Diamond Rio 500--Does Its Age Make It Better?
Written: Jul 06 '00 (Updated Jul 18 '00)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Small and sleek design, great battery life, exceptional sound quality, great price for 64MB memory
Cons: No FM tuner
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| rahulm's Full Review: Rio PMP-500 (64 MB) MP3 Player |
I recently had the good fortune of receiving the Diamond Rio 500 MP3 player as a gift. I've found this player to be a great device, with functionality mixed with fun and entertainment. I hope the following review helps you decide whether the Rio 500 is for you.
Installation
The Rio 500 is incredibly easy to install. I simply plugged in the USB cable into our computer, and popped in the installation CD. An automated wizard took us through the entire setup process, and I was on my way to transferring songs onto the portable player.
Diamond's RioPort Audio Manager software is an all inclusive package, featuring a built-in playlist editor, MP3 player, and transfer wizard. Transferring and deleting songs from your MP3 player is incredibly simple and fast with the included software.
Additionally, the software includes a browser for searching for MP3s, though its library of songs is nothing compared to Napster.
Performance
The Rio 500 is by far one of the coolest and most functional toys I've gotten the opportunity to review.
First, lets discuss the design of the Rio 500. The player I received was gray in color. The Rio is small enough to easily fit in your pocket or carry in the palm of your hand. It is also exceptionally light. The buttons are all located in easy to reach locations. The Rio is very intuitive and includes a MP3 browsing knob (which doubles as the volume knob).
The Rio comes with a handy carrying case that has a belt clip on it, though I found this to be pointless since the device is small enough to fit in one's pocket.
The player has a large LCD display, which includes backlighting. I tested to see how having the backlight on in its default setting (so that backlight would turn on whenever a button was pressed or volume was changed) effected battery life, and found that the battery lasted significantly longer with the backlight entirely off. With its single AA battery, I found that the Rio easily exceeded 8 hours of listening time on a reasonable volume setting. The Rio recognizes ID-3 tags, and the names of songs scroll across the display, making it convenient and easy to switch from song to song.
Sound quality is as essentially the same as it would be on any CD player. Additionally, however, the Rio has bass and treble controls, as well as four preset bass/treble settings (normal, rock, classic, and jazz). The only disappointing feature of the Rio 500 is the horrible pair of earphones that is included. To fully appreciate the sound quality, I had to use a pair of high quality headphones. Of course, this was a tradeoff, as battery life slightly decreases (since volume has to be set higher). In general, even with headphones, the volume settings don't have to be hiked up too much.
Probably one of the most attractive features of the Rio 500 is the USB connectivity that is included with it. Transfer rates are 12Mbps, which means one can transfer 64MB worth of songs in a matter of minutes instead of hours. This definitely makes the Rio much more functional, since you can basically change songs on the fly, with no time or effort required.
Conclusion
All things considered, the Rio 500 is an absolutely incredible product. Ever since I received it, I haven't stopped listening to MP3s. Wherever I go, the Rio 500 stays in my pocket. The greatest strength of this player is by far the USB connectivity. Because of it, users are able to transfer MP3s at almost instantaneous speeds. The simpler it is to do something, the more you do it. Because of this, users will find themselves switching the MP3s they listen to very often.
Overall, the Rio 500 is one of the greatest products I've ever seen.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
rahulm
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Member: Anujit Mukherjee
Location: Pittsford, NY
Reviews written: 44
Trusted by: 59 members
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