Advantages: Small simple but fully-featured Disadvantages: I guess the peak volume could be higher
I wasn't in the market for an MP3 player, but got this for my birthday. All the time I've spent with it has been very good, and aside from the utterly wretched "RioPort Audio Manager" software shipped with it, it's great! (I replaced the supplied software with RioGeo, http://www.riogeo.freeserve.co.uk/)
The player is the perfect size to fit in the little key pocket of my jeans, and even though there is a "lock" setting on the power switch to keep ... ...it because the buttons only get pressed when I want... and I've learned where the buttons are so I can pause, FF and rew without pulling it out of the pocket!
Using 128kbit MP3s, I fit about roughly an album plus four songs on it, but since the headphones are so tiny, I'm going to try resampling some of my MP3s to 64kbit so I can fit more. Pairing that up with an additional 64MB on a flash card, you could conceivably have up to 6 albums' worth of ...
WORLDOFADSL 11.07.2001
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful Review of Rio 500 64 MB
...x 60mm x 12mm, the Rio 500 MP3 Player is certainly small. This means it can fit in a shirt or trouser pocket without you really noticing. So what can it do?
Plenty. It packs a punch. The instructions that come with it consist of one folded sheet, the rest of the information you will require is on the 2 CD-ROM's that come with it. These take a few minutes to install on your PC, and for technophiles it is surprisingly easy to get started. I had copied ... ...perfect sound quality that the Rio is capable of.
When you are online, the software that is bundled with the unit is a surfing experience in itself. You can get it to search out MP3 tracks from virtually anywhere on the web, making finding music a delight, and when you want to copy your own music from a CD, the Rio Software will find the artists and track names at the click of a button, which saves entering all the data yourself.
So, a clever bundle ...
MikeScoates 03.12.2000
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful Review of Rio 500 64 MB
Advantages: small, lightweight, no moving parts Disadvantages: woefully inadequate memory, add on memory expensive
yes, the invention of MP3 files has been a huge step forward in being able to download music from the internet. The best thing of all is that you can get away without paying for it! 64 meg may seem alot of memory but most mp3 files are about 4meg or more each. that doesn't give you many songs for your 64meg. Now that is fine if you are taking the player for an hours workout at the gym. But, what if you are away for a two week holiday in the sun and ...
iansingleton 14.09.2000
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful Review of Rio 500 64 MB
Advantages: Easy to install on your PC. Quick downloads Disadvantages: No FM tuner
The big strength of the Rio 500 MP3 player is that it is very easy to install on your PC.
Plug it into the USB port, and the installation CD will give you an installation wizard that will have you downloading and playing music from the Internet within minutes.
You also get a software pack called the Audio Manager.
This pack gives you loads of additional features, that make using your Rio very simple to use.
It has a transfer wizard that allows ... ...suit what you prefer.
The Rio has 64 MB of memory, and with good transfer speeds of the Internet via the USB connection, you can download music within minutes rather than hours.
One big drawback of the Rio is that it hasn’t got a FM tuner.
But this is still a good MP3 player. It’s light and portable, with good download speeds, and adequate memory.
It has come down in price recently, and can now be found for sale at about £150. ...
ranter 22.09.2001
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Advantages: FAST file transfer Disadvantages: space is tight
...I decided to get the Rio 500 and a friend got a Minidisk player.
Now each has there strengths and weaknesses so its all a matter of personal preference. And it seems that everything that the MP3 player is good at the minidisk sucks at, and vise-versa.
SOUND: It sounds REALLY good with your typical 128bit MP3s, on a minidisk it sounds not so good very hissy. The minidisk does win in sound quality then you use the optical out to record from a CD.
... ...the advantage here. Also the Rio downloads the song name for you while you have to put it in by hand on the MD player. Its not a big deal but something to take into consideration.
LOOKS: I really like the Rio’s looks and layout. The buttons all work well, and are in easy to reach if your not looking at it. The display is great, its backlit and the text is very clear and easy to read. The carrying pouch it comes with is nice but has problems. ...
joshnev 17.01.2001
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Advantages: Spoken word features Disadvantages: A little a small
...their music capabilities. The Rio 500 has features dedicated for the lovers of the spoken word. You can listen to the latest thriller or a classic novel in a unit smaller and lighter than a single cassette. The 64 megabyte memory is capable of storing up to 30 hours of content. Hours of listening pleasure can be downloaded from sites such as audible.com and audiohighway.com. These sites are vast and varied, everything from self-help to cutting-edge ... ...Rio 500 comes into its own is its bookmarking feature. You can mark exactly where you are in the story and go back to it at any time. Content is stored in folders, where you can store a personal mix of stories and music. The player comes with quality in earphones and beltclip case. Sound quality is good, but not fulll CD and battery performance not bad at around 14 hours on a single AA.
The Rio 500 comes complete with a USB cable and full software ...
steverob 13.12.2000 (19.12.2000)
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful Review of Rio 500 64 MB
Advantages: near-CD sound quality, portable Disadvantages: battery hog, bad software documentation, weak online support
I've been using the rio 500 for six months now. I bought this device because I wanted to listen to music while working out; turns out the rio 500 is great in the gym environment. There are no moving parts, so skips do not occur. If you keep your MP3 files between 3 and 4 megabytes in size, you can load a complete workout's worth of music (approx. 15 songs) on the device. Sound quality is as close to CD as I've experienced with a device this small. ... ...I've heard complaints from some rio 500 owners that the 64MB storage capacity is a major negative. This is a legitimate gripe, I think, if you're going on a road trip and want to use the rio in your car (with optional rio car adapter). However, if your gym workout lasts one hour, the rio is perfect: lightweight, great sound.
In terms of negatives, battery life is an issue. This baby eats AA batteries like nobody's business. I replace my battery ...
sunstorm2k 15.07.2000
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...these things are neat. The Rio I had was just 10cm long, 6cm wide and only fractionally over a single cm thick. That is tiny, tiny, tiny compared to my clunky old CD walkman.
THE DESIGN
I like the look of this Rio loads. It really knocks spots off my CD walkman in the cool stakes and even compared to more recent MP3 players this looks OK. The one I borrowed had a slightly brushed metal look to it which looked funky and modern. The design of the ... ...PORTABILITY
I don't think the Rio quite measures up to some of the more recent MP3 players but even so this is OK. With the supplied player you can get just over one album on to the player. With an upgrade of a 64Mb memory card this increases to about 6 albums. That makes it significantly better than the CD player in this respect.
PRICE
This cost £169.99 I know they are significantly cheaper now so do shop around. For this price you would expect ...
Plymyphil 20.11.2003
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful Review of Rio 500 64 MB
...to download animations to the RIO and have them play when the unit is turned on. You can create any animation you like and download it. Such a feature is unique amongst such devices.
I reccomend the RIO-500 to anyone with a large MP3 collection or a PC and a lot of CDs.
They are well the worth the £180 from www.dabs.com ...
andrew_newton 12.07.2000
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Advantages: Playing mp3s wherever you want. Disadvantages: The price is not for everyone.
...product to replace the Diamond Rio PMP300 I had owned for a year. The Rio 500 is an excellent product as it holds 64 megabytes of memory, allowing 64 minutes of near-CD quality playback or two hours and eight minutes of FM Radio quality playback, and so on. The most usefule feature is the dot-matrix MP3 title scroller at the bottom of the LCD display, which is backlit, may I add (a VERY useful feature that most of the otehr MP3 players do not have). ... ...liesure time, is a jogger/walker/biker, anyone else that can benefit form this should buy it. It was worth the money I paid for it (about $300 US in most stores) Considering the prices of memory these days, 64 megabytes is $200 US any way you look at it, and the other $100 is worth the product alone. It runs on one AA battery for about 14 hours, more or less, depending on what headphones you use. ...
BeastAmongMen 15.09.2000
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Advantages: everything Disadvantages: little bit expencive
The Rio 500 made by diamond is probably the best mp3 player out there.
It does not have as many features as some Mp3 players but it has “play”, “stop” and ”skip track” and that alone is enough for me. It uses a USB port which makes for very fast transfers of mp3s but if your computer does not have one don’t get this mp3 player. It has 64 Mb of memory built in and an extra 34 on a flash card. This is almost an hour of 128 bitrate music or 40 minutes ... ...quite a lot of Mp3s and transfer mp3s a whole lot faster that a serial port one and also it looks really cool.
If you buy one buy this (if you don’t have a usb port get one then buy this)
The biggest problem is they cost £210 in England but if you import from America you can probably get it cheaper.
NickVE ...
NickVE 09.08.2000
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Advantages: light, easy to use Disadvantages: none
...finally decided on the Diamond Rio 500. I was glad I did. It has internal memory and you can buy external flash memory.
The player is a great looker. It is smaller than a traditional audio cassete, light and easy to use with nicely laid out buttons.
The supplied software is also easy to use and newer versions are available via their website when you register.
The only thing I can say is wrong with this player is if you leave a battery in, even ...
neils 11.11.2000
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Advantages: Very big storage, good quality Audio, Nice display Disadvantages: Headphone pads come off
...I believe the Diamond Rio 500 player meets this requirement. The Rio 500 is the only MP3 player at the time of writing this that can can be upgraded to 128Mb of storage and thus allow more play time.
This is not quite true since you can remove the external flash card and replace it with another thus providing you with even more storage. Even though the compact flash cards are more readily available, the RIO 500 uses the credit card flash cards instead ... ...slight difference in purchase price than the more freely avalable compact flash.
The sound quality from this unit was very good, comparable with CD's or Minidiscs. If you want you can always download at a lower quality and thus get more play time. The download time is very fast via the USB port as compared to a standard RS232. The installation of this was simple, consisting of just inserting the CD that came with it and letting it autoinstall.
...
chris547 08.07.2000
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Advantages: Good sound quality Disadvantages: A bit big for this kind of product
The Rio 500 is a portable digital audio player that stores up to two hours of digital-quality music and more than 32 hours of spoken audio programs. You can access thousands of music and audio files at RioPort.com or over 16,000 hours of Audible.com audio programs. It is possible to instantly create, customize and mix your favorite music and audio selections on your PC or Mac for playback on Rio. The Rio-500 is the perfect MP3 player for active people, ... ...I think it is one of the best MP3 players around... but it could be slighty smaller though, 91 x 64 x 19 mm. But it is pretty light though, weighing a mear 78 gramms, plus it has 64 MB onboard memory.
It looks very stylish and you get a choice of different colours... but I don't really like the leather case it comes in. ...
Garza007 05.08.2000
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Advantages: lots of features Disadvantages: freezes and the screen goes black
Althought his was a good mp3 player while it worked after about 2 months the screen froze while I was downloading a song onto it. I was pissed off as it cost me £174 and then it stopped working. Even when i switched it off the screen remained black and then when i changed the battery and turned it on the same thing happened. I believed that this mp3 player was the best on the market and it had a lot of features but I would advise that you don't buy ...
marko166 08.12.2000
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