Rio PMP-500 (64 MB) MP3 Player

Pros: Good sound, good capacity, wonderfully small
Cons: Lousy headphones, lousy software

Having been interested in purchasing a portable MP3 player for some time, but distressed by the low capacity of those on the market - I finally reached threshold when Diamond released the Rio500 with 64Mb. Also - I was able to tack it on my purchase of...

Pros: Great sound, easy use, easy transfer from your PC
Cons: Poor earphones and case design

I had been downloading MP3 files for the last couple of years to play on my home PC while I worked. It finally occurred to me that it would be great to have some of that music available when working out at the gym or rollerblading. Compounded by the...

Pros: sleek design, high signal-to-noise ratio, more memory than previous players
Cons: Too expensive, not adequate memory yet

All of the points brought up in sunami's review are indeed true. This is the finest portable mp3 player on the market. The size and designed have been improved, the signal-to-noise ratio (very important in mp3 players) is the highest you will find and it...

Pros: Good sound, small, downloads books
Cons: not attractive, useless case

An MP3 player was one of the few gadgets I did not own. Since I travel quite a bit, and get bored on airplanes, I am always looking for something new to entertain me. Hence, my decision to purchase an MP3 player. After much research, I decided to...

Pros: Compact size, excellent sound quality
Cons: A bit pricey, short battery life, software somewhat buggy, needs a powerful processor

Dentists and marathons...what do they have in common? They're both occasions where you want to carry the Diamond Rio 500 for soothing or energizing music, anywhere, in a very compact size. (Oh, and they're also very painful too, but much less so with...

Pros: Great sound, USB connection
Cons: short battery life, expensive memory

The sound quality is excellent and it comes with Soundjam, which does a great job of ripping songs off CDs, and the USB connection is also nice. The controls are easy, the backlight is easy to read, and this thing is so lightweight.

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Pros: USB Connection, Good Sound, Works With Macs
Cons: Pricey, Cheapie Headphones, $100 for extra 32 meg Smart Media Cards

Diamond's new Rio 500 is the best portable MP3 player yet, flat out. Maybe it doesn't have a built-in FM radio or an address book such as some of the competition, but it just does an superb job of what it's built to do, play MP3 audio files. With its...

Pros: small, long battery life, great audio quality, cute
Cons: quite a few operation flaws, TERRIBLE software

Buying the Rio
I first got my Rio500 as a present just about 1 year ago, from CompUSA. The price was/is a bit high, but it seemed to be the best player available at the time.
I was overwhelmed with excitement when I first got my...

Pros: durable, USB, good sound
Cons: software flaky, headphones crappy

I've been the proud owner of a Diamond Rio 500 for about 4 months now. I figured that I would wait a while before reviewing it to see what goes wrong with it. Well, to date it has always worked perfectly and still does.

The Good

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Pros: Large internal memory, good looks, high sound quality
Cons: Price, bad headphones (use your own)

I first became interested in a portable MP3 player when a friend of mine showed me his Rio 300 player. I liked the concept of MP3 on the go a lot, and having played around with his player a bit, decided to get one for myself. But I wanted more than the...

Pros: compact, Fast Transfers
Cons: Battery life, software, "manual", can be difficult to use some functions, unreliability

After hearing good things about this MP3 player I decided I might aswell get one for myself seeing as I had the money availiable. And the Rio is a very good little device. The battery life could be a bit better, but using only one battery makes it twice...

Pros: Easy to use, battery life, portability
Cons: Belt holster, newer products on the market

I bought a Rio 500 right after thay came out. At the time, they were the hottest MP3 player on the market, and there were very few others at that. I dropped $250 for the player and another $100 for the 32MB Smart Media card so that I would have a full...

Pros: Make your own exercise playlists
Cons: Not as versatile as a CD player

The player is small and has a good interface. But the process of getting music into the player is way too hard. It might be tolerable if you could get a few CDs on the player at once, but I found that to get good sound quality 64MB is only enough to...

Pros: Lightweight and Compact Great for listening to MP3 files while working out
Cons: Battery life only about 6-7 hours No AC adapter Case somewhat chintzy

I have owned the RIO 500 for four months and have used it extensively for music when working out and also on plane trips.
I have found that it is a great device for pulling my MP3 collection off of the computer and letting me listen to any...

Pros: no moving parts, excellent portable source for digital quality music
Cons: $200-$250 range, kind of expensive.

if you Listen to music, enjoy listening to mp3's, you NEED this Gizmo. This is an Amazing piece of electronic equipment, no moving parts means no skipping (no need for skip prevention like on portable cd players). I personally use this product the most...