Great Buy, Smart Software, Easily Expandable, Extremely Durable!
Written: May 30 '04 (Updated May 30 '04)
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Pros: Fantastic Sound Quality! Good Price. Highly Durable! Easy-to-use Software. Uses only ONE battery.
Cons: Volume output could be stronger.
The Bottom Line: Reliable, resiliant and reasonable. This player is best for beginners, athletes, music-lovers and (like me) audiobook listeners! This is a great buy!
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| briannewberry's Full Review: Rio Sport S35S (128 MB) MP3 Player |
I've had my Rio Sport for about 2 years. I've taken it across country (from California to South Carolina), I've dropped it, accidently sat on it, gotten it wet & it just keeps coming back for more!
Other reviewers criticize the beltclip, and they're right. The beltclip is lame. I just put the Rio in my pocket. When my wife goes running, it's so small, she just puts it down her sports bra. No worries.
Now the good news!
The easily readable, brightly back-lit LCD is reminiscent of the "IndiGlow" wristwatch. It displays everything you'd expect it to. Song title and the names of the artist and the album.
If the song title is too long ("Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars" for example) then the title slowly scrolls from Left to Right. Mighty slick!
A small status bar shows how far into each song you are.
Pressing the Enter button toggles you through information such as file type (wma, mp3, wav, etc.), time remaining, time elapsed, KBPS Rate (32 Kbs, 64 Kbs or 128 kbs), Date, Pause/Play, Stereo or Mono and track number out of total (e.g. if you've got 100 sound files onboard, and you're listening to song number 38, the it will display "38/100").
If its time-of-day clock is too small (which it probably is), then use your wristwatch.
An easy-to see battery indicator estimates how much juice you have remaining (with about 6 increments inlcuding a blinking battery to symbolize a sort of "2-minute warning").
Battery life: I sometimes advance to the next song, max out the volume (or frequently CHANGE the volume), back up & play songs over and turn it on & off a lot.
With all this activity - I can usually rely on about 8 accumulative hours of operation.
I would guess Sony's optimistic assessment of "15 hours on one battery" (or whatever) is based on putting in a fresh alkaline battery and letting the device play over & over until it finally runs out of battery.
Buttons are extremely responsive and there's also a "button-lock" (keystroke: MENU+ENTER) which means you need not worry about accidently bumping the advance button when you're right in the middle of something good.
This unit comes with good-quality Earbuds. While there's nothing wrong with them, I personally don't care for the basic design of earbuds in general, even if they're the highest quality.
My wife loves hers, but I'm picky so I bought wrap-around headphones (TDK/$10 such a deal!)
The Rio Sport comes with 128 MB of storage space (actually if you want to nit-pick, it works out to about 125 MB) but using the Sport's flash memory card slot, you can expand that storage space from 16 MB (why bother?) all the way upto 512 MB (WOWZERS!)
This unit comes with neato software! The included "Rio Music Manager" is the main software used to get music FROM your hard drive INTO your MP3 player. But wait! There's more!
If you prefer Windows Media Player, then you don't even NEED Rio Music Manager. From within Media Player, you just click "Copy To CD or Device."
Or by using the "other accessories" button, the Setup Wizard creates a Rio Player icon in your "My Computer" window, which allows you to simply drag music files onto the icon (the one drawback to this is you lose the tag information (Song name, artist, album, etc.)
The included software also comes with "RIO Taxi", which enables you to use the Rio Sport as a storage device!
For example - say you've got some big ol' 18 MB Powerpoint file you want to take to a friend's house. Using Rio Taxi, you can put the 18 MB file on your Rio Sport, take the Sport to your friends house, plug it into his computer & download the file from your Rio Sport to your friend's computer! - FREAKY TIKI!
The SOUND QUALITY is exquisite. But sometimes the actual VOLUME output isn't always quite as powerful as you might like (this is true of many MP3 players).
The loudest ambient city noise (garbage trucks, barking dogs, ambulance sirens, nearby car stereoes, etc.) can drown out your MP3 music.
SOLUTION! An oft-overlooked FREE accessory that comes with the Windows Operating System. It's called Windows Movie-Maker. Check it out!
The Drop-Test: I'm not proud of this, but I am clumsy & subsequently VERY HARD on all my toys.
On more than one occasion, I have accidently dropped the Rio Sport from a height of about 5 feet (chest level). It has dropped, bounced & tumbled on asphalt, concrete & other hard surfaces. I even dropped it in water once (rescued within 5 seconds).
I'm happy to report this most rigerous & unreasonable abuse has caused only a few minor problems. About ever 3 months, I can't turn it off. I need to remove & reinsert the AAA battery. Then I can go back to using the POWER On/Off switch. When I do this, it causes the clock to return to 12:NOON. But I have never lost a single file - not once - and the sound quality is (& always has been) supurb!
In short, this is a wonderful little MP3 player & I strongly recommend it to anyone with an active life!
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 150.00
Recommended for: Beginners - Easy Enough for Tech Newbies
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Epinions.com ID:
briannewberry
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Member: Brian Newberry
Location: Hollywood, California
Reviews written: 3
Trusted by: 0 members
About Me:
Map-making, free-thinking, coffee-drinking, laughter-loving, tech-oriented, transplant from Metro L.A.
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