Geartest.com Diamond/S3 Rio 300 personal MP3 player real world review [3]

Home > MP3 > Rio 300 [3]

Diamond/S3 Rio 300 personal MP3 player [3]

Rio 300 MP3 player - top & back, detail view

Thirty minutes of music is just not enough for most people. Sure, you can set your Musicmatch CD ripping software to record MP3 files at half the sample rate so you can fit twice as many songs into that tiny memory chip, but what's the point? The whole reason for getting the Rio is to listen to CD quality music without the bulk, weight and relative inconvenience of a CD player. An hour of AM radio quality music just doesn't compare.

As for the vaunted CD-quality sound, the earbud headphones that come with the Rio lack the ability to reproduce high-fidelity sounds in the lower range. To add insult to injury, they can be painfully uncomfortable. You'll want to save a few dollars to buy a pair of decent headphones to get the full Rio experience.

The design of the Rio's controls, while intuitive and well-placed, suffer from a serious flaw. It is far too easy to accidentally bump the control pad, activating the unit and draining the battery, or changing modes unexpectedly during playback. Using the Hold switch to prevent such accidents and save power is futile -- the Hold function also drains the battery.

Diamond's claims that you can listen to the Rio for 12 hours on a single battery are somewhat misleading. While that may be possible in laboratory conditions with the volume set on the lowest level, real world geartesting in all types of conditions demonstrates that playback times never exceeded 11 hours on a single battery, and rarely topped nine hours. The problem is compounded by the unreliable battery power indicator on the screen, which has a tendency to grossly overestimate the remaining charge. Of course, the power always seems to fail just as the Rio reaches the best part of your favorite song on your carefully-planned playlist.

By the way, add alkaline batteries to the total cost of ownership -- they are required if you intend to get the longest play time out of the Rio on a single battery, and cost more than conventional batteries. Had Diamond used better foresight, a built-in rechargeable battery would have been the ideal, environmentally friendly solution.

[next page]
1 2 3 4