Rio 600 64 MB Digital Audio Player (MP3/WMA)

The basic user controls (play, rewind, fastforward, stop) are impossible to use. There is a single piece of plastic over all four buttons. It is impossible to reliably press one. or the other. What's more, they are not debounced-- in other words if you press and hold fastforward you usually end up going to the next track rather than going forward within the same track. If you have hour long tracks of low bandwidth voice, this becomes tedious.Even if you take great care, you cannot reliably use the controls. Unless you plan to hit "play" and leave it alone, avoid this player.

I've owned the Rio 600 for about a year now. It worked well back then and it was working well until a few days ago. I'll outline my history with the Rio below:A few days after purchasing the Rio, I dropped it (accidentally) from a height of about three feet onto a tiled floor. The magnitude of the damage shocked me: the on/off sliding switch flew out of its socket, the battery backpack detached, and the door covering the battery appeared to have broken away from its position. I pushed the sliding switch back into its socket - amazingly, it worked - and I found that although the battery door had detached, nothing had broken. Then I slid the backpack back into place and it was almost as if nothing had happened (the on/off switch was still a little loose). I decided to use the included carrying case whenever using the device outdoors, and not coincidentally, there were no more breakage incidents.About five months into my Rio experience, I decided that 64 MB of space wasn't cutting it anymore. The Rio could only hold 50 songs at 32Kbps compression rates - it sounded terrible. When I hooked this up to my car using one of those nifty cassette adapters, I found that the sound was simply terrible. It was very quiet, and when turned up, it was tinny and annoying. It sounded like the very low and the very high ranges didn't even copy to the device, which leads me to another peeve. You have to use Windows Media Player (on PCs, anyway) to use the Rio, and this is not the most reliable method of copying. Anyway, back to the storage issue: I purchased a 64 MB backpack from SONICBlue's website for an outrageous amount of money. After installing it, I was chagrined to find out that only 95 songs could be put onto the device in total, leaving me with a gaping amount of space at 32Kbps compression. It was annoying, to say the least.One thing I liked about the 64 MB backpack was that it included a rechargeable battery. This worked fine until the recharging Rio was sat on by one of my friends. This knocked the recharging port out of alignment, and that was it for the rechargeable battery. I hadn't registered my Rio so there was no warranty, and even if I had registered it I would have been out of warranty anyways.With my dead Rio in my hand, I decided to get a 5 GB iPod, which I received recently. To my gleeful amazement, I put 563 songs on it, and it's not even half full. I can say with certainty that the iPod is a superior product.The bottom line: while a year ago I might have recommended this product, I simply can't anymore. The amount of space isn't enough for any serious music fan's needs, and the compression rates aren't high enough to listen to in a car. Go with an iPod instead of this product.

We have recently bought two RIO 600s, and love everything about the device itself. The on-line support, the email support (no response) and the phone-in support, are frustrating at best, non-existent at worst. When you go to 'install' the software, well, their motto seems to be, 'let the selling begin.' As it happens, all we needed off the installation CD was the driver (this took...ah...a while to figure out).As for the player itself, we couldn't ask for more. You can pick any bps rate from 32 to 128 and download up to 40 songs (120 minutes?). We run and work out, have found no skipping, plus, grrreat sound (particularly with upgraded headphones, the bass comes pulsing through).We don't use the backpack, which does seem to be a problem for many. And, be prepared to muddle thru until you find the right settings, for example, 'enabling the volume leveling', while time-consuming, seems to eliminate many errors.That's it, then...a 5 star product with 0 star support. I'm sure they get a ton of returns from folks who just can't get it up and running.

This is my second MP3 player. My previous one was a Samsung. As for this Rio 600 here's my initial thoughts. It looks real nice. It sounds as good as any I've heard so far. The battery drain is very low. It is easy to use with Windows Media Player to load it up. (Get the WMP driver off the Rio site.) I personally hate Real Jukebox (comes with this player). Most of Real software is Real Bad. And it has a very nice belt clip pouch. Also it has good ID tags and a very easy to use back lit menu. Those are its strenghs.Weaknesses - Instead of using removable flash media cards it is upgraded via a special backpack which is hard to get right now. It does not seem to be as rugged as I would like. So I keep it in the belt pouch for protection. I have yet to call Rio (Sonicblue) customer service. I've been told that they are very weak in service. I hope I don't have to find out.This of course is my initial review. I will try and update this review in about a month.

This was my first MP3 player. Worked well for the time I had it, and it was top of the line when I bought it. I thought it was a quality product for the price.

This product did not last very long eventually purchased an Ipod. This was a waste of money.