So you want to get a mp3 player. You read all the literature and all the professional reviews and now you want to know what the common person thinks. You've cut it down to just two good players: the Rio 500 and the Nomad II. Tough choice. Hopefully this review will help you decide.

I wrote a long review at the end but I figured if I were you I wouldn't want to read all that, so I decided to write a short synapse of it in numbered from! Just to let you know I actually bought the Rio and I'm basing my comparison by what I have learned about the Nomad II, I DO NOT OWN A NOMAD II. The synapse of the article is only for Rio not the comparison of the two. The main review is on the comparison.

1) The sound quality of the Rio is great. With the signal to noise ratio at 95 db (the higher the better) there is no hissing.

2) I knocked the Rio around a lot to see if it would skip and nothing. Perfect sound. I never had it skip, I never had it stop on me.

3) It is small. About the size of a portable fm radio that you could get from radio shack. 3.6 X 2.5 X .7 inches to be exact. Also very pretty (if you get the gray one). And very light you would hardly believe it. Pretty much like a portable fm radio. Going off of its appearance the screen is blue blacklit which is always nice.

4) The Rio has 64 mg internally. You can upgrade by buying more memory.

5) Both Windows and Mac OS can use it.

6) The Rio is USB use only. If you don't have a USB port then you really should not get a Rio or a Nomad II. They are both USB. If you do not know if you have a USB port read in my review and you will see where I explained what a USB port is and looks like.

7) The software is bad. Do not use it, you don't have to. Use the real jukebox at real.com.

8) The earphone are bad and the mesh "case" that they give with the Rio is worthless as well.


The Good

The Rio 500 comes with 64 megs of memory installed. You don't need a card of memory like the Nomad II does. This way the least amount of memory you can have is 64 megs. This is about half an hour to an hour of good quality recorded mp3's. Now you can add more memory to the Rio to add more music, this is not an available option on the Nomad II. The Nomad II is limited by the card capacity. And this also means the more memory you want the more you're gonna have to pay. At buy.com the Rio with 64 is 200 dollars the Nomad II with a 64 card is 250.

The Rio as well as the Nomad II uses a usb port for fast downloads from your computer to the mp3 player. The usb or universal serial bus is a faster way to transfer data from one device to another compared to the other ports on your computer. It is on most computers that were bought within the last year in a half. The usb color coding for peripherals, like your mouse or keyboard (that has also become standard on the newer computers), is black. That's probably the easiest way to tell if you have a usb port. It looks like a little slot or rectangle (while a ps2 mouse's one looks like a circle with a bunch of little holes in it). There are also problems with having this as the only interface for transporting data, but that will be addressed later.

The sound is excellent. Just as good as when it was on your computer. You will not be disappointed when you hear your music coming out of this small little box! All your mp3's from your computer will sound great on you mp3 player (which is what you really want). If you have no mp3's and want more, you need to find some off the web (ie napster). You could also use software that comes with the Rio or you could use a downloadable program from real (jukebox) which copies your cds into mp3 format (called ripping). The quality of your mp3s are very similar to the quality of your cd depending on what quality you rip it at.

This is one of the first products that came out that is usable for both pc's and macs. This is probably the most talked about part of the Rio 500. The Nomad II one the other hand was for windows 98 only but now the nomad's website has a mac os download.

The backlit lcd is real nice if you ever use it at night or if you just want to show off your new Rio. It's pretty, it's a nice touch, and as everybody knows the nicest stuff are backlit!

The actual appearance of the Rio is very nice as well. I got the gray one that looks very sleek. I never have been into the transparent I-wanna-be-an imac trend. I think that those just look ugly. So the other colors that the Rio 500 comes in has never really appealed to me. But I can't really say too much about the appearance of the Rio since that is all relative to what you like and a LOT of people really like the Nomad II's look.

The Bad (or not as good)

Ok, I think that the worst part of the Rio is that if you don't have a usb port on your computer you cannot use this product. Now I realize that most people have usb ports and it's not that big of a deal, but sometimes it could be broken or if you have an older computer it is very expensive to create one. The Nomad II as well, is usb driven.

Another bad part about the Rio is the software. It's the worst. I suggest if you get the Rio do not even use the software and use the real jukebox off of real.com. I have no idea about the Nomad's software.

The Rio comes with headphones as well as a mesh case (that is generally the clip that you have to use if you want one). I never used these "extras". They are really bad. I use the same ear buds that I use for my diskman and I don't think I really need a clip since this thing is really small and never skips so you can put it anywhere and never need to touch it again. But I can't see how good the mesh case could be. It would make it hard to get to the buttons and its ugly. You spend a lot of money to get a good, nice looking player to put it in that ugly thing (unless of course you have one of the transparent ones, then I guess I could see why you would want to cover it up). The headphones are the ones that go behind your ears and then into your earsholes (like a worm). I always thought that these were ugly as well. So that's why I never use them.

There is no radio, there is no voice entering device. These are very nice extras on the Nomad II that the Rio does not have. I wish that the Rio did, but for the price difference I really don't think I would use these extras. But to one his own, if these are things for you that are worth the fifty dollar difference then I guess you should get the Nomad II.

Other places that you can find info on the Rio 500:
Cnet: http://electronics.cnet.com/cgi/crunch/pdetail2.asp?ptable=MP3_Players&PID=1000009
Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00000JSGF/o/qid=963364430/sr=8-1/ref=aps_sr_ce_1_3/102-3338041-2944942

for both sites scroll to the bottom and you will see real reviews from professionals as well as other people who have bought the products.


Well that's all I can think of for now. Thanks for reading!






Recommended: Yes