Customer Reviews

Rio S10 64 MB MP3 Player

5 star:		(36)
4 star:		(16)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

Did some research on MP3 players to use while working out. Biggest complaints surrounded use of software to download MP3's or WMA's(Windows Media)to the player. Also wanted to be able to Rip songs off my current CD's to download to the Player. The software was very easy to install (I use Win 2000) and my pc had no problem picking up the new USB connection. After I installed the Software I connected the player and was ready to go. I used Windows 2000 to copy my CD's down to the hard drive in the WMA format. Then using RIO manager I could pick and choose which songs I wanted to hear. The software allows you to sort very large libraries of songs by Genre, Album, Song List and Playlist. The download time for a full CD's worth of sound is about five minutes. The display shows Album, Artist and song title and other info like volume and battery meter. You can shuffle songs and you can apply several setting using an onscreen menu list (i.e. equalizer, powersaver, etc). Also the battery life has been excellent, 3 hours of use and still showing 3/4 full. Headphones are OK (ear plugs only) Very nice padded belt clip stays where you put it.

A nice, simple MP3 player, just the thing for working out at the gym.

Compact, light weight, looks good, plastic but seems sturdy enough; nice padded case with belt clip. Fairly easy to operate: menus could be improved, but it's a barebones little player and you won't be fiddling with the menus very often. Sounds good to me. I listen to classical on Koss PortaPro headphones, and I'm picky about sound. If you listen in a very noisy environment, or if you just like your music REALLY LOUD, you will want to normalize low level recordings before you convert them to MP3.

The 64 MB built-in memory is a joke, and when you update the firmware (and you should) you will have 61 MB left. Count on buying a memory card. With updated firmware, it will take SD memory cards up to 512 MB. The 512 MB cards are priced out of sight, but I found a name brand 256 MB card for $... That gives me 4 1/2 hours play time. It runs on one AA battery, and the batteries last a long time. I don't need to take the batteries out when I'm not listening, like I did with my tape players and radios.

Can't comment on the headphones (which I tossed) or the Windows software. It works fine with a Mac and iTunes.

If you're traveling or going away to school and music is important to you, get an iPod. If you just want something to take to the gym, this will do. Budget another $... for a memory card and better headphones. I give it 4 stars out of 5 for being slightly overpriced. SONICblue should either cut the list price or build it with 128 MB.

Be aware that as of now (April 2003) SONICblue is going through bankruptcy.

First, the good news: this player is probably the most well-designed and easiest to use of any mp3 players (of its capacity) that I have seen, not to mention it's quite reasonably priced. Though hooking the player up to your PC and uploading songs to it takes the usual basic computer skills, once the songs are on the player, even the computer illiterate (read: my parents!) can figure out how to use the Rio S10 and change the settings. The menus are very intuitive as are the layout of the buttons. The S10 comes with 64 MB internal memory (which is, to be honest, not nearly enough), and I just added another 128 MB, and it was a breeze to do (just buy the MMC card, open the player where the battery goes, and slide the MMC card in into the only obvious slot it could possibly go) and it worked right off the bat. Further, the little cover case that comes with it fits perfectly, protecting the player. The size of the whole unit is smaller than a pack of cigarettes, and easily fits in my pocket. The in-ear headphones that come with it are pretty much junk, but that's to be expected, I guess.

Now, the less good news: when I first got this player (January '03), it was incompatible with my motherboard (MSI Nvidia Nforce with AMD chip) and so I couldn't upload songs to the player. Basically, the player was useless. Sonicblue's support web page was very unhelpful, and tech support was horrendous (they put me on hold forever, were obtuse, and hardly spoke English). They kept having me reinstall (many times) the software that you put on your PC, but it was clear that was not the problem and instead my problem was that the firmware was incompatible with my PC's motherboard. They would have none of it and insisted it was something else. In fact, they even said that even if it was a compatibility problem, this was technically not their fault and they couldn't refund me! Since they don't tell you beforehand what motherboards the player is compatible with, I think that is a horrendous thing to say to a customer. I was very disappointed. Nonetheless, I did what they said (reinstalling the software on my PC a million times) and, needless to say, it didn't work. So I gave up and decided I was just stuck with a piece of junk.

Fast forward to several weeks ago (late April '03). I noticed that, finally, a newer version of the firmware was out. Since the player was not working with my motherboard, I used a friend's computer to upgrade the firmware on the S10 (since the player didn't work on my PC, I couldn't even upgrade the firmware on my own computer) from version 1.60 to version 1.80. I thought I'd do it just for kicks, to see if it might work. Amazingly, the new firmware worked and all my problems were solved! My Rio S10 now works perfectly with my motherboard. Though SonicBlue still doesn't publish a list of which motherboards the player is compatible with, I would suspect that they have finally ironed out most compatibility problems with the newest firmware (I just saw that version 1.84 came out last week, or early May).

Also, I should mention that the software that comes with the player which you install on your PC (called Rio Music Manager, or just RMM) is pretty lousy. It gets the job done allright, but it's clumsy and if you have any more than a couple dozen mp3's or wma's (I have thousands), it's a major pain to organize them. Once you find the songs you want, uploading them is a breeze; it's just the way RMM organizes them that is terrible. However, you can also use RealPlayer instead of RMM (the appropriate drivers come with the Rio S10). It's somewhat better.

So, in conclusion, I would have given the player 5 stars, but the fact that their tech support was terrible and that it took them this long to come out with a fix, forces me to only give the player 4 stars. Had I not gone through the headaches of the past 4 months, the Rio S10 would have gotten 5 stars.

This music player is awesome. It couldn't be better. It has a decent amount of on-board memory, and can be cheaply extended with the MMC Cards. The sound is great, the song transfer is fast and it has an E X C E L L E N T backlit display, which shows the time, battery life, song, album, track, progress meter, and more. The buttons are easy to use also. The player looks great, is light and small. The best thing is that it has a very good battery life, 1 AA battery for more than 35 hours worth. It is a great player. Obviously it is no iPod, Archos, RioRiot or something like that, but is the best of its kind in the cheap mp3 players. I recommend it over any mp3 player that is less than $150, including the Creative Labs ones, Rio 600/800, and the Mp3/CD players as well.
PROS
-Good battery life
-Excellent Display
-Fast transfer, good music software
-Good look and appearance
-Light and small
-Easy buttons
-Low price
-Will Probably last long
CONS
-Menu button is at the top.
-Menus are a little weird

This product should be 100/5 stars, but i can only go up to 5. I highly recommend this product if you have a limited budget and are looking for an mp3 player that is > $150.

When I got the unit last Christmas it was 129.99 and it was great for the price. I still have it today and it works great, and I can get about 25 songs on it which is enough for me. A well informed LCD with Progress Meter, Song Name, Artist, Album, Track Number, Time remaining/elapsed, battery, time shows. Good options such as 7 preset equalizer modes and custom bass & treble, stopwatch, clock. Only complaint is that the player doesn't have a playlist editor built in. Thats where the software that comes with the unit comes in. It is easy to use but very basic. What they mean by custom playlists is that you make playlists on the software. I was hoping you could make custom playlists on the player itself, which is included in some other players. But its not a big deal because the software is fast and easy. But since Christmas its price has been cut in half, and its replicate, the Rio S50(which was 179.99 when I got the S1) with twice as much memory and FM radio has gone a little below the old S10 Price Range, which is now only 100 dollars. So for twice as much memory, and a radio, go with the S50. But if you dont have 100 dollars, go for the 70 dollar S10, its a great value and a great, durable player.

I loved this product so much I bought 2 (I lost the first one). My Dad and my brother have one also. It lasted a few months before I lost it without a scratch. I use it to ease bordem in car rides, barn work, etc. It has many great features:
-Hold Button. Great for when working
-Mac and Windows support. If you own a mac like me, you probably already have iTunes, the included software. I've been told the wondows software works great also.
-USB transfer. Uploads 60 mb of songs in 2-3 minutes.
-Sound quality. The sound quality is better than you'd expect from something so small. The included headphones have low quality sound (obviously), but It's still pretty good. With a good set of 'phones, it sounds great.
-Battery life. Lasted 25+ hours on an alkaline.

It does have a few faults though:
-Included headphones don't fit all ears. They fit mine fine, but my brother bought different ones.
-the protective cover is a little large. It makes it hard to fit it in small places with it on, but it's easily removable.
-Has no radio. Most others have this included, but SonicBlue wanted to keep it small.

If you get it, KEEP THE PACKAGING! I tryed to get my rebate, but found that the UPC code, which was long gone by that time, was needed.

Overall, This was one of the best MP3 players on the market for this price range. The S50 is better (128 mb, fm tuner), but it cost more. The S30 is pretty cheap, but is kinda large. I would strongly recomend the S10 to anyone who needs a small, reasonably priced MP3 player.

Pros: Sturdy, cheap, compatable, fast, user-friendly, long battery life
Cons:Bad headphones included, lack of FM tuner.

I wanted an mp3 player for audiobooks. I was tired of the skipping that occurred with my supposedly skip protected CD player. As a mac user, I looked first at the iPod. However, the iPod doesn't support bookmarks in mp3 files which the Rio S10 does. Also, when listening to an audio book, on power up, playback needs to resume at the point that it stopped when the player was shut down. This is something that you can do with the Rio S10 (as a setup option) that (apparently) the iPod doesn't do.

(The iPod does resume at the point of interruption if the audiobook is in audible.com's file format. This means that for the iPod, you will want to purchase audio books from audible.com. No thanks. The S10 doesn't have this restriction.)

Since the iPod wasn't appropriate to books as mp3s and the Rio S10 was, I purchased the S10 and added a 256 MB SD card. Total price was $140 plus tax. Spoken word does not require the sound quality of music. I find that I can get good quality with an mp3 file compressed to less than 10MB per hour of narration of a book. My 320 MB player easily holds 2 books.

I have been very happy with the S10. These are things that I like:

- Small and light weight. I put it in a pocket while listening. (I have trouble with the belt clip. It separates from the case leaving the clip on my pants and the S10 on the ground.)

- Good battery life, no proprietary battery. I have gotten nearly the 30 hours from 1 AA alkaline (the amount that Rio claims). I normally use rechargeable Nimh batteries and get less battery life, but since I listen 20 hours a week, this is definitely cheaper.

- Never any skips as I get when walking and listening to a CD player (even though the CD player has 45 seconds of skip protection)

- Acceptable display. I see everything I need at once: what's playing, remaining playing time, battery condition, and other things. The display is a little bit small but is legible and backlit.

- Reasonable controls. Once a book is started, I usually operate the player by feel while it is in my pocket. I can change volume, pause/resume, backup or advance all by feel. Fast forward and reverse accelerate when held down so that you can quickly move into the middle of a long track.

- Reasonable menus

What I don't like:

- No playlists, no way to group files into folders. That is one of the main reasons I don't find this player appropriate for music. You must play the files in the order they are loaded or in random order. If you want to play a single track you must scroll through all of the files in the player to find it.

- Occasional flakiness. On a couple of occasions the player has locked up and I have had to reload its firmware.

My brother said I should ask for one of these for Christmas, so I did. I got it for Christmas this year, and I have to say that it is truly amazing. Almost everything is near perfect. It is a normal flash mp3 player, with 64MB internal drive(actually 61.5 since it uses 2.5MB for required information). That may not seem like a lot but it is, i got about 37 128kbps tracks on the player, which is enough for me. The transfer speed is somewhat fast, it took 2.5 minutes to get the 37 tracks on. The player is smaller, slightly smaller than a deck of cards. On the front it has the display, D-Pad(Top is play/pause, Bottom is stop, Left is rewind/track search and Right is fast forward/track search). The D-Pad is nice, and there is a smaller circle enter button. On the left and right sides it is rubber coated, with a volume see-saw on the right side. On the top there is the on/off switch, usb/headphone port and the menu button. The back has the battery and memory card compartment. On Screen, while playing the LCD is great. The top row has the time, play modes and battery life. The next row has the track name, next two rows have artist and album. Below that is a progress meter, followed by 4 options below it. The options are Time Elapsed and Track Number, Time Remaining and Track Number, File Type(MP3 or WMA) bitrate and Stereo or Mono, and the date. This can be changed by the enter button.
The menu is nice looking, with the main menu having 4 half-oval menu items coming out from the right side of the LCD. The items are Play Music, Stopwatch, Settings, and About. In the Play Music menu, there is Play All or Play Track. They do what they say. In the Stopwatch menu, there is a stopwatch, which is pretty cool. In the Settings menu, there is Playback, Equalizer, Bookmarks, Power, Resume, Contrast, and Time. In the Playback menu, there is the shuffle and repeat options. The cool part is the Equalizer menu. There are 6 preset equalizer modes, plus custom bass & treble. The presets are Normal, Rock, Jazz, Classical, Pop, and Trance(which is a form of Techno). The Bass & Treble are adjusted by graphical sliders. In the Bookmark menu, there is Set, Select, and Delete. You can have up to 9 bookmarks to save you place in music. In the Power menu, there is Backlight, Battery, and Pwr Save. Backlight can be adjusted to 2, 5, 10, or 20 seconds, Always off or Always on. The Battery can be toggled with Alkaline or NiMH. The Pwr Save can be 1, 5, 10, or 30 minutes, and Never. In the Resume menu there is Track, which can be First or Current, and Timecode which can be start or current. In the Contrast you adjust the LCD Contrast, and in Time you can set time, set date and set the time mode(12h or 24h). In the About menu in the main menu, there is Player and Storage. The About menu just says "About RioS10 Version 1.00 Copyright....." and the Storage shows how much memory you have used.
Sound Wise, this player is great. The possibilites are great with the equalization settings, but with the volume seesaw, its even better. The volume levels range from 0-30, and does it get loud. I rarely go over 14 for my volume. 6 is what i normally use, which is loud enough for me.
I have expierienced a one bug, but a very small one. When i woke up this morning it was December 26 and the date read February 14, 2003 and at 3:23am. . Thats all the bugs i have found.
The Software is great. Its easy to use, and friendly. It searches your drive for music, and from there you can sort the music by Artist, Album, Songs, Playlist, Genre, and My Computer(which lets you select folders manually). You can edit the ID3 Tags, which are information the mp3 uses to return Artist, Album, Bitrate, etc. You can make playlists to use for later. This is an easy tool. MoodLogic is ok, but i rarely use it.
I do have a few complaints about this player. First of all, in all the pictures the player looks purple, but it is actually a slightly-dark blue color. I like that color better, and the photos used for the player need to be changed. Also, The buttons are a little over-sensitive, and a small push can trigger them. Lastly, I was hoping for A-B loop and Playlist Editing on the player, but there isn't. If you want to playlist edit, you have to do it on the software, and you can even choose songs to skip on the device anyway, which is not very cool. The earbuds have a hard time staying in my ear, so i used normal earphones instead.
Praises about the player. The battery life is great, I have probably had it on for 11 hours already and the battery shows about 2/3 full. The backlight is good, and bright. The USB cable is easy to insert. The menus are easy to navigate.
Overall, this is a great portable player. If you like to workout, play around, listen to music, or have a tight budget, this is for you. Its not something you want for an 8 hour road trip, but it will do if you just like to sit and listen to music. If you aren't on the move a lot or you are a huge audiophile, I wouldn't reccomend this to you, since 64MB is only so much. But for those who are not picky, on the move, or like to listen to music for an hour or two, I highly reccomend this MP3 Player.

I thought I would add a review to update the information on the S10 to it's current use. The player has been out for some time now and I believe can only be had refubrished or used at this point, but it's still one of the best Flash players available.

Here are 5 Pros and Cons. I listed each in order of importance.

Pros:

1. Battery Life! What more can you say about a player that uses one AA battery and still gives you some 30 hours of play time.

2. Memory. Sure it only comes with 64 megs internal but I just grabbed a 1 gig SD card for 60 bucks. Follow that by uploading 300+ songs and you can see where you won't be changing your playlist any time soon. Also I didn't see any slow down with the larger card. Some other players can experience a start up delay in proportion to the card size.

3. Price. Used you can find these for $55 or so. You'll need to budgest at least another $30 for a 512 meg card. But coming in at under a hundred dollars for 150+ songs is an excellent price point.

4. Durability. I was a little scared when I first felt the S10. Certainly it does feel rigid but the body is molded plastic unlike my metal bodied Rio 500. However it turned out to be a blessing in disguise. By passing on the metal body the S10 is much lighter than the competition. The lighter weight combined with a rigid body means that random drops won't damage the unit. I keep mine in the supplied padded carrier but have dropped it both in and out with no damage. It's well made and reliable.

5. Sound Quality and Features. This is a good player. The sound is good and it has all of the features you need from an MP3 player. Also with the newest firmware (2.03) you can now upload playlist. Volume is also more than sufficient.

Cons:

1. Getting one. You'll have to buy one used now.

2. Software. The Music Manager software is simple but featureless. Also the device does not come up in XP as a storage device which excludes manually adding files from Windows Explorer or through Windows Media Player. But with the larger cards I don't find myself uploading songs often. You will need to format the device with each new card before using it for the first time.

3. USB 1.1. It doesn't have USB 2.0 Speed but again as I said before I don't find myself changing the playlist often. Filling the whole device with a 1 gig card took me about 25 minutes.

4. Non-Standard Connection cable. You'll have to keep the cable they provide as it's proprietary. Yet another thing to have tangled up behind your computer.

5. No radio support. This doesn't really bother me as I've yet to come across a player with decent radio reception. Also the total storage is such that you won't miss not having FM.

Thoughts: Really this is a good player. I can't recomned it enough for anyone looking to pick up something they can work out with but that won't break the bank. Also don't spend too much on the SD card. You don't need good speed for an MP3 player. Just pick out the cheapest card you can find.

I recently got this product for Christmas, and I am amazed with it. It is very stylish, and holds alot of memory. It is also very tiny, and I am still in shock of how it cant hold nearly 30 Songs! Well maybe the iPODs and the RioRiot are better that this, but first of all who wants to pay that much money And, How many of you can Actually THINK of 4,000 let alone put them on a MP3 Player! This is a great Mp3 player and makes an awsome gift. This MP3 also has great sound quality and might I add that the Rio S-10 is very reasonably priced...This is the perfect MP3 player! Highly Suggested