your Tape/LP Player's Line-out to the Line-in & voila!!
U have mp3 files!!
I love this player for its mic-in feature.... & i'm sure, u know why!! :)
Overall a great buy for a reasonable price....

Rating:
Summary: RipFlash TRIO - good features - poor perfomance.
Review: The bad:
Headsset connection is intermittent, must hold it to get stereo.
Battery life is poor ... with no pushing of buttons got less
than four hours. Display is very hard to read except for brief
seconds after pushing buttons when it is illuminated. Menu controls are poorly done.
The good:
It looks slick, the sound quality is quite good (stereo separtion while pressing on connection), nice features.

Rating:
Summary: Ripflash Trio
Review: The Ripflash Trio is everything promised - excellent. There was 1 problem, solved by the Pogo web site FAC Sheet. I had to discard the small UBS jumper supplied to get the Computer/
Ripflash link to work. I have been enthralled by it.

Rating:
Summary: Ripflash Trio
Review: The Ripflash Trio is everything promised - excellent. There was 1 problem, solved by the Pogo web site FAC Sheet. I had to discard the small UBS jumper supplied to get the Computer/
Ripflash link to work. I have been enthralled by it.