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The walk to work every day was getting very boring, I need music to stop myself falling asleep, so a flash of light and deep booming voice said “Get an MP3 player you dozy bugger!” (Well, the light is a fabrication; the deep booming voice is still unknown).
I had heard a lot about the iPod’s however I really did think they were overpriced and there must be someone who makes a good player for less… my eyes were drawn to the Rio Carbon.
Looks
This is something it scores very well on, though it is a thing of personal preference, but with it’s nice chrome look back and matte silver finish on the front, it does look rather lovely. However the problem I have had with this sort of finish in the past is that it does not last long before it looks like a scratched mess. At 3.2 ounces it is very light making it unnoticeable in your pocket, this was a big selling feature for me, plus it’s 2.4 inches wide, 3.3 inches tall, and 0.6 inches deep, so it fits well in said pocket as well.
The actual build quality seems very good as well and very sturdy… I however can’t really tell you for sure until it actually gets dropped, but I feel confident it would survive mostly intact.
Ease of use
I have to be honest, one of the things that really gripe me about portable music players is the ones that absolutely insist you must use ‘their’ software… this is annoying because when it comes to them not supporting it, and you loose the CD, you are up a certain creak without a certain implement. Also the other thing that is usually a pain with this sort of connection is that bugs are commonplace; they are bloated and totally pointless.
None of this is relevant to the Rio, it mounts as a removable FAT32 drive, meaning you can just copy things across to it like a normal folder in windows. Also the connection is USB 2.0, making for nice fast transfer speeds.
The actual GUI (if you can call it that) is controlled by a jog dial; I have always loved this feature on Sony equipment and was most happy to see it on this. However the GUI isn’t brilliantly laid out, but after about 5-10mins you will get the hang of it. I think this is somewhere the iPod excels.
Sound Quality
The Rio has a inbuilt EQ with several different presets and also a mode to create your own custom settings, I am very impressed with this as you can tweak it to what ever you want very easily. The headphones that come with it, as with most MP3 players are ok, but to be honest I would be going to buy some aftermarket ones fairly sharpish, I use Koss - The Plug headphones and they provide a good all round music experience.
Charging and Battery Life
In my own scientific test (me sitting listening to music for ages) I got about 20 hours out of it, I really didn’t expect it to live up to this due to the size of the thing, but pleased it did.
The charging can be done either through the USB port or through some truly atrocious bit of design called the ‘Rio Carbon charger’… this makes me shudder. Basically it’s like a normal charger but with the connecting cable being replaced by your USB cable, terrible design if you happen to want to charge away from your computer… means you have to unplug it and take it to where you want to charge, made no sense to me at all.
Overall
The Rio has indeed impressed me, there are a few ‘features’ of it I am not overly keen on, but the good points easily outweigh them. It’s a very stylish looking bit of kit and the actual connection to the player from the PC is excellent, especially the fact it mounts as a drive. Just a shame about that who charging fiasco and the rather odd GUI.
4/5
£119 – PC World
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