Excellent budget MP3/WMA player
Written: Jul 09 '04
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Pros: 20-30 hours of playtime
Upgradeable to 576mb
Supports playlists
Lightweight and compact
Skip free
Cons: Difficult to use playlists
Uses USB 1.1
Software not very intuitive
The Bottom Line: Excellent budget MP3/WMA player. Extremely portable, upgradeable, and will last a long time.
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| evilpig247's Full Review: Rio S10 (64 MB) MP3 Player |
I purchased my Rio S10 on eBay for a total of $30. I then purchased a 256mb SD card for $30. So, for a total of $60, I had a hip, compact, lightweight, skip-free, 320mb MP3/WMA player (well, actually, it's only about 315mb, but still!), which translates into about 5.5 hours of music. With software and firmware updates, the S10 can even accept a 512mb SD card, which is about 9.5 hours of music!
Those harddrive-based players are neat and all, but they're somewhat heavy, can skip, and guzzle batteries (which is why most of them come with built-in lithium-ion batteries that only last 8-15 hours). The battery life on this little guy is 20-30 hours, so it can last a car trip (including the trip home in some cases).
Sonic Blue also updated the firmware and software to support playlists to allow for easier uploading and selective listening, but you can only create the playlists on your computer and not on-the-fly on the player...bummer...and accessing the playlist is a few menus deep on the player...another bummer...
With the new software I can upload all the songs I'm in the mood for, then tell it to fill the rest of the player with other random songs from my compilation, so there's no wasted space! It also supports synchronization, but it either deletes random songs to make room, or doesn't delete any (manual deletion), whereas newer players support options like "delete least often played", which would be great for me, if the S10 would support it...I hate redundant music files. =oP
You also have to use the Sonic Blue software or iTunes to transfer music to the SD card, you can't simply put it in a high-speed reader to copy large amounts of music (I use a USB 2.0 7-in-1 card reader)...the player uses USB 1.1, so transfering only 256mb of music takes about 5-10 minutes, versus 1-3 minutes with USB 2.0.
But that's really it. This really is a great player for the money, I mean, you can't beat $60 for 5.5 hours of music and a 20 hour average playtime!
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 30
Recommended for: Athletes - Lightweight and Portable, Perfect for the Gym
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Epinions.com ID:
evilpig247
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Reviews written: 1
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