RCA Lyra RD2820 (20 GB) MP3 Player

Pros: Inexpensive and good sounding.
Cons: Poor design. Prone to malfunction. Bulky.

I've now owned two of these devices (the first was the 10gig 2800 and the second was the replacement 20 gig 2820.) Both were a bit large, prone to lock-up and caused me to have to hit the reset button (which is, incidentally, far too small and difficult...

Pros: Lots of memory.
Cons: Clunky size. Clunky navigation.

Having 20GB of memory is wonderful, but I wish the unit itself was smaller. I also have the freezing problem that other owners have, requiring a reset. I upgraded the software and that did not help unfortunately.

I am also disappointed that I am unable to use www.audible.com files on this player. From what I understand, spoken word files come in chapter form and this player does not enable the user to skip ahead through files in that fashion.

I paid $400 for this one year ago and am happy to see it going for $190 now.

Pros: Battery life, hard drive size, lots of accessories
Cons: Slow to navigate around, crashes often, only USB 1

The unit seemed attractive for the price, and I was not impressed by it. Sound quality is above average, but you can heard some distortion sometimes with good headphones. Battery life lives up to its expectation with more than 10 hours. Navigation is painful within the unit. Have your playlists ready! File transfer is really slow, they could have included firewire or USB 2. Takes ages to fill the drive. The unit comes with a protective case, good headphones, the AC adapter is small, and they give you the car adapter as well as the cassette adapter. Screen is big enough, but backlight could have been brighter. Supports mp3 pro, although I have never used it. Firmware upgrades are very far apart from each others. Units tends to freeze too often, my advice is to carry a paperclip with the case, as the unit could not be shut down without being reset first (battery is internal, and the power switch is software only). 20gb should be enough for anybody. Unit is quite silent when operating. The power button lights up bright green when there is hard drive activity, it is annoying and useless.

Pros: Value/size/durrability/software/software updates/onlinehelp
Cons: case/

I purchase this unit from amazon a few months back.
I have had no major problems with it so far.

The reason I chose the RCA is because you can use the MP3 Pro format that provides smaller files with better sound quality. You can almost get your unit to hold 40 gigs of mp3 pro music on the 20 gig drive.

One issue I have with the unit is that when skipping around your files or a whole album that is not broken into tracks. The Lyra will sometimes freeze up thus requiring a "reset".
Other than that it is rugged my unit has been dropped a few times with no effects.

I wish they would have included a better case for it, the one that comes with the unit is useless.

Great value for your money, I was able to get mine new for under 190.00.

This is a great little unit. I purchased mainly for storing/playing my MP3 collection but this unit can do much more - I presently carry my resume, web pages and many pictures with me wherever I go - can be easily downloaded to any computer that supports USB.

My friend brought this baby to school one day and boy did i love it. I went out the next day and boguth one. It is easy to scroll to find the song you want and with 20gb of hard drive, you can take your whole computer and put it on it. I recommend this to anyone who loves music. The battery works for about 16 hours straight befor eytou have to recharge it. I payed $400 for this and boy was I happy with what I got.

well it`s incredible comming from rca, its sound is kind of weird, but you can`t deny that it sounds pretty good, the battery lasts as you desire but you wouldn`t like to change it,because it can lose its programed files but it`s great. think about this you can use it for around 13 hours and in a cd you can store about 9.5 hours of music (compact disc capacity 700mb)and this can store ˇ20gb! so music forever.

My friend brought this baby to school one day and boy did i love it. I went out the next day and boguth one. It is easy to scroll to find the song you want and with 20gb of hard drive, you can take your whole computer and put it on it. I recommend this to anyone who loves music. The battery works for about 16 hours straight befor eytou have to recharge it. I payed $400 for this and boy was I happy with what I got.

This is a great little unit. I purchased mainly for storing/playing my MP3 collection but this unit can do much more - I presently carry my resume, web pages and many pictures with me wherever I go - can be easily downloaded to any computer that supports USB.

well it`s incredible comming from rca, its sound is kind of weird, but you can`t deny that it sounds pretty good, the battery lasts as you desire but you wouldn`t like to change it,because it can lose its programed files but it`s great. think about this you can use it for around 13 hours and in a cd you can store about 9.5 hours of music (compact disc capacity 700mb)and this can store ˇ20gb! so music forever.