Rating: 
Summary: Great player!
Review: Great features on a portable CD player, there's no other like it. Being able to upgrade the firmware is awesome. Anyone who wants to upgrade his/her Rio Volt firmware go to: ftp://ftp.sonicblue.com/pub/rio/riovolt/Here you'll find the lastest firmware, right now, it's version 1.12!
Rating:
Summary: This is the Real Goods
Review: Want to put close to 150 cuts on a disk? Want hours and hours of music available to you on each CD you burn? Want to pay a reasonable price for great performance? Kids, the Rio Volt is the goods. This unit performed flawlessly out of the box on a pair of AA batteries. (They packed Duracells with the unit; how cool is it that they didn't send a pair of "Joe's Pretty Good Batteries" instead?) After a day of near-constant use, those same batteries are still delivering great performance, which is amazing. Also amazing is this unit's resistance to skipping. I tucked it into the carrying case and shoved the whole thing into my coat pocket so that it bounced along against my hip all afternoon, and not once did this puppy skip on me. Now I'm not a jogger so I can't tell you if it's going to run the marathon with the same flawless performance, but I can say that it'll take normal bouncing around in its stride. The design is clean, and very straightforward. Play, pause, stop, forward, back, vol. up and down are all obvious; there's no guesswork involved. Just glance at the unit and you'll know what button to push. A little less obvious but not difficult to figure out are Prog. (program a sequence of songs. I haven't used this yet.) +10 (Skips ahead 10 cuts), Mode (a full array of repeat commands, and a couple of nice shuffle features), and EQ (equalizer - your choice of normal, rock, jazz, classical or honking huge bass. Can't say it's really impressive, but it's not bad.) The only control that's a little tricky is Navi. This takes you through your directories, allowing you to see the title of each song. It might take you a minute or two to figure out how to navigate, but it's not rocket science. The unit includes an eight function remote with a clip so you can attach it to your body. The design, while aesthetically pleasing, is a little awkward. The clip doesn't hold on very well; a light tug will pull it off whatever it's clipped to. And when you go to reattach it, you're likely to turn the unit off, or skip backwards or forwards. It does allow you to raise and lower the volume, set the hold switch (locking the controls)or switch settings on the equalizer without having to pull the unit out of your pocket or bag, or off your belt. That's nice, but I think something you could grip safely might have worked a bit better. The remote's design is the reason why this unit gets only 4 stars instead of 5. The display window is a large backlit LCD. On start-up, it displays the total number of cuts on the Cd. Press play and you'll get song information, file format, file number and elapsed time. In addition, it shows the mode, the program and tells you if you're on hold. It looks as if it has a low battery warning, but I haven't seen that yet. The bundled software includes applications for creating your own CDs, but there's nothing on any of them that you must use in order to enjoy the Volt. According to the package, the unit supports not only audio CDs and MP3s, but "popular music formats" including WMA files, and is upgradable so that the unit will be compatible with emerging standards. If all this is true, the Volt really is a long-term investment. And with a price tag of less than $200...well, do I have to tell you what a bargain this is? Bottom line: It makes it possible for you to have all the music you could ever want in an affordable, flexible, compact package.
Rating:
Summary: Almost Perfect
Review: I have the same probelm as previous reviewer, the battery indicator does not work. But it is not big deal for me. Another problem is the EQ function stopped working after few times of use. I was almost to return this product. Then I thought that I may need to upgrade the firmware. So I check riohome.com for upgrade. It turned out that I already have the lastest version (1.08f) but I did upgrade anyway. It actually helped!...so go figure. My EQ function is back! According to the manual, normally after you turn off the unit, the EQ setting and your playlist will return to "normal" mode (in other words, you will loose them). But I did not find that is true anymore for EQ setting. I guess they fixed that. I hope that they will have 'resume' function in the next upgrade too. It is kind of pain to begin with first song every time. The playlist function is hard to use because you don't see the name of the song...you can only see #. Who on earth could remember what song#56 is??? Other than that, the sound quality is nice. The navigator function is so intuitive. You can organize files into sub-directories and moving thru them easily. Firmware upgrade is easy. Basically, you download the software, burn it on blank CD and then put CD in player and just push play. Anti-skip/shock function works well, especailly when you play MP3 files b/c the CD is not spinning all the time (that also help saving battery power). It works okay for regular music CD too.
Rating:
Summary: Great player
Review: Great player. Others have said it cannot do directories within directories? Sure it can, it does this just fine. Being able to actually update the firmware is very nice. I wish I could find 1.10 as others said to update to though. All they have on Riohome.com is 1.08f, shipping version. Where did you guys get 1.10? How do you tell what Firmware version you have anyway? I would give it 5 stars but they have room for a third line on the display they could have used for the song title but use it for little dancing men instead. Other small things as well but this unit seems real nice all in all. I LOVE the NAVI button. That makes it real easy to find songs.
Rating:
Summary: firmware
Review: Does anyone know where you can get the upgraded firmware? A virsion past the 1.08f that it comes with. Have not got the rio yet, still in the mail. Want to burn a cd with the new firmware on it now while I have the chance. thanks.
Rating: 
Summary: Great player for indoors use. (not for jogging)
Review: Few days ago I both this player and play a little bit around. It's my first MP3/CD player so I can't do comparisons. So there are my remarks: This unit is great for indoors on in car use. The sound quality is amazing, and it did recognize all my CD-R and CD-RW. First I tried it in my car. And it worked well too (even on bad road). But when I tried to take this unit for my walking there comes disappointment. It can't handle it (I placed it on my belt). The intervals between songs increased from 2-5 seconds up to 15, or even 25. And it occasionally stops playing in the middle of the song (especially of higher bitrates). Maybe placing this unit in my back pack solve the problem.. but at a moment I don't think it's good solution to take it for a walk. Anyway. It's a great toy for MP3 lovers but still need some improvement.
Rating:
Summary: Woulda/Coulda/Shoulda been a 5 but no RESUME function!
Review: This is a great player, almost the best. But, in my opinion, there is no "best" in the field right now. If this player had a "real" resume feature, it would be the absolute BOMB! Hence, it only gets 4 stars from me. Perhaps there is hope because of their flash upgrade ability. BTW, anyone know where to get the upgrades? RioVolt Website only has 1.08f (the original shipped version). I also own the Philips Expandium 103. That too, is a really good player except that it doesn't FF/REW thru MP3 files! But it DOES have a decent Resume (to the start of last played mp3 even if unit is powered off). The Exp103 plays ANYthing I throw at it--any bitrate 32-320, VBR, 22/44/48, never skips a beat, durable case, easy to navigate, has a "hold" button, good sound (but not w/earbuds!) errrgggh, Can't somebody put ALL features into one machine?? If I didn't absolutely need FF/REW of MP3 files, I'd stick with the Expandium. It's a strong reliable box that plays anything! I've been thru the Memorex (the worst!), the Classics CM415 (pretty bad) and D-Link (bad). The RioVolt is the best so far. I was waiting for the RCA RP2410 to come out but I got tired of waiting so I got the Rio. However, I just did a search on the RCA box and I found out it has FINALLY been put into production!! This might be the one, guys. Check it out. Supposedly, it has all the features any of us could possibly want or need (yeah riiight)! I'll believe it when I see/hear it. Hey, if anyone knows how to get the flash upgrades for the RioVolt, please let us know here! Thanks!
Rating: 
Summary: It works. Buy it.
Review: Ok, yeah there are a lot of glowing reviews about this product, and here comes one more. It's played everything I could throw at it flawlessly, was fairly easy to get going, and it is not hard to navigate through even the longest playlists. Sound quality is superb. The only concerns are really trivial, come on for the money, this mp3 player is way ahead of the pack! It's ironic when comments are written about a good product like this on message boards, someone always has to say that there are just too many glowing reviews and that some "insiders" are just trying to pump up sales. Go ahead and listed to the small minority who didn't love this product and you'll be cheating yourself out of a really great, maybe the best, Mp3 player available.
Rating:
Summary: Fantastic!
Review: It just arrived (from another vendor because Amazon was sold out :-( ). The sound is great (five position equalizer, not quite as nice as the 15 position bass/treble controls on the Rio 500, but much better than bass/no bass on others). The remote is a nice touch, too. It is corded - it plugs into the headphone jack and the headphones plug into it. Unlike others, it works with any headphones, and the headphones can plug directly in to the player if you don't want to use the remote (some other players MAKE you use the remote because there are no controls on the unit). It also essentially adds around two feet to your headphone cord, which I appreciate because I have some great headphones with a cord that is just a little too short (you could always use a twist-tie on it if you wanted to keep it short). I like the headphones - they are almost identical to my aforementioned ones, but not quite as good (the others are outstanding, so I'd say these are still above average, especially for bundled earbuds). The cord length is better with these, and the plug is gold plated, or at least appears so. Backlighting is convenient, too. The case has a belt loop and an opening for the cords - not bad at all for a "freebie", though a clear piece of plastic for the display would have been nice. The player is also lighter than the Memorex I had tried previously. For those of you comparing it with the AVC Soul Player (same internals by all accounts), I like the looks of this unit better (though it isn't clear what the Soul looks like since there are two sets of photos running around). This one has a small clear piece that allows you to see the disc which the Soul doesn't. (It lets you see when the disc is spinning and when it isn't. Interestingly, it only spins for the first 30 seconds or so of each song. I guess it buffers the whole song in that time.) Also, this player comes with MP3 making software where the Soul doesn't (not an issue for me since I already have that). The Soul's advantages would be cost and that it comes with a car kit (at least it was - check with the other vendor to see if that promo is still running). Also, its buttons aren't placed so close together, which is probably nice from a practical standpoint if not quite as stylish. Fortunately, the closely spaces buttons on the Volt don't seem to interact with each other, so it's not as big a problem as it could have been. The only "negatives" (more of a wish list, I'd say) : a car kit would have been nice, as would backlit buttons. The third line of the display is mostly wasted on flashing icons of dancers, and it would be nice if the "hold" function covered the "open" button as well as the electronic controls. I'd also like to be able to keep the backlight on all the time even with batteries. (They're my batteries, and I'll waste them if I want to!) As it stands, the backlight goes on for a few seconds whenever you hit a key if you're using batteries, it stays on all the time with DC in). All in all, the best MP3 player in the CD player class IMHO. The Rio 500 (SmartMedia player) has some advantages in size and usage, but you can't store over 600 megs on it like this. I like being able to use my existing discs - no drivers to mess with, and no waiting for files to get transferred (even with USB, 600 megs would take a while). There's still room for improvement, but Diamond/SONICblue's experience shows here, and the rest of the pack is playing catch up.
Rating: 
Summary: Dont Buy this product at Amozon
Review: To me this product looks great and I've ordered it, but dont make the same mistake I made, order it elsewhere. I placed my order on March 6th and it was delayed fivetimes already and it is estimated to get to my house on March 19th if it doesn't get delayed agian. So if you want to buy it go somewhere else. Its also not my mistake becouse I paid for 2nd day delivory, and the player still hasn't even been shiped. So Buy it, Just Buy it Elsewhere
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