Rolling, Rolling, Rolling with my Rio.
Written: Sep 08 '03
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Pros: light, cool-looking, easy to use, battery life
Cons: a little unreliable, rubber material, small memory
The Bottom Line: It is a little faulty, but with proper care is a dandy.
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| jennings2003's Full Review: Rio 600 (32 MB) MP3 Player |
I received my Rio600 a few years ago as a birthday gift. At the time, it was the peak of the Napster age. I wanted a MP3 so badly because I had no CD burner to listen to my newly pirated tracks away from my computer. So I got a Rio600.
APPEARANCE
The Rio600 is one of the best looking players on the market. It’s small, light, and even contoured for your hand. Mine came with a blue face plate and you can buy other colors. My faceplate was painted with a metallic and color shifting paint. The faceplate itself is cool to me. The rest of the MP3 player has a rubber like material on the outside. This material has a cool feel to it, but it peels on the edges easily. You need to keep good care of it to prevent the peeling because once it starts it is not going to stop. The player has a nice, large display screen.
BUTTONS
There are five buttons on the Rio600. First is the Menu button. This allows you to change the bass, treble, and balance. You can also delete track, see the battery life, create a playlist, repeat a track, random play, correct and see the time and date, and set the screen options. To move the cursor on the screen you use the circular button. This button also plays your songs, fast forwards, reverses, and stops the songs. There’s a button inside of this button and it is like the left button on a computer mouse. It chooses your options and also rotates the on screen information so you can see the length of the track and its album. The other two buttons are the volume up and down buttons.
PERFORMANCE
The sound of my player is average to good. My friend has a more powerful and more expensive player but I think the difference in sound is very minimal. The sound is clear and crisp. The volume goes up to 20. I think it is safe to say that volume around 13 will even suffice heavy metal listeners. If you go any higher it may distort the sounds.
BATTERY LIFE
The Rio600 uses a single AA battery. It is easy to install. The Rio600 is two pieces. One piece is the screen and button face while the other is where the data chip is and where the battery is held. I can usually get 8 hours from the single AA. The battery life also depends on how much you use the Indiglo feature and how loud you listen to it. I also found out that you should unattach the two parts after use. This saves on the battery too while not erasing the data.
SOFTWARE AND LOADING
My Rio600 came with an easy to use USB cable. You plug the cable where you would plug the headphones into. The software Rio Audio gives you is awesome. I use it to burn CD’s (Yes, I finally got a burner), load my music onto my Rio, and to just listen to music. The software is simple to install. After you install it you will be happy with the ease of it. Loading tracks onto my Rio takes almost no time due to the USB cable.
MEMORY
My Rio600 has 32MB. I think it’s expandable. Four years ago 32 MB was good. Nowadays it isn’t. I would advise getting at least a 64MB, but if your find this one at a decent price it is worth the shot. My Rio holds about 7 to 8 MP3’s. It can also hold about 12 to 13 CD compressed files (WMA’s).
UPDATE
My Rio went dead after 10 months. It wasn’t completely dead, just on its deathbed. I kept poor care of it, and it was probably my neglect of it that caused it to stop. The player had an awful noise to it whenever I played it so I looked for the warranty. I lost the warranty but I still sent an email to Rio telling them of my problems. My mom had the receipt and that was all I needed. The Rio people were very helpful on the phone and I got a brand new one in the mail. All I had to do was send my broken one back. I keep good care of my new one and it has been fine until today (appx. 2.5 years). The volume goes down when I listen to it. I will put the level to 8 and it will decline at random intervals until it reached zero. I am going to give it a break and hope that is all that is wrong with it. We’ll see.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 150
Recommended for: Beginners - Easy Enough for Tech Newbies
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Epinions.com ID:
jennings2003
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Location: Brooklyn, NY
Reviews written: 36
Trusted by: 18 members
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