Home > Consumer Reviews > Rio Volt MP3 CD Player

I agree wholeheartedly with one of the reviewers regarding the fact that the general features were good but the sound quality was lacking. I tried several sets of headphones, from the ones originally included to quite a good pair of Sony's and the sound was thoroughly mediocre at best, even when listening to mp3s recorded at a 192 bitrate.
The battery life was also disappointingly low--I think I had a 4 hour max as well and thought there might be a short circuit in the device. What a waste of batteries. If I could have located my original invoice I would have sent this unit back to the re-seller.

Not a bad player, however, I have no experience of other players to make a comparison with. I found that I could get all my mp3s off my pc onto one disc (exceptionally useful since I had to format my hard disk to re-install windows!). Good sound quality - make sure you replace the headphones supplied. I did find a few annoyances. Firstly, when flicking from track to track using the remote control I couldn't tell if the player had seeked the correct track and was loading it to memory, had stopped playing or was paused. All these are equally possible to do using the control - especially when crushed on the tube on the in morning. You also have to be patient to allow the tracks to be loaded to memory before jogging the player and I found the battery life limited - however as I said I have no benchmark.

After suffering hours of taping CDs onto cassetes or tapes that had worn out or got chewed up in my bag - not to mention the MP3s that I have stored at work, I decided to embrace technology and buy a CD player that could play MP3s and I could load on my favourite tunes from CD.

I haven't been disappointed by this player at all. Sound quality is excellent and even a novice like myself found it easy to use. It is quite big, but as I keep it in my bag, this isn't a huge problem for me. If you buy a pair or portable speakers, you can put all your holiday listening on one CD so that you can either listen to your music on the beach or have a party without worrying about damaging your CD collection. My only niggle is that the headphones have too much cable and the clip on the remote control doesn't always stay put, so you sometimes run the risk of tripping over the cable.

I absolutely loved the Rio Volt from the instant I got it, it was everything I'd been waiting for for 2 years in an MP3/CD player. This was my 3rd MP3 player and the first one that offered anything approaching acceptable battery life but be beware it's a tad on the fragile side. I had read a review somewhere else complaining about fragility and discounted it as somebody's whinge after dropping it or something however, at 3 weeks old, mine suffered an extremly minor knock which I know wouldn't have bothered either of my previous models nor a standard CD player and certainly nothing above that which a PORTABLE unit could be expected to experience in everyday use but unfortunately it was enough to render it inoperatve. OK the supplier exchanged under guarantee but just be aware that it is a potential problem area.

I've had my Rio Volt just one day and I don't know how I ever coped without it!! Its an absolutely brilliant player, but like the other reviewers have mentioned, do download the latest firmware from the Rio web site, it only took me about 15 mins to download, burn onto a CDR and upgrade the player. I so love being able to burn just tons of songs onto CDR's and the Volt plays them without any probs!!! If you are reading this and thinking about buying it - just don't hesitate, oh and the best bit is I ordered mine from Amazon on Wednesday night and had it delivered Friday morning - just brilliant service!!