| 24 July 2005: My Rio Carbon
experience, now six days old, is full of (expensive irony). I saved up a
bunch of Amazon gift certificates and so I only paid about $75 for it. It
arrived swiftly and it set up easily and plays well. Next day, I decided to
burn a song off a CD and discovered that my laptop no longer recognizes the
existence of its internal DVD-CDRW drive. Uninstalling Music Manager didn’t
help. I took it off to the shop and after spending $365, the tech says he
can’t figure out what the problem is. The DVD-CD drive is hotswappable, and
sometimes if you remove it and then put it back, the drive appears for a
while under My Computer, but then disappears. This never happened till Rio
Carbon Pearl came into my life. The techie says if I buy an external CD
drive, it’s work fine, “guaranteed”. My Computer recognizes Rio itself when
I plug it in, but the CD drive has become a ghost. So burning CDs onto it is
impossible. Nice, huh?
Rio Carbon review kindly provided by SM |
20 July 2005: This is my
second Rio player and shame on me. The first was an earlier
model. Forget which one but it had problems and ended up shipping it to be
repaired and was somehow lost. So several years later I reluctantly and must
admit desperately bought the Rio Carbon, being that it was the last MP3
player available on Christmas Eve and needed a gift to wrap.
A few months after using it, I noticed the battery wasn't holding a charge
as long. This only got worse until it no longer worked. I tried the reset.
Software upgrades. Nothing. So finally contacted tech support which started
out helpful but suddenly stopped returning email. Tried several responses
and still no return. Not sure if tech on the other end left company or what
but I'm stuck with a unusable Rio player at this point.
I will not purchase another Rio product again.
Respectfully, M
18 Jan 2006 Help please
I have had my Rio Carbon for
about 2 years and am very pleased with its performance, however, I now get
between 2-3 hours of operation per charge. I have the backlight off
and the sound as low as possible and I have performed all the software
tweaks that Rio suggested. I cannot find any information on replacing
the battery. It must be possible, any Ideas?
See video here on how to change a rio carbon battery
http://reviews.cnet.com/Replace_your_iPod_s_battery/4660-6450_7-6246925.html
| 2 Sept 2005: I have had my Rio
Carbon for a little while now, having purchased it on eBay from a USA
eBayer - I live in the UK. I did not have to wait too long, about 5 days
from the close of auction to receiving it on my doorstep. Considering
how impatient I am, this is outstanding!
I have had an iPod and a Samsung Napster YH-920GS 20GB. Battery life on
the Samsung is atrocious (around an hour or two with equivalent use of
the Rio Carbon and iPod), and it is fiddly to get on with although it
looks good. The iPod is ok, as is the battery life of around 6 - 8
hours.
When I opened up the box, what I saw made go "wow" - and I promise you I
am not easily pleased! The look of the Carbon is fabulous. The shiny
mirror like metallic back, the easy to read front area, and the funky
and practical overall design. The little touch of putting a rubberised
strip around the edge is such a fantastic idea, enabling sweaty hands to
grip it more easily. A big, big let down is the supplied case holder. No
belt clip and not clear front panel to view the screen and control
buttons! How ridiculous! Ridiculous, that is, until you see that Rio
Audio website will let you buy the case with a clear panel for another
$19.99 (around £12.00 or so) plus p&p. So it is their way of increasing
profits (and maybe reducing costs of the player, too). The enclosed
headphones are pretty decent, meaning you don't have to rush out and buy
an expensive set if you don't want to!
Battery life can achieve 18-20 hours if you are frugal with how many
times you change tracks and mess with the menu options. I am not at all
frugal, therefore average battery life for me is between 12 - 15 hours.
A decent amount of time there. |
It took around 3 hours to charge up from
the USB to PC connection, which is amazing! For us Brits, the
alternative power supply is an issue if you buy from the States, as the
supplied plug is not able to be used in the UK without an adaptor (US to
UK conversion). I had to buy mine from
http://www.maplins-electronics.co.uk and then modify it by
cutting a portion of the adaptor trim away to accommodate the plug. All
told, I only spent £2.99 and a bit of elbow grease, so well worth it!
The Rio Music Manager (included on the enclosed cd-rom) is very facile,
being a completely straightforward, and easy to use piece of software.
Transferring tracks using the software is really easy, as is using WMP
to do so, or straight from the pc in Explorer. Whichever way I do it,
presents absolutely no problems whatsoever. It picked up my existing
tracks and requested where I wished to retrieve and store new tracks. It
really is simple as point and click and you are done!
In summary, having experienced a couple of other mp3 players, the Rio
Carbon beats them hands down in all sorts of ways. Ok it has no FM
tuner, and the voice recording is not that great, but who cares? I only
want to listen to my MP3's! And for that, it does the job perfectly
well. So go on and get yourself one. I promise it will be a treat!
I hope this helps some of you!
Rio Carbon review kindly provided by R. N, Coventry, United Kingdom. |
|
| 18 Sept 2005: I got my Rio Carbon
"Pearl" a couple of weeks ago here in the U.K. The pearl appears to mean you
get the better carry case included with access to the controls and easy
screen viewing. Oh and it's also a pearl colour I think.
I got it from a U.K website which gave prompt delivery of about 4 days after
ordering. It came with a smart AC adapter that you can change the pins on it
for U.S, U.K or european use and also utilises the usb lead which goes from
the AC adapter to the unit to charge it up.
It seems like quite a good unit so far, but after it's first full charge it
only managed 8 hours and that was playing my songs from start to, well not
quite finish. I didn't flick about with the controls either.
Apart from that the fidelity is quite good really, struggles a bit with WMA
VBR, but will play almost any bit rate of mp3. It is easy to put your tunes
onto it, I didn't bother installing the software that came with it as you
don't really need it as WMP10 or windows explorer do just nicely. The
drivers already come with windows XP.
It also works fine as an external hard disk, I put some text files and a
video on it, transferred it to another computer without a problem.
I didn't really like the headphones that came with it as the bass sounded
really muddy through them, but an old cheap pair of sony in ear headphones I
had lying around make it sound as good as any I've heard.
The menu's are easy to understand, it's even got a multi-lap stopwatch!! But
I haven't worked out how to reset it yet.
All in all well worth the money for a decent, good sounding, none of your
nonsense gimmicky mp3 player. It does look cool as well, and is the size of
a credit card, well about 6 in a stack.
Rio Carbon review kindly provided by Steve, from Scotland
6th June 2006:
We bought a 6Gb Rio Carbon Pearl which failed with a broken thumbwheel in
70 days. After 3 weeks (18 May -- 6 June) Rio support come back to me
with this line:
Unfortunately broken scroll wheels / power buttons are not covered by the
warranty. We do not do off warranty repairs. The is due to fact that
repairing and shipping a Rio is more expensive than a new player.
I can go to a repair shop that will work on a fixed price repair of $75
-- IMHO, I think that their warranty policy is pretty sharp. When this
company designed a product with a vulnerable component like the thumbwheel,
they clearly knew that it was a point of failure and therefore excluded it
from the warranty.
Want to eat dirt ? Get a handle of honest black earth from your garden
and not this corporate crap. Don't buy thumbwheel devices from Rio.
Regards W |