Rio PMP 300 Special-Edition MP3 Player

by Rio

Product Details

Product Manual [748kb PDF]

• Product Dimensions: 3.5 x 2.5 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S.
• ASIN: B00000JHYS
• Item model number: 90260030
• Batteries: 1 AA batteries required.
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (265 customer reviews)
• Discontinued by manufacturer: Yes

Product Description

Amazon.com Review

The next generation of digital music players has arrived. This special-edition Diamond Rio comes with an impressive 64 MB of storage, which holds about two hours of music copied from your favorite CDs or downloaded from the Internet. This lightweight unit can be easily upgraded to hold 96 MB of your favorite tunes.

The only real improvements over the original Diamond PMP 300 are in storage capacity and cosmetic appearance. Diamond has enhanced the case design of this compact unit with a stylish, transparent teal that distinguishes it from the stodgy, solid-black or metallic design of other portable players. As with the original Rio 300, this special-edition Rio plays MP3-encoded digital music, the open Internet standard that's shaking up the music industry.

This special-edition Rio stores your music files in 64 MB of RAM instead of on CD or tape, so it has no moving parts and won't skip during playback. About the size of a deck of cards, the Diamond Rio weighs under three ounces and can store up to two hour's worth of music encoded at 64 Kbps or about an hour's worth of files at 128 Kbps. The supplied Windows software and PC-connector cable let you upload new selections, delete old ones, change the playback order, and even create new MP3 files from your own CDs.

What about sound quality? MP3 is a compression technique that discards a lot of the information captured by normal CD encoding. True audiophiles will hear the difference. But the overall effect is surprisingly clean, and the Diamond Rio's extreme portability more than makes up for the subtle degradation.

Using the Diamond Rio is fairly simple. You connect the Rio to your PC via its connector cable, which passes through an included parallel-port adapter to your computer. The parallel adapter has a pass-through connector so that you can use the port for your printer or other parallel device. You can easily disconnect the Rio when you are ready to take it on the road. A single AA battery (included) supplies power for the device, which is amazingly lightweight.

We found software installation to be a snap. The default installation puts two applications on your system: the Rio Manager and the MusicMatch Jukebox. These are the same software programs included with the standard Rio PMP 300. You use the Rio Manager to download new selections to the Rio player, delete selections from your lineup, or clear all memory so you can start with a fresh slate. It also lets you view the size of each selection, control the play order, and see how much RAM remains for storing music.

The supplied software also lets you make MP3 files from your own CDs using your computer's CD-ROM drive. You can select 128 Kbps, 80 Kbps, or 64 Kbps encoding. The highest-quality encoding (128 Kbps) will give you the best listening experience, but it comes at a price. MP3 files created in 128 Kbps are twice as big as those encoded at 64 Kbps. If you have plenty of hard-drive space to spare, this may not be an issue. However, storage space for the portable flash-media cards can be somewhat expensive. A 32-MB flash-media card generally sells for about $100.

While this second-generation Rio from Diamond is not a groundbreaking improvement over the original, it is a cool alternative. If you are looking for the largest built-in storage capacity possible in the current wave of MP3 music players, this is the unit for you.

Pros:

• 64 MB of storage
• Compact, lightweight design
• Uses MP3, Internet's open standard for music
• Allows you to create MP3 files from your own CDs
• Near CD-quality audio

Cons:

• Requires a Windows PC to use
• Extra flash-media cards can be costly

Amazon.com Product Description

Taking the Rio to the Next Level! For the true MP3 fanatic, Diamond is proud to offer the Rio PMP300 Special Edition. With a cool transparent teal case and a whopping 64MB of onboard flash memory, it has all of the functionality of the original Rio PMP300 plus an additional hour of digital-quality audio.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

57 of 59 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A great portable system with a few problems., November 26, 1999

By 

Matthew (Morgantown, WV United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Diamond Rio Digital Player (Electronics)

The Rio PMP300 is a great portable system if you have access to your own computer. Some advantages are that it's very small, very light, it doesn't skip, It only takes 1 battery which runs for at least 10 hrs, and the music can be free on the internet. You can also take tracks right off your favorite CDs. The 1 problem that I have with it is that it only holds 32 MB which is about 7 or 8 CD quality songs. It could hold more if you don't mind radio quality. If you want to get more memory on this thing it's not cheap. You can double your memory from 32MB to 64MB for about $100. I am going to wait for the price to go down before I buy more memory for mine. The software that it comes with is pretty good too. I also like the overall design of the buttons and player. It has a Hold option, 5 different Equalizers, Replay and Random modes, and a cool A~B feature which is pointless fun to play with.

57 of 61 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Sounds like a good idea.... But leaves much to be desired, July 12, 1999

By 

Nick Paul (Omaha, Nebraska) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Diamond Rio Digital Player (Electronics)

I bought my Rio about 2 months ago. It plays perfectly, and I have no complaints with the performance. But if you are going to take this with you as a truely "portable" unit you are going to be stuck with only 30 minutes of storage for cd quality music. Maybe that's not a problem for you, but personally I need more of a variety of music when I take this on a trip. And the extra 32-meg flash memory cards cost $100!! That's way too much just to hold an extra 30 minutes of music. I recently sold my Rio and purchased a portable Minidsic player/recorder for $275. My advice to people would be to save an extra $100 and go for the minidisc. It uses digital sound, and does not skip. You can use it to record mp3's from your computer and the blank 74 minute discs cost less than $5 a piece, as opposed to $100 for a 30-minute flash memory card for the Rio. Minidisc is a much better overall value than the Rio. I would not recomend any buy a portable mp3 player until the storage can be greatly increased at a much lower cost.

47 of 50 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Still Not Enough Space!, November 20, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Rio PMP 300 Special-Edition MP3 Player (Electronics)

As you may surmise from my email address, I know and care a thing or two about mp3s and their future. Unfortunately for anyone who bought one, Diamond Rio is not in that future. Granted, this 64mb unit (upgrade to 96 for a hefty charge) is an improvement over the impotent 32mb original. But if you care at all about the quality of the music you listen to, and if you also like the idea of listening to a lot of DIFFERENT music when you're out and about, then DON'T BUY THE RIO! The mp3s I encode are ripped at a bitrate of either 160 or 192kbps depending on the contents of the song. At that you could only fit about 12 songs onto this guy (if you're lucky). What a waste! There is a cd-mp3 player (which interestingly amazon does not offer...) which allows you 10 times the capacity (and with 40 sec esp there is not much chance of skipping). Also, down the road a few months there will be a player with a 4GB+ capacity! I don't know the specifics of this technology, but I am willing to wait for that and let Diamond Multimedia go back to making killer graphics cards -- something that they are actually good at.