Geartest.com Diamond/S3 Rio 300 personal MP3 player real world review

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Diamond/S3 Rio 300 personal MP3 player

Rio 300 personal MP3 player and earphones - 1/4 view

ITEM	Rio 300
MANUFACTURER	Diamond/S3
MSRP	$ 200 US $ 300 CDN
RATING	7.7 /10

CATEGORY	Personal MP3 player
COMMENTS	· Easy-to-use portable MP3 player with a good set of basic features · Parallel port interface · Solid-state electronics
Pro	· Easy to use interface · Lightweight and compact size · Software to rip and load MP3 files included

Con	· Only 32 MB of memory -- enough for 30 minutes of CD-quality music · Plastic body feels a bit cheap · Expensive compared to portable CD players

Additional information	· Made in Taiwan · Rio Manager and Musicmatch LE software included · uses parallel port passthrough cable · black colored with silver accents · removeable belt clip · requires 1 AA battery

REVIEW DATE
First look	July 1999
Update	December 1999
Long term	August 2000, September 2001

Style & design	8 /10
Fit & finish	8 /10
Ease of use	8 /10
Functionality	8 /10
Documentation	7 /10
Value	6 /10
Reviewer's ranking	8 /10

Technology is dragging the music industry into the 21st century kicking and screaming, and a new category of digital devices are at the vanguard of the revolution. The Diamond Rio 300 portable MP3 player is one of those devices.

If you haven't heard the buzz, the Rio is a playback device for audio files that have been digitally compressed into the MPEG Layer 3 (MP3) file format. The MP3 file format lets you listen to CD-quality sound in a file that is one-tenth the size of a regular audio file, such as those found on CDs.

To put it in other terms, one minute of CD-quality sound takes up one megabyte of disk space in the MP3 format. The same minute of sound occupies 10 megabytes of space in other, more traditional audio formats. Instead of listening to 74 minutes of music on a regular audio CD (the maximum amount of standard audio that will fit on a typical CD), storing your music in MP3 format on a CD or on your computer's hard drive would allow you to play about 11 HOURS of music on your computer.

Traditional CD players are not designed to play MP3 data files, but your computer can, using special software that is available for free through the Internet.

The Rio is the first serious attempt to make MP3 a mainstream, mass market phenomenon.

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