Rio S10 64 MB MP3 Player

See it at Amazon.com for $129.99

Average Customer Rating
(4.0 out of 5)

Amazon Customer Reviews

Most Helpful First | Newest First

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Took a chance and was pleasantly surprised

Did some research on MP3 players to use while working out. Biggest complaints surrounded use of software to download MP3's or WMA's(Windows Media)to the player. Also wanted to be able to Rip songs off my current CD's to download to the Player. The software was very easy to install (I use Win 2000) and my pc had no problem picking up the new USB connection. After I installed the Software I connected the player and was ready to go. I used Windows 2000 to copy my CD's down to the hard drive in the WMA format. Then using RIO manager I could pick and choose which songs I wanted to hear. The software allows you to sort very large libraries of songs by Genre, Album, Song List and Playlist. The download time for a full CD's worth of sound is about five minutes. The display shows Album, Artist and song title and other info like volume and battery meter. You can shuffle songs and you can apply several setting using an onscreen menu list (i.e. equalizer, powersaver, etc). Also the battery life has been excellent, 3 hours of use and still showing 3/4 full. Headphones are OK (ear plugs only) Very nice padded belt clip stays where you put it.

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Good for the gym

A nice, simple MP3 player, just the thing for working out at the gym.

Compact, light weight, looks good, plastic but seems sturdy enough; nice padded case with belt clip. Fairly easy to operate: menus could be improved, but it's a barebones little player and you won't be fiddling with the menus very often. Sounds good to me. I listen to classical on Koss PortaPro headphones, and I'm picky about sound. If you listen in a very noisy environment, or if you just like your music REALLY LOUD, you will want to normalize low level recordings before you convert them to MP3.

The 64 MB built-in memory is a joke, and when you update the firmware (and you should) you will have 61 MB left. Count on buying a memory card. With updated firmware, it will take SD memory cards up to 512 MB. The 512 MB cards are priced out of sight, but I found a name brand 256 MB card for $... That gives me 4 1/2 hours play time. It runs on one AA battery, and the batteries last a long time. I don't need to take the batteries out when I'm not listening, like I did with my tape players and radios.

Can't comment on the headphones (which I tossed) or the Windows software. It works fine with a Mac and iTunes.

If you're traveling or going away to school and music is important to you, get an iPod. If you just want something to take to the gym, this will do. Budget another $... for a memory card and better headphones. I give it 4 stars out of 5 for being slightly overpriced. SONICblue should either cut the list price or build it with 128 MB.

Be aware that as of now (April 2003) SONICblue is going through bankruptcy.

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Just plain awesome.

This music player is awesome. It couldn't be better. It has a decent amount of on-board memory, and can be cheaply extended with the MMC Cards. The sound is great, the song transfer is fast and it has an E X C E L L E N T backlit display, which shows the time, battery life, song, album, track, progress meter, and more. The buttons are easy to use also. The player looks great, is light and small. The best thing is that it has a very good battery life, 1 AA battery for more than 35 hours worth. It is a great player. Obviously it is no iPod, Archos, RioRiot or something like that, but is the best of its kind in the cheap mp3 players. I recommend it over any mp3 player that is less than $150, including the Creative Labs ones, Rio 600/800, and the Mp3/CD players as well.
PROS
-Good battery life
-Excellent Display
-Fast transfer, good music software
-Good look and appearance
-Light and small
-Easy buttons
-Low price
-Will Probably last long
CONS
-Menu button is at the top.
-Menus are a little weird

This product should be 100/5 stars, but i can only go up to 5. I highly recommend this product if you have a limited budget and are looking for an mp3 player that is > $150.

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Good hardware and design, less good software

First, the good news: this player is probably the most well-designed and easiest to use of any mp3 players (of its capacity) that I have seen, not to mention it's quite reasonably priced. Though hooking the player up to your PC and uploading songs to it takes the usual basic computer skills, once the songs are on the player, even the computer illiterate (read: my parents!) can figure out how to use the Rio S10 and change the settings. The menus are very intuitive as are the layout of the buttons. The S10 comes with 64 MB internal memory (which is, to be honest, not nearly enough), and I just added another 128 MB, and it was a breeze to do (just buy the MMC card, open the player where the battery goes, and slide the MMC card in into the only obvious slot it could possibly go) and it worked right off the bat. Further, the little cover case that comes with it fits perfectly, protecting the player. The size of the whole unit is smaller than a pack of cigarettes, and easily fits in my pocket. The in-ear headphones that come with it are pretty much junk, but that's to be expected, I guess.

Now, the less good news: when I first got this player (January '03), it was incompatible with my motherboard (MSI Nvidia Nforce with AMD chip) and so I couldn't upload songs to the player. Basically, the player was useless. Sonicblue's support web page was very unhelpful, and tech support was horrendous (they put me on hold forever, were obtuse, and hardly spoke English). They kept having me reinstall (many times) the software that you put on your PC, but it was clear that was not the problem and instead my problem was that the firmware was incompatible with my PC's motherboard. They would have none of it and insisted it was something else. In fact, they even said that even if it was a compatibility problem, this was technically not their fault and they couldn't refund me! Since they don't tell you beforehand what motherboards the player is compatible with, I think that is a horrendous thing to say to a customer. I was very disappointed. Nonetheless, I did what they said (reinstalling the software on my PC a million times) and, needless to say, it didn't work. So I gave up and decided I was just stuck with a piece of junk.

Fast forward to several weeks ago (late April '03). I noticed that, finally, a newer version of the firmware was out. Since the player was not working with my motherboard, I used a friend's computer to upgrade the firmware on the S10 (since the player didn't work on my PC, I couldn't even upgrade the firmware on my own computer) from version 1.60 to version 1.80. I thought I'd do it just for kicks, to see if it might work. Amazingly, the new firmware worked and all my problems were solved! My Rio S10 now works perfectly with my motherboard. Though SonicBlue still doesn't publish a list of which motherboards the player is compatible with, I would suspect that they have finally ironed out most compatibility problems with the newest firmware (I just saw that version 1.84 came out last week, or early May).

Also, I should mention that the software that comes with the player which you install on your PC (called Rio Music Manager, or just RMM) is pretty lousy. It gets the job done allright, but it's clumsy and if you have any more than a couple dozen mp3's or wma's (I have thousands), it's a major pain to organize them. Once you find the songs you want, uploading them is a breeze; it's just the way RMM organizes them that is terrible. However, you can also use RealPlayer instead of RMM (the appropriate drivers come with the Rio S10). It's somewhat better.

So, in conclusion, I would have given the player 5 stars, but the fact that their tech support was terrible and that it took them this long to come out with a fix, forces me to only give the player 4 stars. Had I not gone through the headaches of the past 4 months, the Rio S10 would have gotten 5 stars.

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Well worth the money, A solid product.

I loved this product so much I bought 2 (I lost the first one). My Dad and my brother have one also. It lasted a few months before I lost it without a scratch. I use it to ease bordem in car rides, barn work, etc. It has many great features:
-Hold Button. Great for when working
-Mac and Windows support. If you own a mac like me, you probably already have iTunes, the included software. I've been told the wondows software works great also.
-USB transfer. Uploads 60 mb of songs in 2-3 minutes.
-Sound quality. The sound quality is better than you'd expect from something so small. The included headphones have low quality sound (obviously), but It's still pretty good. With a good set of 'phones, it sounds great.
-Battery life. Lasted 25+ hours on an alkaline.

It does have a few faults though:
-Included headphones don't fit all ears. They fit mine fine, but my brother bought different ones.
-the protective cover is a little large. It makes it hard to fit it in small places with it on, but it's easily removable.
-Has no radio. Most others have this included, but SonicBlue wanted to keep it small.

If you get it, KEEP THE PACKAGING! I tryed to get my rebate, but found that the UPC code, which was long gone by that time, was needed.

Overall, This was one of the best MP3 players on the market for this price range. The S50 is better (128 mb, fm tuner), but it cost more. The S30 is pretty cheap, but is kinda large. I would strongly recomend the S10 to anyone who needs a small, reasonably priced MP3 player.

Pros: Sturdy, cheap, compatable, fast, user-friendly, long battery life
Cons:Bad headphones included, lack of FM tuner.

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