Original RioVolt and the SP90 and the upcoming SP250
Written: Sep 18 '01
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Pros: Price, Cheap Storage, Longer Battery Life, and the ability to play regular CDs
Cons: Cheap construction and poor LCD on low and medium end models.
The Bottom Line: Two new RioVolt products update this line to include the low end and somewhat high end market. The SP250 RioVolt is definitely something to watch for!
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| yusakugo's Full Review: Rio Volt SP100 Personal CD Player |
It really hasn't been that long since the original RioVolt was released... maybe just 6 months. I posted a review on the original unit back in April... now, that same original unit is being dubbed the SP100 and two new RioVolt models are being released... the SP90 or RioVolt Jr. and the SP250.
I will repost most of the original RioVolt review to cover the SP100 and discuss the SP90 (which I have played with) and talk about the SP250 unit (which I have only read about). The SP100 review will be italicised, although I will have updated it quite a bit from the original review.
Warning that this will be a long epinion!
Parts of Original RioVolt... i.e. SP100 review with quite a bit of updating
Since I first wrote this piece, the market has expanded considerably. Phillips has their line of Expandium CD-MP3 players. Pine is in the field now with their CD-MP3 players (I believe 3 models now). Samsung has released the Yepp line of CD-MP3 players. Panasonic and Sony have starting getting into the action as well. Aiwa has expanded their CD-MP3 line with a longer ESP model that comes closer to the RioVolt, more people are discovering the AVC Soul Player that is the same unit as the RioVolt but cheaper (See my review http://yusakugo.epinions.com/content_19010981508 ), and my new favorite CD-MP3 player, the TDK Mojo but this player has its own set of problems... wait a sec, new RioVolt firmware came out recently to ver 2.01 (June 2001). Now I can't decide which I like better! See my RioVolt vs. TDK MOJO article here:
http://yusakugo.epinions.com/content_1561895044
There are also the new 3 inch CD-MP3 players that are starting to hit the market now for even more compact players.
When this player first came out, there was a large price gap between MP3 Flash Memory players and Hard Drive based players like the Creative Jukebox and Archos Jukebox... my how times have changed! 6GB and larger Hard Drive jukeboxes cost less than $300 now. 128MB flash players can be found as low as $250 as well. There even a new competitor with the PocketPC... You can get an iPaq 3100 series handheld with a CF sleeve for around $150. Buy a 256MB CF card for $120 at www.newegg.com or a brand name Viking at amazon.com (after rebates). For less than $300, you have a 256MB MP3 player that can act as a personal organizer, calculator, MS Word and Excel editor and viewer, as well as B&W picture viewer and even more... WOW! Competition has definitely stiffened up since the beginning of 2001!
Rio Volt is Jolting the MP3 World!: The Basics
The Rio Volt is basically a Discman that can play regular Audio CDs and CD-Rs/CD-RWs with MP3 and WMA files burned on them. The Rio Volt is not an especially thin Discman I must note... it is about the same thickness as your bargain basement and medium cost CD Discmans. The player is a royal blue base with silver cover and a large LCD screen on top in the center. The entire player is made of plastic (which does make the player feel rather cheap) but as my player has gone through a few minor bumps and bruises, it still plays fine. However, I wouldn't really push anything since the plastic still feels cheap to me.
The Volt has several buttons and a joypad on it. On the left side of the LCD, you have a play button (doubles as the program list function), +10 button to skip 10 tracks at a time, a mode button, and an EQ button. Under the LCD are three buttons, increase and decrease volume buttons and a navi button to access directories on the CD-R or CD-RW in the player. Below and to the right of the LCD is a 4 direction joypad that allows you to access menus, navigate the directories, turn on and off the player, and search, play, and stop the Volt. There is a sliding latch to open and close the player and CDs are held in place through a snap in ball bearing system featured in most CD players now (like Sony and Aiwa). There is a hold switch and a sliding switch on the bottom of the player. The switch on the bottom picks between 10 sec ESP and 40 ESP when playing audio CDs and 120 sec ESP (40 sec ESP Audio CD) versus no ESP for MP3 and WMA file playing. On the right side of the player, there is a headphones port with a connection for the included inline remote, a line out port, and a AC adapter connector.
The LCD has a light blue backlight when a button is pressed and lasts a second or two. The LCD will display a three bar battery indicator, a mode indicator, and a program indicator. You also get a two line area that displays track and time and the name of the song (if the MP3 ID tags have been encoded to the file) scrolls by on the second line. the bottom of the LCD has a cheesy dancing man figure that flashes through while playing a song (the same LCD features are on the AVC Soul Player... even the dancing man!)
The player comes with a leather pouch that you can loop your belt through. The pouch has the Rio Volt name on the flap and a cut out to access the ports easily. Basically, it's very nice for the player.
You get an inline remote that features a 4 directional pad like the player itself and 3 buttons for volume and EQ adjustments. The remote is nice enough for the player although there are some problems with it. The headphones plug into the inline remote. The included headphones surprised me actually. They are decent headphones in my opinion. Much better than the crud that the Rio 800 and the Nomad II MG came with... but not as good as the headphones that came with the Intel Pocket Concert. I think most people will be content with the supplied headphones with the Rio Volt.
They give you the AC wall adapter in the package. That's way cool!
They give you two Duracell batteries... not some crappy batteries. It's a nice touch.
You get two CDs worth of software. This includes Adaptec's (Roxio is really under Adaptec) Easy CD Creator 4 software, Real Jukebox, the Rio Volt User Manual, SoundJam, and Adobe Acrobat to view the Manual. I didn't play with the software much since I have other programs that I've installed already.
I will also say that you must have access to at least a CD recorder (burner). Otherwise, this unit wouldn't have much value if you can't create CDs full of MP3 and WMA files!
Features: What Jolts your boat!
The main feature is that the player plays CD-Rs and CD-RWs with MP3 and WMA files on it. For MP3s, that means over 600 minutes of music on a single CD-R. More music than the player will play on a set of standard AA batteries! That's 10+ hours of nonstop music! Actually, a fresh set of Duracells or Energizers have lasted close to 14 hours straight on 10 sec ESP/no ESP for MP3/WMA mode... the SonicBlue packaging states up to 15 hours under optimal conditions. 40 sec ESP/120 sec MP3/WMA ESP cuts the battery life down to 2/3 of that. With firmware 2.0 on board, MP3 ESP has a minimum of 30 seconds or 60 seconds with 120 seconds being the maximum.
The mode button allows you to select from repeat 1 song, repeat all songs in a directory, repeat all songs period, shuffle, repeat a random song, repeat all songs in a directory with random order, repeat all songs in a random order, and cycle through song intros. I have noted that shuffling through all songs can have songs repeated more than once before hitting the other unplayed songs on the CD-R. However, firmwave 2.0 allows many of these options to be turned off so you don't have to scroll through them when you press the button.
The EQ button lets you pick from Normal, Rock, Jazz, Classical, and Ultra Bass. It does not have a manual equalizer setting, which bothered me a little. The equalizer presets did work well for the most part. Firmware 2.0 adds a menu function when you hold the EQ button. This allows you to change several features... including the new sleep timer mode for up to 90 minutes, the option of choosing when your unit is stopped and power off after so many seconds/minutes, system settings, and more. Another useful function is allowing the EQ button to be reprogrammable to another function other than Navi... like say the Navi button... this way, you can navigate the CD-R through just your remote.
Volume runs from 0 to 20 or 0 to 40... althrough the highest setting really isn't all that loud compared to the Rio 800 and Nomad II MG highest volume settings. It does get the job done overall. The minimum volume and maximum volume of the unit has not changed just the number of steps between the minimum and maximum settings. The Intel Pocket Concert volume setting and sound output pretty much blows the Volt away (as well as every other MP3 player out there currently). I usually keep the volume setting no lower than 12 to hear the MP3... as I said the headphones with the Rio Volt are rather decent and boost the sound output quite a bit.
The included AC adapter is a nice touch. You can hook up the Volt to your stereo system and play songs for hours on end with the AC adapter. Too bad there isn't a car adapter kit included (I would invest in one for the Volt though!).
The ESP works fairly well overall. There was a little skipping on bumpy car rides (I drive a Ford Explorer) but overall, the unit held it's own on 40 sec/120 sec MP3 mode. I wouldn't go jogging with it though (for other reasons... like the plastic case).
If you don't like the pouch included with the Rio Volt... guess what, use whatever Discman case you like. The Rio Volt is as portable as a CD Discman since it basically is a Discman.
With firmware 2.01, the song/file nagvigation system is much improved with a few tweaks over firmware 2.00. Still not as good as the TDK Mojo but it is getting much better. You can pick from file and directory with a couple of presses from even the remote!
You can upgrade the firmware of the Rio Volt by downloading the latest firmware and burning it to a CD-R. Run the CD-R on the Rio Volt and the Volt will be upgraded! Easy as pie!
The last update I put into my RioVolt was version 2.0!
With firmware 2.01, there is improved clarity at a sampling rate of 32. It doesn't seem to affect playback of any other sampling rate.
Where does the Volt blackout...
Technically, the Volt is a second/third generation MP3 CD Player. It still has a few problems. I've already mentioned several times that the Rio Volt is made of plastic and feels rather cheap. Although the unit has taken a few bumps and bruises, I still think that the unit will break just because of how the Rio Volt looks and feels. I really like this unit overall, but the feel of the build quality is very deceptive. It doesn't say that the player is well made although it is.
The inline remote I felt was designed rather poorly. It was too easy to press the volume buttons and equalizer button while holding the remote or pressing other buttons on the remote. It was annoying to say the least.
The program lists you can program into the player only stay there as long as the unit is on. You lose them if the player is turned off for any reason. Firmware 2.0 seems to have corrected this as well!
You start from the beginning of the CD-R every time you turn on the player. Since you could have hundreds of songs on the CD-R, it becomes a task to find out where you left off last time. This seems to be corrected with firmware 2.0. It starts where I last stopped the unit! Yay!
The unit is still a bit thick for a Discman... although the unit is still portable, flash players are still much easier to carry around with you.
Overall... for the SP100
This is a nice unit any way you look at it. If you have a CD-Recorder or a CD-Rewritable and need an MP3 player, this will satisfy many people especially with firmware 2.0 installed! A flash player is still more portable and skip-free but the Volt is a much cheaper alternative with a cheaper medium and much larger storage without going to a hard disk drive unit. I wouldn't go to the gym or jogging with this unit, but in the case of long car trips, this item is almost a necessity for me now. The ESP is very good on the unit. However, newer CD-MP3 players are hitting the market already with some strengths and weaknesses versus the RioVolt. I undecided between the new TDK Mojo player and the RioVolt. The TDK Mojo skips less (45 sec ESP on regular music CDs and 8 minutes of MP3 buffer!). The TDK Mojo also feels much sturdier than the RioVolt player. Another feature is the navigation through the CD-R... it is much easier on the TDK Mojo than on RioVolt (although this has greatly improved with firmware 2.0!). There is more to the TDK Mojo, but I will address that in my upcoming review of the product (I have it already typed up)!
Read my TDK Mojo versus RioVolt/Soul Player article!
http://yusakugo.epinions.com/content_1561895044
For under $200 bucks, you can get the Volt, CD-Rs to record MP3 and WMA files on, and a card adapter kit (a power adapter and a cassette adapter) and be ready to play the night away with music (assuming you have a CD-burner or a friend of yours does). In my case, it serve as a perfect companion to the Creative Nomad II MG unit I have (with 128 Megs of memory) and Intel Pocket Concert. For most people, the Volt may the only MP3 player that they will ever need.
Now onto the SP90... what's the difference?
Well, with the nickname of RioVolt Jr., it shouldn't be too hard to guess that the SP90 is a stripped down version of the SP100. The RioVolt Jr. is packaged with just about nothing when compared to the SP100. No AC adapter, no case, no inline remote... Just what seems to be a SP100 in a royal blue color. There are other changes as well that you should note... the SP90 lacks the ability to flash upgrade the firmware. That is fairly upsetting to me. However, the firmware on the SP90 seemed based on the current 2.01 firmware for the SP100 unit. Thankfully, the sound is intact on the SP90 unit... I didn't notice any differences from the SP100. The SP90 has 120 sec of anti-skip MP3 protection. Heck, I don't even recall seeing batteries when my friend opened the package...
The only other advantage that the SP90 offers is a much reduced price... it should sell between $85 and $100 online and on the web. Remember that you lose the flash upgradable firmware ROM and the remote, AC adapter, and case to help save anywhere from $20-40 from the SP100. The SP90 is a decent buy... buy not outstanding by any means. Realize that many places sell the SP100 for $140 and less... with coupons, the price can come down as low as $120... maybe even $115 if you look hard enough.
Then what the heck is the SP250 then?
Since the SP90 is Jr in the lineup, then the SP250 the is papa bear and superstar of the RioVolt lineup. The SP250 boasts a new design and much better LCD... similar to the Rio 600 and 800 lines and definitely competes with the LCD on the TDK Mojo. You get up to 8 minutes of MP3 anti-skip protection on this monster. Rechargable batteries... no problem... you get a pair with this player. Sick of your MP3s... then use the integrated FM tuner. Much better navigation system is used on the RioVolt SP250 compared to the SP90 and SP100. Two sets of headgear are provided... folding headphones and earbuds... but I would still use my own since the SP100 earbuds stunk. A more stylish remote is included as well as a much more functional case. Everything that was on the RioVolt SP100 unit made it to the SP250 as is or in upgraded fashion. You still get the AC adapter as well. It is still hard to guage this unit since I do not yet own this particular unit. I will upgrade this article or write a new review (if the section provides itself) when I finally get my pre-ordered unit. The MSRP is $179.95 for the SP250. I am definitely excited about the SP250 though.
Overall... future thoughts and the current market
The SP90 is great for the budget user... although I think most should still choose the SP100 unit for the extras... the inline remote, flash ROM for firmware, and the AC adapter. The market has become much more competitive in all MP3 player catagories including new and unexpected products from the Pocket PC and Palm OS front (i.e. the Sony Clie N700 series handhelds). If you want the best, I would recommend waiting for the SP250 and compare that to other units like the TDK Mojo and the older SP100 units. The decisions in this market just got much harder... but the entire RioVolt line definitely holds its own and more with the two new RioVolt units.
Read my reviews on the Creative Nomad II MG 64 Meg player (cut and paste the link)
http://yusakugo.epinions.com/content_12093918852
Read my reviews on the SonicBlue Rio 800 64 Meg player (cut and paste the link)
http://yusakugo.epinions.com/content_11880205956
Intel Pocket Concert review
http://yusakugo.epinions.com/content_16884993668
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 80-180
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yusakugo
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Member: Rich Go
Location: Somewhere in the NorthEast
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Losing Sleep and Lacking Time... sigh...
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