Rio Rio Karma 20GB MP3 Player (Rio-90260461)

Rio Karma

Rio Karma 20GB MP3 Player (Rio-90260461) Review, by Tom Mainelli February 24, 2004

Show More Show Less

0 Comments | 0 Topics | Print Only This Review

• Reviewed by: riodowner

  Strengths: Great sound, good battery life, nice feel...

  Weaknesses: unreliable, poor screen visibility, flimsy, no customer support for the hardware

  Overall: initially I returned the unit 3-times due to malfunctions, including a creashed drive. It worked for about a year, when suddendly the drive crashed, it is cheaper to replace thean fix. I would never buy a RIO product again...

• Reviewed by: bradlightner

  Strengths: Mine has always worked.

  Weaknesses: I don't know of any.

  Overall: My experience over 9 months of use is that it plays and plays and plays. I have over 4500 mp3's on mine and have never had a problem! I walk three miles every day with it in my pocket, flying around and I take it out in my boat fishing. Great product!Brad

• Reviewed by: 7trent7

  Strengths: lots of nice features

  Weaknesses: hard drive issues and power on/off issues

  Overall: This unit has a 3 month warranty and mine will not power off or on manually anymore and is only 6 months old. when it worked i thought it was great but now i have an mp3 player less than a year old that is useless. when i wrote to the support they said it probably needed to be re-placed and mentioned the 3-month warranty. great.

• Reviewed by: newreviewer

  Strengths: Signal-to-noise ratio, capacity, battery-life, eq settings, overall sound quality

  Weaknesses: Red-dot joystick could be better engineered, easily-scratched screen, standalone playlist creation, little or no support from manufacturer, no replaceable battery

  Overall: The other reviewers must have got a bad batch hard drives. I've owned this player for 3 months, without any problems; no resets and no hard drive problems. Currently have 680 tracks/10 playlists on the player, with 15.4gb left on hard drive! Mostly use WMA VBR and WMA lossless codecs, with fantastic sound quality. If you are an audiophile and searching the market for a decent player with good capacity this 'older' player should not be overlooked. One recommendation: [for any player] invest in good quality 3-party earbuds/headphones...this can make all the difference in the world (Sony MDR-EX71 are very good).

• Reviewed by: iconcilio

  Strengths: Easy to use, good sound quality, good software, good battery life. Fantastic price for 20G.

  Weaknesses: A little thick (as lots of people are), no (usable) case (nor any third party venders).

  Overall: I don't know if there are quality issues with the unit - I certainly haven't seen any so far and take it to the gym, work, in the car, and biking. No other 20G units (including iPod refurbs) are within $50 of the Karma. I'm not sure why Rio stopped making this unit (I suspect a small 20G Carbon will be here soon - thus the low price) - seems like a great product. The size is a little thick compared to the iPods, but similar to the Zen and others. I initially was thinking about returning it and getting an iPod or Mini iPod, but it really is a great unit at a great price. I've matched it with some NexxTech neck wrap headphones (also grey/black) which have excellent quality and good for sports/outside activity. My biggest complaint is no case/clip, etc. The third party venders are either cheap looking or really expensive. The software is good - I'm still learning to use it. Unlike my RCA Lyra 256K, the Karma is not accessed as a removable disk - I still haven't learned how to use the computer to playback off the Karma.