Rio Carbon reviews (page 3 of 3)

The best thing about the Rio Carbon is that I bought it from a high street electronics chain so shouldn't have any problems getting my money back.

I bought my wife one a few weeks ago and was quite impressed with it, so last week I bought one for myself. The device worked fine until I tried to turn it off and found that it wouldn't turn off, I took it back to the retailer and had it replaced but the replacement is quite noisy and if I use the voice recorder there an awful lot of hiss as it's recording the whine from the hard drive. The battery life isn't too good either.

I decided to see if my wife's Rio recorded voices any better than mine - her machine is very quiet - so I put tried to put it into voice recorder mode. Big mistake. The message came up 'Entering voice recorder please wait'. I've now waited about half an hour as we can't get the machine to do anything, the message is still displayed, none of the buttons work and it won't turn off. The power-off timeout hasn't kicked in either, so it's going to stay stuck until the battery dies. I have no doubt it will return to it's current useless state when I charge it up again.

Two duds out of three and I'm not impressed with the remaining device, so satisfaction is about 10 out of 100.

When the manufacturers get the thing to work as it should it'll be a great little device, but at the moment I wouldn't recommend anyone to buy one.

Musically, the playback is fine and the software is a breeze to use, however it doesn't seem to take mp3 files ripped with software other than Rio's own. They will load ok but won't play so I don't know what music downloads would be like.

Regards

Rio Carbon review kindly provided by D

31 Oct 2005

Bought Rio Carbon back in April - after 6 months of good service message 'upgrader' appeared on screen, and player would not play anymore. Rio software detected the player but stated that it was in recovery mode, sadly more like terminal mode!

Waiting on Amazon to get back to me with regards to replacement or refund.

Good machine but longevity is questionable!!

Review kindly provided by MG

31 October 2005

I purchased my Rio Carbon Pearl May of this year. I decided on the Carbon instead of the iPod because of its size (physical and capacity), price, and convenience. The Pearl was cheaper than the iPod mini AND stored more songs. And the regular iPods were just too chunky for my taste. I also chose the Carbon over the iPod because I didn't want to have to install iTunes, especially because I'm a PC user. I also liked the convenience of being able to use my player as an external hard drive (plug & play!) compatible w/any other PC.

I chose the Pearl over the normal, gray Carbon because I really felt it looked that much better (even though it was about $60 more on eBay/Amazon), and supposedly people said it had newer firmware and was in general, more reliable. Also, the more convenient case for it only helped.

So when it arrived in the mail, I was stoked. Charged it, uploaded my music, all of that was a breeze. Learning to navigate the menus was pretty easy, too. I was really very happy with it for about 5 months. The battery life was just as the description said, for me. Play-life of 20 hours. To this day it still has about that much, I believe, maybe a little less like 17-18.

But then... One day at work, I was listening to music while at my workstation, and accidentally elbowed the Carbon (with the case on) off my lap. It dropped from seat height, about 2 feet from the floor. The floor was carpeted. My music didn't skip or anything, and the Rio still seemed to work properly. So I was very happy until I realized that the scroll/volume wheel (main navigation piece for the Carbon) got jammed inside the player. I was so annoyed at this flaw. I could still use the player, but now I couldn't change the volume, and I couldn't use it to scroll through long lists. I had to use the manual up/down keys to navigate which slowed my navigation speed a very considerable amount. Luckily, right before I dropped it, the volume was almost the highest it could go, so now I just listen to it at that volume at all times. Though that becomes annoying when I don't want it so loud, or if I'm talking to someone and just want to lower the volume.

I figured I could open up the player and fix it myself, so I looked it up online and apparently this has happened to numerous people already. Some are able to fix it, and some have failed miserably and have made their player worse off. I opened up my player but later decided not to go all the way through for risk of being in a worse position (which usually tends to happen to me...).

I dealt with this problem for a couple months now, but now another "hardware" problem has sprung up. This time I didn't even drop the player. I merely keep it in my backpack when I go to my classes (I'm a college student). But just yesterday I discovered that my POWER button also got jammed. So now I have to try pressing on the jammed-button while praying to God that the thing will turn on when I want it to. I'm almost at my last straw and am considering getting an iPod and attempting to sell this flawed thing.

So all in all, the Carbon is a good player, as long as you take very good care of it. If you plan on taking it with you to many places, and putting it in bags/backpacks, etc., then be VERY careful. I'm not even a very rough person and I generally take care of my things very well. But apparently the Carbon is more fragile than it looks or appears to be.

Also, the software/music manager it comes with is pretty good, straightforward. The only thing about it is not being able to edit ID3 tags in the player. Kind of annoying.

But otherwise... Yeah. I'd probably overall suggest getting an iPod, even though I've never had one myself. They seem to be a little more durable/reliable. So maybe you do pay a little more for quality.

Rio Carbon review kindly provided by DC

I bought a refurbished Rio Carbon on eBay almost 2 years ago and it has run flawlessly. I did extensive research and bought it based on 1) ease of use, 2) compact size, 3) high review ratings, 4) long battery life, and 5) competitive price.

The ease of use and size/style are important features for me and are the real seller for the Carbon. My wife is not a gadget person and she can work it with ease. It is great for travelling, and we've used it in the car, in airports/airplanes and hotels (I even bought portable speakers that essentially turn it into a small stereo).

Battery life is less than the stated 20 hours but still very good. The included software works great. The headphone jack problem is really a non-issue since it can be fixed with a piece of tape. I've seen some of the competition - my kids have iPods and Creative Zen Micros, all great MP3 players, but for my wife and I the Rio Carbon is the one.

I may have to buy a second unit to avoid sharing conflicts.

Rio Carbon review kindly provided by G L

20 October 2005:

I bought my Rio Carbon from Amazon UK in May, and have been very pleased with its looks and performance - right up to the point it failed! I used it mainly to play classical music : I thought the quality of reproduction with the supplied earphones was exceptional, the battery life really good (& quick to recharge), and the menu software pretty intuitive. 

All-in-all, I would have reported a 5-star product, except that the device completely failed after 5 months!   I tried all the documented troubleshooting/recovery procedures - including attempting a firmware re-install - without success.

The Rio UK helpdesk were responsive but said that the device was not repairable : Amazon UK are offering me a refund, without argument.  Having now read some other reviews, I suspect Rio may have a problem with the continuing reliability of this model - if so, it is a great shame because in all other respects it is a great product. 

Personally, I will not buy this particular model again : but I may well (after waiting a while) buy another Rio model, on the hypothesis that they will preserve all the good points, and correct the problems!

Rio Carbon review kindly provided by C B, London, UK.

15 Jan 2006

I received the Rio Carbon Pearl for my birthday in December 2005. It is extremely easy to use and transferring tracks from the Music Manager to the player is no problem at all - when the player is fully functional !

Up until yesterday the player worked fine now it is completely dead - I can't turn it on, charge it or anything.  When I connected it to my computer in order to transfer tracks onto it, the Music Manager recognised it but would not read the tracks that I had already put on it - when I clicked on the Rio Carbon icon, all of the buttons were greyed out.  I thought this was strange and decided to see if I could transfer any music onto it.

I tried this and I received an error message telling me that the player was full and could not hold any more tracks - I know for a fact that that is incorrect as I have only transferred about 200 songs & the player should hold 1500.  I also received a message from my pc telling me that there was a problem installing the hardware for the player.  In addition, once I had given up trying to transfer the music I tried to turn the player on to listen to the songs I already had on it.

However the player was completely lifeless and I cannot even charge it up.  I have no idea what is wrong with it but I am absolutely gutted, as up until this point found it reliable and very easy to use.  Luckily the product is still under guarantee so I'm taking it back to Currys as soon as possible but its majorly annoying that I now cannot listen to any music until I get it sorted out. 

Review kindly provided by GG