The Rio Karma

Civilian_Target

OK, you lot asked for a Rio Karma opinion, so here it is

Out of the box, I have to admit, I was amazed by how small it was. I'd been told 3cm x 2.7 x.9cm but it really looks much smaller. The w x d are almost exactly the same as a minidisc (that's the discs, not the players), but it is quite thick all the same. If you've ever seen a Gameboy advance SP, it's lightly smaller than a closed GBA - SP. It's not as study as I would have liked, it's made of a rubbery plastic, and the transparent from doesn't look too scratch resistant. Fortunately though, it comes with a crap little body bag that will do for now until I get something with a belt clip.

Setup wasn't bad. I plugged it into the very nice, solid base station (which also has phono plugs), and left it to charge. The whole base station glows blue when the Karmas plugged in, which looks cool in a tacky way. When I plugged it in then, Windows went ape****, but then I realised my USB port was dodgy. It works fine in my other free USB port. You can also connect by Ethernet, have yet to try it. Once it was plugged in, I ran the firmware upgrader, which worked flawlessly. Installed the drivers, restarted, and ran the Rio DJ software, which isn't great, but better than the explorer interface. Transfer to the player occurs faster than I can choose the tracks to change, which is nice.

Once I got going, I found a great surprise. The sound reproduction on the player is superb (helped by the good headphones that come with it), best I've ever heard from a portable player. It's a bit of a downside, because the quality is good enough to pick apart a 128k mp3. Fortunately most of my music is in OGG format, so I'm OK there. The gain is very good, I'm a metaller and find anything above 26/30 (playing RATM - Renegades) uncomfortable. Anything above 23 blocks out all but the loudest environment noise.

For the most part, the interface for the thing is really well designed. For once, someone's had the sense to put the headphones socket in the top of the player, which is great. The Rio Stick thing works very well, and the menus are mostly intuitive (I still haven't found a simple way of enqueuing to the playlist, but I haven't read the manual yet). It has a left handed mode (if you care) and the button placement is mostly good. I say mostly because the volume control and skip back/forward controls should really be in opposite places. You may be able to change that too, I'll soon find out.

It isn't a stylish player though, not compared to and iPod. It looks square and rugged, not tall and elegant. It's substantially smaller, and debatably more functional than and iPod, but it's black and geeky, it doesn't have styled headphones or any of that crap. Its visually alright, but its small, its very practical and its a joy to use and listen too.

I decided that I might as well start as I was going to continue, so stuck it in my pocket and got walking. I walk damn quickly, and it didn't skip once, so I was well impressed. That said, I'd still like to get an extended warranty on it, because minidiscs didn't last the distance and I don't see why a hard disk would do any better. So if anyone has ideas on where to get warrantys on stuff you already own, tell me.

All this said though, the Karma doesn't have any non-music-playing related features. It won't record from a microphone. To move files you have to use Rio Taxi. It works on all OS's thanks to the Java version of Rio Music manager and the Ethernet interface, but there's no radio receiver, no games, no frills. Not that I want any, I wanted a music player, and this does a superb job of playing.

Overall, I have to say, good decision, I like this thing. I'm going to stick a pros cons list up now, in case I've forgotten anything. And if anyone knows about getting an extended warranty for it, tell me.

Civilian_Target

Pros:
- Excellent sound quality
- Very Small, but still excellent capacity
- Mostly well designed and easy to use, very practical
- Controls respond instantly (no control lag like other DAPs)
- Nice base station with Ethernet and USB interfaces (USB plug also on player)
- Plays OGGs and MP3s
- Phono plugs on base station (for use with Hifis)
- No battery problems (there's a battery replacement programme in the US, for $40, battery life is about 14hrs I'm told, but never tested it)
- Rio Music Manager is better than a standard explorer interface, and file transfer is very fast.
- Reasonably durable
- Quite cheap for what it is

Cons:
- Arkward for transferring non-music files
- Can't record from without computer, and no FM radio
- 90 day warranty
- Less stylish than an ipod
- Screen looks easily scratched (haven't tested this )

Civilian_Target

Just discovered that in Ethernet mode it has a webserver. Rumour has it that they might upgrade this to become a web interface for file transfer, which would be much better than that silly java applet they have the the moment.

I'm really growing to like the little thing