A reasonably good player
Written: Mar 14 '01
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Pros: Good sound, sleek, good lookin', decent battery life (see caveat below)
Cons: No AC adapter or rechargeable batteries, need to keep track of firmware upgrades, not cheap
The Bottom Line: I would have given this unit 3 1/2 stars if I could, but it's a vast improvement over the Rio 600 (even though it pre-dates it).
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| Luyen_Chou's Full Review: Rio PMP-500 (64 MB) MP3 Player |
For those of you who have read my Rio 600 review, you know I received a 500 from SonicBlue as a result of having had to return my previous 600 three times (!) with the same electrical defect. SO I was a bit skeptical when they offered me the 500 as a replacement the third time around (me: “but isn’t the Rio 600 100 Rios better than the Rio 500??”). But to SonicBlue’s credit (or is it Diamond? Or Rio? It’s all so confusing!), this unit is significantly better than the 600, and is gaining my grudging respect. If you have your heart set on a Rio 600, definitely buy one of these babies instead. Details follow….
Battery Life
I had major complaints with the 600’s battery life. When I first started using the 500, I was even more dismayed. I was getting MAYBE 5 hours of battery life, transferring music from my computer was draining juice like the state of California, and the unit was exhibiting some very weird behavior when the battery was low (which was always).
To wit: I installed a fresh Duracell battery on a Wednesday morning. I transferred 5 songs to the unit. At the end of the day, I transferred another 6 songs (I hadn’t even listened to the unit yet) – and I’m already at 1 bar on the battery indicator. Listened to it going home on the train (25 minutes). Tried to transfer music the next morning, and the unit basically shuts down in the middle of transfer hanging the RioPort software and actually erasing the contents of the Rio as a bonus.
Frustrated, I decided to log onto RioPort.com to see if there were any FAQs about this problem. There, I discovered a firmware update for the 500 (version 2.15). Checked my unit’s firmware version number and it’s 1.04! So I downloaded the firmware upgrade and followed the directions (which warn you to do the upgrade with a completely new alkaline battery – probably to prevent the unit for crapping out during upgrade (which I can imagine would be much more catastrophic than crapping out during music transfer!) At any rate, this firmware upgrade made a HUGE difference. I replaced the old battery, and was able to use it for a week (just replaced it today, exactly a week since I installed it). Let’s see, that’s roughly 4.5 subway rides, or figure close to 2 hours. Plus two or three transfers – all on a battery with one bar. Definitely an improvement, though certainly not as good as my portable CD player (more like 10-20 hours).
Some important improvements with the firmware upgrade: the unit is much better about not crapping out in the middle of transfers; when the unit is low on juice, it appears to go into an energy saver mode and plays songs only one track at a time; advancing or rewinding a track at a time while the unit is playing seems to take up a lot of juice, and the unit often shuts down when low on battery. But stopping the current track and advancing or rewinding by track works fine even on a low battery.
Sound Quality
The sound quality from the 600 is really pretty good. I plugged it into my home stereo, and with tracks sampled at 160-192k bitrate, the quality is indeed “near CD audio”. I’ve noticed a tinny sounding distortion on tracks I’ve grabbed from my CD drive using RioPort’s built-in ripper; but I’ve noticed this with other rippers I’ve used as well, and this may either have something to do with my CD drive or the MP3 codec.
I was disappointed by the maximum volume level available on both the 500 and the 600. One nice benefit of the 2.15 firmware upgrade is that the maximum volume level on the 500 is increased from 20 to 25 (I know, I know, this sounds like a joke from Spinal Tap, but it really does appear to increase the maximum volume).
As in the case of the 600, the standard headphones stink. Go get yourself a good pair of earbuds from Sony.
Form Factor
The 500 looks and feels sleeker and sexier, IMHO, than the 600. I like the colored translucent case. More importantly, the buttons are much more functional than the Nintendo-like controller on the 600 (which I could never get to work properly). The volume is controlled via a knob rather than two tiny buttons (radical concept!)
Software
I upgraded to the latest RioPort software, 3.3.087. Works better than the last version, which crashed on me a lot. You need to upgrade the software once you download it to support unlimited CD ripping, but the software does an admirable job of automating this task. There are some minor annoyances with the software interface in general, but really, all things considered, I can’t complain.
Storage Capacity
To me 64MB is the bare minimum for a portable, software-based music player. At reasonable quality, I can fit about 10-12 songs. The 32MB available on the 600 is just insufficient. Of course, all of this raises the question whether you’re not better of spending $100-200 more and getting a hard drive-based model like the Archos Jukebox or the Nomad Jukebox, both of which provide 6GB(!) of storage (at the cost of the solid-state and compact construction of flash-memory based models like the Rios).
Durability
So far, I have not experienced the problems I experienced with the 600 (I’ll keep you posted). The unit seems solidly built. I am going to jinx myself and guess that this unit lasts me at least a year or two (which in this day and age is nearly miraculous).
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 260
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Epinions.com ID:
Luyen_Chou
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Member: Luyen Chou
Location: Brooklyn, NY
Reviews written: 2
Trusted by: 0 members
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