Player Good; Process way too hard
Written: Oct 21 '00
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Make your own exercise playlists
Cons: Not as versatile as a CD player
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| tharrison02459's Full Review: Rio PMP-500 (64 MB) MP3 Player |
The player is small and has a good interface. But the process of getting music into the player is way too hard. It might be tolerable if you could get a few CDs on the player at once, but I found that to get good sound quality 64MB is only enough to get about one and a quarter CD's worth of music on the player at a time.
The player does have a slot for a SmartMedia card, and after looking around, I found that Diamond now supports an additional 64MB on the card. This could make the difference since you could easily get two, maybe three CDs of music on the device. I found a 64MB card for $140.
It's still a fair amount of work. Once you have gone through the process of making MP3s you have to hook the Rio up to the PC (30 seconds), create a "playlist" (a few seconds), delete any existing files from the Rio to make space (30 seconds), make a folder to put the files in (10 seconds), and then copy the files to the Rio (a minute or so).
This assumes you have already made MP3s from your CDs. To do that you have to go through a lengthy process, but at least you only have to do that once per CD.
I was kind of envisioning a process like: insert CD in drive, copy to Rio. Sigh. And if you think about a regular portable CD player, this would actually be one more step. Sigh again.
A bit about bitrates: when creating the MP3 you have to decide what tradeoff between size and quality you want by choosing a bitrate. They range from 64K to 190K. I found that 64K was flat and dead; 96K seemed almost as good to me as any of the higher resolutions. At 96K
typical CDs consume about 50MB of disks and memory space. Maybe if you are exercising or riding a train or bus, it wouldn't make any difference.
The software that comes with the Rio is klunky. Once you get the hang of it, it does most of what you want, but it could be much better. I downloaded MusicMatch Jukebox (freeware), and it is somewhat more clever with regard to creating, managing and playing MP3s. It has a "plugin" that will copy files to the Rio, but it is still a multi-step process. I would say MusicMatch or similar software is a necessity for using the Rio.
The actual device is lovely -- small, light and well designed. It has the main buttons you need on the front, and a few other features and settings available through the display. Very nice design. The headphones are perfect -- like eyeglasses they have little hooks that slip over your ears so they stay in place, even if you tug on them. I have two complaints: 1) there is no place to put a strap (it comes with a case that would clip on a belt), and 2) the little pads on the headphones come off. They will be lost within a few days.
Finally, the battery gets used up more quickly than I expected -- there are no moving parts, so why shouldn't it last as long as my Palm Pilot? But I have a few sets of NiMH rechargeable batteries for my gizmos, so this is not a real problem for me.
This particular gizmo just ain't there yet for me. It would be fine if you 1) loved to play with MP3s and make up your own playlists, 2) really wanted a lightweight, jostle-free player for running or exercising, 3) didn't mind listening to the same songs for a while, 4) didn't need high-fidelity, or 5) were a major digit-head.
So I talked with my wife about this, and to my surprise she included herself amongst viable users. She said she liked the idea of being able to combine tracks from different CDs and thought the idea of creating a few playlists of good music to exercise to would be fun.
Recommended:
No
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Epinions.com ID:
tharrison02459
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Member: Tom H
Location: Newton, MA USA
Reviews written: 15
Trusted by: 1 member
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