It's Great For Active People and Runners! [Detailed Review]
Written: Apr 22 '03 (Updated Apr 24 '03)
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Pros: Small, Expandable, Great Music Quality, Good Battery Life, No Moving Parts
Cons: Exposed Proprietary USB Connector, Only One AAA Battery, Proprietary Software Required
The Bottom Line: Buy It! If you want the best portable player for an active usage, such as running or workouts.
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| jakfrost's Full Review: Sonic Blue Rio S35 128MB MP3 Player |
This is The Best portable MP3 and WMA player designed for active usage and workouts that is currently available in mid-2003.
While the other reviews have done a great job expressing the Pros of the player, I would like to dedicate this review to the Cons of it because they need to be brought up. But before I say anything, please understand that this is not a negative review, I am merely pointing out a few issues that people should be aware before buying. I still think that this is The Best player currently available for active usage.
Con: Exposed Proprietary USB Connector
The USB connector on this player is exposed and the holes with the leads are facing upward. During active usage it is possible for sweat to get into these holes and possibly cause electrical problems. (My recommendation to the manufacturer would be to place all the buttons and connectors on the side or underneath the player in the next version. Alternatively, you can just be careful and place the player on the arm band or on the belt of your gym pants to prevent sweat from getting into the holes. Luckily, I and two of my friends that have this player have found sweat to not be a problem at all while using this player.)
Con: Only One AAA Battery
This player only has room for one AAA battery. Luckily it supports rechargeable NiMH batteries so they can be used to extend the life of the player. I would much rather have preferred for the player to support one AA battery or two AAA batteries to offer a longer play time. Using currently available NiHM rechargeable batteries a single AAA battery provides 700mAh of power or a AA provides 2000mAh. (For reference, I personally use Maha Energy PowerEx AAA 700mAh batteries and play my music at loud 25 of 30 volume, and I only get about 6-hours of playtime out of the battery. These results are not to be taken as a bad example, since the volume, battery type, and charger type will affect the playtime. These results are a worst case scenario for battery life. Using softer volume it is very likely that the player will provide 10-hours or more of play time using a fully charged NiMH battery.)
As a recommendation, you should definitely invest the money in a good charger and rechargeable NiMH AAA batteries to give you 3x as much play time as ordinary Alkaline batteries and save you money by letting you recharge batteries. I highly recommend Maha Energy 401FS Charger which supports fast and slow charging of four AA or AAA batteries using independent charging channels and uses smart chip technology for charging and also Maha Energy AAA 700 mAh Batteries. You can also check out other Maha Energy (Mahaenergy.com) products at the manufacturer's web site and verify the performance and quality of their batteries and chargers at Digital Imaging - Accessories Review: The Great Battery Shootout (Imaging-Resource.com).
I am not affiliated with any of these companies, I just like and recommend their products.
Con: Proprietary Software Required
Proprietary software is required to load music onto the player, such as the provided Rio Music Manager, RealOne Player, or Windows Media Player. I would have much rather preferred if this player allowed access to music through a driver letter like modern digital cameras that are USB Storage compatible and show up as a disk drive when connected to a modern Windows machine. (While I understand that this might be a limitation of the SecureDigital media or the DRM compliance of the player, I would still prefer access to the storage on the player through a drive letter to allow a standard way of accessing the player in the long future when software support and upgrades are discontinued due to product's age.)
Con: Drivers Not Available For Download
While this is a very small grievance, this is still a valid one. The drivers are not available for download from the manufacturer's web site, even though the firmware and software is. The drivers themselves are tiny, at only 14KB, and you only need two files, RioS35.inf and RioS35.sys to install the drivers. (The manufacturer should put these tiny files on the web site and make them available for download. I don't understand why they are not available, sounds silly to me. The drivers might even be put onto the player itself with a firmware update so that they'll load themselves automatically on a computer if the player is connected to a USB connector. That would be better.)
Con: Included Headphones Are Cheap
The included headphones are very flimsy, offer terrible music quality, and often fall out of the ears. I would highly recommend that you purchase your own set of good quality head phones.
I recommend the Sony MDR ED228LP Ear-bud Headphones. They are very high quality, offer great music quality, stick in the ears very well and do not fall out, and are very loud sounding.
Con: Expandable Memory Available Is Less Than Available
While this player has great support for SecureDitial (SD) expandable memory and it is currently compatible with memory sizes up to and including 512MB, there is a little downside to this. The memory that is available for music storage on the external expandable memory is less than what is available on the card. With a 256MB SD memory card, you only get 241MB of memory to be used for storing music. That is 15MB or 6% less memory available for storing music. While this sounds like you are losing only a little, 15MB adds up to 15-minutes of music for quarter of an hour of wasted space.
When I e-mailed SONICblue customer support I only got this response.
My Question: "Why does a 256MB SD Expansion Card Report 241MB only?"
SONICblue Customer Support Answer: "It is normal that the available memory on any external memory card is a little less than the capacity which is specified by the manufacturer."
I wanted to mention a few important Pros of this player.
Pro: Expandable Memory Support
This player supports SecureDigital memory, up to 512MB currently. This is a great Pro since SecureDigital (SD) memory is currently very popular and really affordable. You can purchase a 256MB SD memory card for about $60 if you shop around and the prices are still dropping on this memory type. This is a very important factor for portable players since the players that use unpopular expandable memory technologies usually require a lot more money per MB of memory for that memory type, such as SmartMedia. (As a recommendation to the manufacturer, it would be great if somebody finally made a portable player that supports CompactFlash (CF) memory since the price of this memory is even lower than SecureDigital (SD).)
I recommend the SanDisk SecureDigital SD Memory Card 256MB, it is very a very affordable card with very good performance and the best cost-to-memory ratio. Using this 256MB card with the on-board 128MB will give you 384MB of storage on the player. Using normal 128Kbps MP3 files encoded with constant bit rate (CBR) will give you approximately 1MB per 1-minute of audio for a theoretical total of 6.4-hours of music using this memory but rounded down 6-hours realistically. This amounts to between 60 to 90-tracks of music depending on track length.
Optionally, you can also check out 256MB SD cards from other manufacturers.
Lexar Media Flash memory 256MB SD Memory Card
SimpleTech Flash memory 256MB SD Memory Card
Viking 256MB SD Memory Card
Pro: No Moving Parts (Solid-State)
While other players offer 5, 10, 20GB of memory or more they are all hard drive based. This means that there is a spinning disk in the player and any type of sudden movements might cause the disk to skip or worse, scratch the surface. This is a very important factor for people who want a player for active usage such as running or for working out. When you run every step you take sends an impact through your body and the portable player. Think about how many steps your take and how many chances there are for a CD disc to skip or a hard drive disk platter to get scratched with a normal player. Well, with this player there are no moving parts, everything is solid state. Impacts from running do not affect this player in any way since there is nothing spinning or moving in the player. The music is stored on little electronic expansion cards that only send electrical signals through circuits. This player should last a very long time without breaking, provided you don't drop it too much.
Pro: Good MP3 Support
This player has very good MP3 support and allows the playback of pretty much every bit rate, including 320Kbps, and also allows the playback of VBR (variable bit rate) encoded MP3 files. The support for VBR is very beneficial since many people prefer to use this encoding method to get the best music quality at the lowest bit rate and file size. Also, this player reads the information about music from the ID3 tags at the end of the MP3 music files and displays the track's Author and Song Name information to make it easy to see what music is playing. Finally, the Rio Manager software supports adding tracks to the player by selecting individual tracks, whole albums, whole artist collections, or tracks from custom created playlists.
Pro: Good WMA Support
Additionally, this player supports Windows Media Audio (WMA) file playback which should be very beneficial for people who download music from pay-for-download services. Albeit, there is no Ogg Vorbis support, I wish more manufacturers added support for this codec.
Pro: HOLD/LOCK Buttons Feature
This player does have a HOLD feature that can be used to lock the buttons so that an accidental button push won't stop the music. You can activate this feature by pressing down and holding the MENU button on top of the player and then pressing the ENTER button on the front of the player. To unlock the buttons, just do the same.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 199.95
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Epinions.com ID:
jakfrost
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Reviews written: 7
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