Rio S30S Sport 64 MB MP3 Player – Customer Reviews
Cheap, Functional and Expandable, but not that Durable
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This is a great player for the price, it works and sounds great, and that is all that matters, right?
I totally agree, but there are a few problems that kill this little MP3/WMA player's glory.
All have been mentioned so far, and I am pretty sure that everyone is aware but now, but why not put my two cents in it?
-I like the fact that you have an arm band and a belt clip. There is a rubberised enclosure for the player that facilitates the mounting to the arm band. My problem is the player's unusual shape causes it to stick out like a sore thumb on the side of your arm. I suggest increased awareness in situations in the gym where there is a possibility of rubbing, as the buttons on the player are akward and stick out.
-Since we are on the topic of buttons, I have read several reviews of individual's players losing button functuality over time. I do not doubt this from feeling the shoddy construction of the buttons. The lock function is also buried too deep down in the menus.
-Speaking of menus, common functions are buried deep and make it a pain, especially when the rubber casing is on, it makes the top buttons hard to access, including volume.
-Music still sounds nice at max volume, included earbuds are good, but may not quite reach some waists.
-Complaints about radio reception; I have not tried it myself, but Rio claims to have solved these problems with the latest firmware update.
-It makes a difference, you will notice the differences in the menu format.
-The software sucks, use anything but the Music Manager. It does work in terms of basic functionality though. The USB cable is proprietary, and Rio states on their website that they have tested SD media up to 1 GB.
-Battery life is adequate, as advertised.
-The screen shows a lot for something in its price range, maybe a little too much, although the LCD does look a little archaic. I will expand on this in the next bullet.
-The LCD screen is the Achilles Heel of this player in terms of durability. Two weeks after I got this thing from Overstock, I clipped it on my Interceptor body armour in an ammo pouch, and took it on an 8 mile ruck march. At the end, I forgot and threw my armour in the back of a truck. When I got back the screen was done. It will take a fall anywhere, but once the screen gets hit, it is done.
In summary, this rocks if you can get it for 30 bucks, it is expandable to 1 GB, but you have to be cognisant of your surroundings, or you will break this toy.8/28/2005 12:00 AM | Rating:
Best value for the price!
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I've had my Rio S30S Sport for about 3 weeks now. I absolutely love it. It is small, weighs almost nothing, and stores more than enough music to cover my daily workouts for more than a week. The software that comes with it is very good. Makes downloading songs to the Rio very easy and was very intuitive . . . never had to look in the help files or read the manual. If you buy this product, you will want to plan on buying an SD card as well. I believe the maximum this Rio Sport will take is a 256MB card, but that size holds a lot of songs.
My only complaint about this item is that when I clip it to my belt, I sometimes bump the stop position on the round toggle with my hand. (This never happens if I attach it to my left side, so I am attributing that problem to a weird right-hand swing!) It comes with a plastic clip-on case and an arm-band. I'm a walker, so the arm-band would be an overkill for me. But I'm sure joggers would find that works better for them.7/17/2005 12:00 AM | Rating:
very good
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this is a very good mp3 player.It only has 64mb but it plays track very good.It never skips but my advice is dont drop it because if u drop it on the wrong spor it can like open up but all u have to is push it back togetheryea just dont drop it
6/15/2005 12:00 AM | Rating:
Works Great, added 1 gig Sandisk SD :)
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This is a great cheap player, nice interface.
You can add the one gigabyte SD cards.(I bought a 1 gig Sandisk for cheap), you may need to update the firmware (you should anyway, it is very easy to do).
Only took off a star because the SQ while excellent was not up the the Rio Karma I own (I guess that is expected as that may be the best sounding DAP on the market).SQ overall is great but I want everything for nothing and dont hand out 5 stars :)2/8/2005 12:00 AM | Rating:
A fantastic little thing
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I love this mp3 player! I've had it for about 1 1/2 years. It has been through a lot, and it's still working fine. If you bought one, you probably wouldn't abuse it as much as I did. Mine has been through drops, some water, and just some general wear and tear, but all it has to show for it is a few scratches!
One of the reasons I chose Rio was because of the large screen, with which I could see much of the info about the song, like the artist and album. Many others have only one line of info, and you must wait for it to scroll or something like that. Also, the rubber outside is a plus. It feels very nice, and has a nice grip. It could definetely have more memory, but since it has a memory card slot, it isnt really a problem for me. Some of the new Rio players, and many other mp3 players, have a stick control, where one stick controls all of the play/pause etc. This Rio has a larger control pad, which I find to be much easier to use. The FM tuner...is a piece of junk. I could only get 5 or so stations that were remotely clear. Also, the stopwatch is very hard to use. You have to go through the menu and select your stopwatch mode in order to start/stop your stopwatch. Then, if you want to go back to your player mode, you must go through the menu again. But overall, this mp3 player is definetly worth the money.12/21/2004 12:00 AM | Rating: