The low-cost, convenient, modern answer to the Walkman
Written: Jun 29 '04
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Pros: FM tuner, sound quality, battery life, PC software, options, memory upgrades, size and weight
Cons: earphones, corrupt files, No AM tuner, could be a bit cheaper, flimsy navigation button
The Bottom Line: Aside from the earphones and corrupt files, I have nothing but praise for this small MP3 players. Definitely a good buy for beginners and decent quality for audiophiles.
bluevellet's Full Review: Rio Chiba Street (128 MB) MP3 Player
After my old Walkman broke down, I've begun looking for an alternative to listen to music on the go. I briefly considered a CD player with MP3 playback abilities, but no matter how I looked at it, CD skipping and the bulkiness of all CD players made me choose against it. Ipods and other devices using mini hard drives were tempting, but were too pricey for me.
So I naturally settled for a MP3 player using memory sticks. The Rio Chiba was the one that I bought after initially trying to find its cheaper cousin the RioSport s30s.
First impressions? Thank God for technology! The thing is small and lightweight. It can easily fit in any shirt or pants pocket. It also comes with a belt clip but I hardly use it. Battery life is also a god send. With a single Alkaline AAA battery, that thing can give you nearly 20 hours of playtime. I wouldn't have thought it possible 10 years ago.
It comes with a 128-meg memory built-in, allowing you to store about 30-35 MP3 and WMA files at normal bit rates on average. The memory can be expanded if you add a SD card, the same ones used by many digital cameras (including mine), up to 640 MB.
File management is handled with an application provided with the player (Rio Music Manager) that you install onto your computer. You connect your player with a custom wire and then stick the other end in one of the USB slots of your computer. There are lots of features, but to be honest, I am not interested. All I want is to quickly drag and drop the files I want and it does that very well. It is also through this program that you can erase whatever music file in your Rio Chiba. Transfer rates are fast (it takes maybe 10 seconds to transfer a 4-meg MP3), but a small percentage of files get corrupted once uploaded in the player. I'm not sure why, but there are some files that it just doesn't like and end up corrupted, no matter how many times you try to re-upload them.
Though somewhat uncommon among such devices, I tried hard to choose one model that actually offered a radio tuner. This one has a FM tuner (there are no MP3 player with AM tuner for some reason) and though the RioSport s30s is criticized by many reviewers on this site for bad reception, I can say with confidence that this isn't the case with this Rio model. In the city where I live (Montreal), I have no problem listening to any station I want with clear reception. Granted you're not under a bridge or on the subway, of course.
Everything in the player can be accessed via 5 buttons and a nice, little, 1-inch 1/2, LCD screen. FM station, MP3 file info, battery life, volume, it's all there. You can also dig a little deeper and access various settings such as equalizer, clock, pre-sets, language and such. All of which can be more easily read with a soft back light (that automatically shuts off when you are not pressing any button after a few seconds, part of many little energy-saving features). My only complaint is that the navigation button seems a bit flimsy to me.
The Rio Chiba has pretty good sound quality, but you wouldn't know it if you restricted yourself to those cheapo earphones that comes with the box. The earphone complaint is one common with many MP3 players of this price range or lower. So don't be too cheap and invest an extra $15-$20 to get a decent sound quality.
With everything said, the Rio Chiba is really the low-cost, convenient, modern answer to the Walkman. I wouldn't necessarily recommend this particular model as the only one you should buy for yourself, but as far as I'm concerned, I am thoroughly satisfied with my purchase.
128MB of Memory Plays Back Over 2 Hours of MP3 or 4 hours of WMA music Expansion slot to add up to 512MB using SD or MMC Cards 5-Band Adjustable Equal...More at Amazon Marketplace
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