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Rio Carbon

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Rio Carbon Review

by Tom Mainelli

Among 5GB players, Rio's unit is no carbon copy.

Rio's 5GB Carbon is the sleekest MP3 player I've ever laid eyes on. Happily, the $199 device isn't just about looks: A simple interface and amazing battery life mark it as the new chief rival for Apple's $249 6GB IPod Mini.

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The Carbon's wedge-shaped design makes the unit easy to slip into a shirt, pants, or jacket pocket (even when enclosed in its simple case). A smooth-operating directional pad up front and a clickable dial and menu button on the right side streamline navigation. Rio keeps other buttons and ports to a minimum: Aside from a power-on button, there is a headphone jack, a USB 2.0 port, and a built-in microphone for recording memos.

The USB 2.0-based Carbon appears as a drive when you plug it in, or you can use Rio's solid Music Manager app to transfer songs. I loaded 906 MP3 songs encoded at 192 kbps into my preproduction unit (Rio claims that the device can hold up to 160 hours of WMA music encoded at 64 kbps). Both the unit's sound quality and its volume were good.

The Carbon lets you select songs by album, artist, genre, or track--or by when you last heard them (in increments of a day, week, or month). The Carbon's greatest weakness: It doesn't let you generate your own on-the-fly playlists.

In my informal tests, the rechargeable lithium ion battery ran for an admirable 20 hours, 37 minutes.

I would recommend this truly impressive MP3 player to anyone who would be satisfied with 5GB of storage.

Upshot: Impressive 5GB player looks great and works even better.

Tom Mainelli

User Reviews for Rio Carbon

Reviewed by: rolemdl1

Duration of ownership:

Strengths: Great overall product probably best MP3 player for sound quality as I have tried them all. Best part is that this is a drag and drop technology that you can use as a portable 5 gig thumb drive.

Weaknesses: If any part breaks on this MP3 player RIO does NOT repair them you will need to purchase another one without a DISCOUNT of any kind. I have gone thru 3 of them due to the volume wheel breaking off.

Overall Evaluation: Nice product that lacks manufacturers backing. Either this is a great business scheme by RIO or they just have a lack of business project management when it comes to caring if the consumer will in the future want to buy any other products due to the lack of customer care thru this products problems. Funny that you can continue to purchase this product new all over the place but no one can repair a part on it. ALL BE AWARE of this issue.
Reviewed by: pjchatman

Duration of ownership:

Strengths: Battery life, storage, stopwatch (cool), size, adjustable 5-band graphic equalizer, flash firmware upgradable

Weaknesses: Battery meter is not accurate. It will seem to drain away, it's just the firmware not accurately reporting battery life. Rio DJ requires that Windows Media Player 9 be installed

Overall Evaluation: I have read many reviews of the Rio Carbon (5GB Silver model) player and I can say that I really am glad I _did not_ buy the iPod Nano. Though I was just a minute away from clicking BUY on CompUSA.com when I remembered this player.It has more storage space (at 5GB -> iPod's 2GB), longer battery life (20h -> iPod's 8h). Though it may not be color and have all those features it is still a better buy. However, Rio went under so if you can find this player get it. I got mine for under 200$.The software installed fine, but requires that Windows Media Player 9 be installed as well, which is silly. It's because WMA files that are protected with DRM use MP9. I have two PC (XP & Win98 SE). I have had no issues with the USB plug-n-play under XP, however the player will not install fully under Win98 SE unless you have a USB 2.0 port, which mine does not. It will go through the motions, but when you try & access the drive it won't show up in the drives list even though the Device manger says it there.Battery meter is not accurate. The firmware seems not to accurately report actual battery life. I have used this in a cross country trip (LA to Arkansas) and was able to listen to 12 hours of music, and the battery didn't die. This week I charged it full on Monday and it died (shutoff) yesterday (Saturday after midnight). I have 23hrs of music in 388 files (96kbs to 320kbs). It shut off on song 311. So the battery IS just over 20h.All in all a very great buy over the iPod fad. If you can find it, get it. Plus, you can put regular files on it and playlists. NOTE: Someone said you can't generate playlist. You generate a playlist with your MP3 program then put the playlist on the Rio; then you have a playlist to listen to.ADDENDUMS:It will seem to drain away while off. I started the stopwatch, turned Rio off, then 8 hours later turned it on - the stopwatch was still running. I wanted to know just how long the battery lasted. The specifications says 20 hours. But, I used the stopwatch function and (pausing it when it turned it off and continued when i turned it back on) found out that tha battery ran out after 10 hours 10 minutes. I'll try again to see if I can get it to last for 20 hours like it supposed to. I upgraded the firmware from 1.42 to 1.95 and the Rio Music Manager software from 2.90 to 2.96. Upgrading the firmware reformats the Rio, so backup your music first.I have seen a implementaion difference in how the drive is formated (Data and Media folders are separate) and it now supports the PlayForSure music service from Microsoft -- not that I'll ever use it, I'm partial to Real Rhapsody. Also you can now play music from seprate folders.As for whether the battery will now display accurately, we'll see how it handles.Once at work it wouldn't come on, so I thought I'de broken it some how (the power button looked like it was going to slide out); I was even thinking about buying a new player (the 6 GB model even); but then 'my voice inside' said to just take it home and recharge it. Turns out it _was_ just out of battery juice. HAH! I'm so paranoid!I love my Rio Carby!

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