Customer Reviews

Rio 500 64 MB USB MP3 Player (Purple)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Needless to say, this is not just a review of the "purple" model of the Rio 500. My remarks apply equally to the "teal" and "silver"

I have bought each of the previous Rio models as they came out, which makes me either an expert or a nut. But the advantages I was looking forward to on this model included the USB transfer speed and the backlighted display with song information.

On these counts I was well satisfied. The USB speed is roughly two to three times as fast as the parallel port speed of the previous models. Certainly not the five times that Diamond claims, but welcome nonetheless. And the backlit display is OK - a little small, but OK. Like the previous "Special Edition" model, this Rio comes with 64MB of storage with the ability to put 96MB on line using optional 32MB SmartMedia cards.

The sound is excellent when listening to songs recorded at 128Kb/s. The controls are frankly not as convenient as the uglier "round" control was. There is now a slider switch that controls on/off/hold, and that's not clever. Because now when you want to slide the switch to "hold" to lock the buttons at their current settings, it's too easy to slide it too far -- to "off." There are also "browse" and "multi" buttons on the side, the latter being a Sony-style rotate-and-push control. The logic of which button controls what is not clear, and on my player there was no manual in the box, on disc or on the Web. So you're pretty much on your own.

But here's the real disappointment: the software. The old Rio Manager was a simple transfer program that let you choose songs from your hard disc or wherever and transfer them to the Rio with little complication. A separate piece of included software (MusicMatch) did the ripping and created the database, if you wanted that. This time out, the Rio Audio Manager does everything, but not too well. To start, it will refuse to transfer anything to your player that is not in its "database", so you have to use their database even if you already have your own or don't want one. Second, it will refuse to add songs to the database if they reside in directories it doesn't like. For example, if you have some files on your Windows Desktop that you would like to transfer to the Audio Manager or to your player -- forget it. Audio Manager doesn't approve of people keeping MP3 files on their Windows Desktop. And if the files don't meet its own standards, it won't load them either. I had some files recorded earlier which played fine on all other softwre players and on my earlier Rios. They will not load on the new Audio Manager.

Want more? When searching for MP3 files on your computer, the software will not look on a Jaz drive or a network drive. Once again, it decides where you should store these files. You begin to long for the simplicity and non-judgmental nature of the old Rio Manager.

The software has lots of other problems, some of which could perhaps be solved with a manual. For example, I could not get the new software to work with the older Rio. I happened to stumble on a batch file that does the trick, but you always have to run the batch file before loading the program for it to recognize the right player. Not too clever.

Wouldn't it be great to just slect some files in Explorer and drag them to a Rio icon? The database idea is very big now, and everyone wants their MP3-related site to be some kind of portal. But the battling desktop databases really reduce the functionality for everyone. Since I still use the database from the MusicMatch software I got with my first Rio, I am hoping that it will soon support the PMP500.

Final Verdict: The PMP500 is a great little player that will benefit from big improvements in the software. You may want to wait until other, better software supports the player.

I am pretty satisfied with my Rio500. But there are a few things toconsider when purchasing one. First of all, don't bother with theRioPort Audio Manager software, it's nowhere near as easy or as intuitive as MusicMatch Jukebox... MusicMatch also downloads directly to Rio, at whatever bitrate you specify.

If you're buying this to listen to Audible books online, be aware that Audible has caused nothing but problems for me. First of all, their software didn't start supporting Rio500 until 2 weeks ago (the Rio hardware was ready and Audible happily sold me books without a way to upload them to my Rio -- bad advertising). Audible only has their Rio500 software in Beta, it's extremely buggy and crashes often. And here's the kicker: If you have an Audible book on your Rio500, you CAN'T have any mp3's on it! It's either Audible or MP3 until you delete the Audible files and go back to MusicMatch to upload your mp3's. Audible says they're "working on it". We'll see.

Given the choice again, I probably should have just waited until the new PocketPC's that support mp3's came out. Especially for the price.

Love to work out to music, but hate flipping through the channels to escape the blah-blah-blah of egotistical radio personalities? Frustrated with positioning a bulky CD player out of your way? I found the Rio500 MP3 player to be the best thing since sliced bread. Not being a high-tech kind of gal, yet somewhat intelligent, I was able to figure out most of the software/hardware without instructions. For the part I didn't understand, I e-mailed Rio tech support and had a full set of instructions waiting for me the next day. In my humble opinion, the sound quality is great, especially when compared to the static-ridden walkman I was used to. I suppose there will be bigger and better in the future, but for now, it was worth every hour of overtime I spent to get it.

I recently purchased the Rio 500 to download books for a long international trip. When I got the product (through audible.com), I was pleasantly surprised by the small size and streamline look. The instructions (or lack thereof) leaves little to be desired,however. It was pretty easy to set things up in retrospect but at the time I had some trouble figuring out how to use the software and the actual mp3 player itself. I was happy to be able to download nearly 28 hours of audio books into my player. Like everyone else had mentioned already, the earphones are terrible. I couldn't hear the player even at the loudest volume on the plane so I had to get a new set of earphones for the return trip and that worked like a charm. I haven't yet downloaded music yet but I'm looking forward to doing so as I've been reading that the quality is excellent. Overall, I am pretty happy with my Diamond Rio 500, but I had to knock off a star for the poor instructions, earphones, and included software.

I purchased this from Audible for 99 bucks about 13 months ago. As an audio book device this is a wonderful player. Upgrade with another 64 MB Smart Media card and you'll get about 9 hours of very good quality spoken word. As a music player it is good but not great. Not enough memory for more than an hour or two of good quality music. The 500 has a quality feel to it that other players do not. It has the look and feel of a first generation device that was over built and probably wasn't intended to make a large profit. Very small, slips into a pocket and is rugged enough to stand up to a fair amount of abuse. Great battery life compared to a minidisc player I used to use - at least 12 honest hours of playback on a single AA battery. Subsequent Rio mp3 players are bigger and aren't as elegant as the 500. Forget the included software. Download RIOsitude from hotfiles.com. A free program that is intuitive to use, fast and reliable. As good as this player is the Apple iPod has established a new benchmark for portable players. The Apple uses a 5 GB microdrive which hasn't proven itself yet in terms of reliability but is certainly a step in the right direction. Bottom line is that the 500 is a supremely good audio book device, a great spoken word device, a good music player but too little memory for more than a couple hours of high quality audio.

The Rio 500 is a great product. It comes with headphones, a carrying case, instructions and a USB connector. I really like it because instead of carrying around ten cd's, each with only one or two songs I like on them, all I have to take is my rio. It is very small and doesn't weigh much. The only complaint I have is the price of the memory cards (which are used to upgrade the memory and number of songs you can have on the rio at 1 time). I highly recomend the Diamond Rio 500 to any and all music lovers.

First, the good: lightweight and TINY, take it to the gym, or on a plane, and it won't be a nuisance. If you download a firmware upgrade from rioport.com a lot of the bugs are fixed and the interface is improved. Now the BAD: headphones included are crap -ditch them and get new ones right away. Holds about 15 songs on its internal memory - get firmware upgrade to allow you to plug in a 64MB smartmedia card. Everywhere you look it says you can only plug in another 32 but don't listen to that. All in all, I love this thing, its compact size makes it great.

I bought this last year and it was working fine for about 6 month. Then it suddenly froze and didn't react to anything. I spend several days trying to fix it. I downloaded a program from the website that is supposed to fix that problem. It turned out to be useless. Of course they do not have a tech support you can call. So after a lot of e-mails I was allowed to return the product and got it back after 3 weeks. It was fine for about 2 month and then the same thing happened. In summary this is a bad product manufactured by a terrible company with bad tech support. Don't make the mistake to buy it.

Hello! i Bought this MP3 player 2 years ago and I was very satisfied with it, until yesterday! It just stopped 4 no reason and It won't turn itself on! I contacted Tech Support but nothin! Watch out!

Having just purchased the Rio500, I must say that I am pretty impressed with the design, ease of use of the unit and the quality of the playback, provided other headphones are used.Two points to note. The Audio Manager is a pain to use as quite a few steps are required to transfer each piece of music. Facility being the watchword of the Rio, this seems a bit of a shortcoming in the software design department. Also, I have not yet been able to transfer 2 hours of music from any source to the Rio. One hour and forty minutes is the most I've been able load before I reach the saturation point of 64megs. Just a couple of things to be aware of if you are in the market for an mp3 player.