Rio Cali Sport (256 MB) MP3 Player

Pros: AM/FM radio; battery life; good sound quality.
Cons: Bad, bad, bad, bad armband; cheap headphones.

Pros: Low Price, Great Sound, Long Battery Life, and Durable!
Cons: Cheap Armband Construction, Cheap Holster, Short Headphone Cord!

I bought my Rio Cali after reading all of the reviews on here. I'll tell you from experience that the pros and cons are exact. The armband is cheap, along with the holster. On the other hand, if you adjust the equalizer, and load quality MP3s in the unit, and it sounds good, and allows you to load 60-70 128kbps MP3s into it. The expansion port is perfectly hidden behind the battery, but the door itself feels cheap.

Pros: Nice size. Easy to use interface. Good sound quality.
Cons: Firmware issues. Unreliable electronics. Short warranty period. Manufacturer uninterested in building loyal customer base.

We bought two of these for our teenage kids for Christmas 2004, at $200 apiece. After a few weeks one of them would not work properly and was returned to manufacturer under warranty for repair. It had an acknowledged firmware problem. The second one experienced a malfunction with symptoms similar to the original firmware problem, unfortunately after the warranty period had expired. No help from the manufacturer. I cannot recommend Rio Cali on account of their reliability problems, and on account of the manufacturer's not standing behind its products. One wonders if these devices are being manufactured deliberately to low quality standards, in order to generate additional profits for the mega-retailers on the sale of extended warranties. Please note that the ePinions.com rating equates durability with good outer plastic parts. The outer plastic on these units is durable; it's the electronics that are of poor quality.

Pros: Light, durable, good sound quality, easy software
Cons: Haven't found any yet

The Rio is light and comes with a quite comfortable arm band. The sound is very good, headphones stay on while you run. The software is so easy to use...it took me 10 min to mix my favorite songs and download to the player. It even came with a battery so you can take it for a run about 15 min after you get back from the store ;)

Pros: Small, cool colored, expandable! dot matrix display
Cons: disposable batteries, FM radio needs a boost

i had one of these things a long time ago, and i still have it, but i got it second hand, so i cant write a open package review.

this is a nice MP3 player, the screen is bright, plays music with great quality, but the only thing i didnt like was the disposable batterys you used with it. i like rechargables, but this one takes a AAA or an AA, i cant rember. pop off the battery door, and theres a slot for SD cards.

I really liked the radio this had built into it, its nice to hear something else thats not in the player. the screen is a standard http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dot_matrix screen. on the screen, it shows trach information and a slide bar thing that looks like the seek bar in windows media or iTunes, which i thought was awesome!

Pros: decent sound quality
Cons: poor software, no technical support

Playlists don't work at all with an added memory card, so if you have more than a couple dozen songs, this player is useless. I've got about 500 songs, and obviously there's no way I can scroll through them to find the desired tracks while I'm jogging.
Rio's support line is only open during business hours, which doesn't help if like me you have to work during the day.
Though Rio promises to reply within 24 hours, I got no reply at all to me e-mail request for technical help.

Pros: plays wma and mp3
Cons: software doesn't create playlists correctly

Software doesn't perform consistently when creating playlists. Sometimes the playlist is created, other times the Rio Music Manager creates the playlist and shows tracks in the playlist; however, when you select the playlist, the player says there aren't any tracks. I used a SD memory card with 1 GB capacity. Other than that, I would say it works ok. I just can't live without playlists. I have 2.43 firmware and the Rio Music Manager 2.90 build 15. All the latest software. Get the iPod - it works!!!

Pros: -looks good out of the box
Cons: -zero reliability

If you own a Rio mp3 player and haven't had a problem yet, you will. I got the Cali after breaking the plastic clip on an older version Rio. It worked well and my girlfriend got one too. Her "refurbished" Cali never worked right and she immediately exchanged it.

Meanwhile the warranty ran out on mine and it is permanently stuck in the locked position -- completely unresponsive! Together we have gone through 3 Rios in a short time. There is a reason there are thousands of refurbished units for sale out there -- these things are junk!

Pros: Light weight, long battery life, great for athletes. Pretty durable and reliable.
Cons: Hard to browse quickly through songs. Headphones that come with it are mediocre.

I have had this player for about 5 months now, and I would say it has worked just fine for what I had set out to use it for. I only use it when I work out and when I jog, which is every day on alternating days. I think since then I have only gone through about 4 AAA batteries. I admit that when I set out to buy an MP3 player I was _very_ tempted to get one of the hard drive based players, but Im glad I ended up not doing that. I am on my 2nd pair of headphones, but only because one of my damn cats chewed through the wires. Definitely worth the buy. If you're considering getting an MP3 player, take my advice. Pocket the extra 200 bucks it would cost you for an IPOD and get one of these bad boys. It may not be pretty but it gets the job done.

Pros: Expandable Memory, small, convenient, portable, lightweight, expandable memory, easy to use
Cons: Volume, lifespan, software only for PC (Except iTunes)

The Rio Cali sport is an EXCELLENT Mp3 player, the Rio has pretty a pretty good FM tuner. I love the easy to use, up front, joystick. It's small, portable, and sleek. Expandable memory with relatively cheap SD cards to expand the memory. Can expand from 32 MB to 512 MB, but no 1 GB.
This is a great Mp3 player. Available for both Mac and Windows platform, and easy to use with iTunes, Windows Media Player, and Rio software, if included. The only bad part with the Rio software is you can't play the music, while exporting the songs and playlists to your player.

**Update: 7/7/07

This music player has turned out not so excellent...it is somewhat fragile...the device has fallen apart (internally) and refuses to turn on...we bought a second player, and that player is also damaged, in regards to the screen, and the inability to read it anymore. The Display has essentially quit.

Pros: FM tuner, blet clip, large screen for a unit this size.
Cons: playlists and memory cards don't work together. Battery drains quickly.

When I originally bought the Rio Cali 256MB, I liked its simplicity, decent sound, and the ability to create multiple playlists for different listening moods.
After a couple of weeks though, I started having intermittent problems after storing songs on it. Sometimes the music database would not initialize properly, and other similar problems. It would eventually work, so I ignored it.
The battery would run out faster than what the documentation led me to believe.
Then, I bought a 512MB memory card so I could store more music and more playlists. I found out that playlists and extended memory don't play together. The Cali would only "see" the subsets of the playlists that were stored in main memory. The only way to listen to music stored on the card was by listening to "all tracks" or specific tracks. Apparently, this is a known situation but that Rio doesn't seem to want to fix it.
The more memory one has, the more important it is to be able to use playlists to categorize the music.
I was so dissappointed that I returned the Rio and bought a Sony Network Walkman NW-E99 instead.

Pros: Lightweight, easy interface
Cons: Low volume buzz

The Cali is my first portable mp3 player. It has some great features. It's easy to operate. The proprietary software is a bit confusing at first but very manageable with minimal effort. However, there is a constant low volume buzz that is present on both high and low quality MP3 recordings. I actually exchanged it and found that the replacement Cali had the same problem. I've adjusted the equalizer and found that the problem persists.

Pros: Easy user interface, expandable memory, very easy to learn and use.
Cons: Lousy head phones. Lousy customer service.

I purchased a Rio Cali for my wife as a birthday present. It was really easy to install the software and get the music loaded - less than ten minutes and we were listening to our tunes. YEA!!! But...... within 30 minutes the left speaker on the included ear-bud type headphones went dead. Wiggle it around a bit and it would work a bit - then dead again. Obviously a loose connection in the ear-piece. No big problem, I think. Just send them back and get a replacement set. WRONG! According to the "english is my second language" assistant at Rio.keepyouwaitingonholdforever.com the headphones cannot be shipped by themselves. My only alternative was to return the whole unit (at my expense) and wait for a new one to be shipped to me. He could, however, send a set of ear-buds without the ear clips as a replacement. Gee, thanks. My wife, being ever eager to use the unit, purchased a set of Koss KSC22 Sportclips locally and discovered they sounded better anyway! Anyhow - great MP3 player, lousy headphones, lousy service.

Pros: easy to use control button. Works well in the dark
Cons: earpiece not up to par, High volume lost sound

I product was a great gift for me because I am a active runner. I properly break more MP3 players that I would like to talk about. However the Rio Cali has been holding up pretty strong for about a year. I find the Rio very easy to use when running. The red control button is excellent for someone in motion. I had a problem with the ear piece about two months of use. They some times lose sound. I suggest anyone who buys the Rio, invest in a ear piece that is dependable. I like the Koss or Sony brand.I have been using the Koss brand for a while now and it is working out.

Pros: Small size Big sound BIG 256MEGS of space.
Cons: Cheap ear plugs (so what ..Buy a good pair and it sounds better!) :)

I`m Happy with the sound and all that music(about60songs) that little thing can hold(256megs). I'm training for a marathon and I bought it for the size. It fits around my arm and is a great motivator(music) to get me going.
I had no trouble with the software (I'm running windows ME) and all went fine with the music transfer to the Rio.
I bought it at Best buy and bought a 2year warranty on this bad boy so I have no worries if it rains or I drop it. I really have no complaints except for the ear plugs but thats goes with all ear plugs that come with players. Its only been 1 week so far and it works like a charm.