Home > Consumer Reviews > Rio SP50 MP3/CD Player

- the only other one I have seen at this price is a Goodmans model - but that doesn't play cdrw and has less features. Obviously the more you pay the better model you get.

Pros:

Cheap
plays mp3 and cd
plays cdrw - no hassle at all
on a cd you can get around ten albums - mp3 only players at most are 128mb (say 2 albums worth) and cost double the price of this player.
Recognises all my mp3 discs (i recommend you use nero to burn - works a treat)
finds mp3 tracks quite quickly (seen alot alot worse)
ID3 tags
Line out
works fine in a car - used on a 3 hour journey, 156 x mp3s on random, didn't skip once, finds next track fast
Bass switch - i keep it on always
lock feature
for cd playback ESP shock is great
Sound is great on both cd and mp3
No glitches on mp3 - I use music match to rip the tracks from my original cds

Cons:

No resume
search function a bit fiddly to use
battery life with orig batteries is bad -
I use ni-mh 1300 (or better) rechargables - last much longer.
Earphones supplied are cheap - I use some cheap sony ones
open and close - a bit cheaply made
no light for display (you can't expect this at this price - also that would use up more battery power)

MP3 - EPS:
Reads disc for about 10 seconds into the 2mb buffer (whilst its doing this there is no shock protection - so if you jolt it, the jolt will be read into the buffer and will make the song jump slighty). After disc is read then for 2 mins you cannot jolt it at all. I have found that if its in a pocket swinging around a bit then it can ocassionally jump - you just need to make sure it doesn't move too much when using Mp3 playback - now i have sussed this I don't have a problem. No problems in car or at home use with the mp3 EPS at all.

In summary for £10/£15 less you can get a personal cd player with similar antishock - the difference is this has the mp3 playback as well - which is essential - 10 albums on 1 cd is superb!...

Main negative thing is the MP3 EPS - so read above then decide.

This MP3/CD Player is fantastic. My old Personal CD Player was good but couldn't play MP3s.
As I have a CD Burner and a huge MP3 collection I thought this would be a superb combination. It accepts CDRW as well so you can actually rotate your entire collection over a number of days simply by overwriting the CD every night and when you get a new song just add it and it's done.
Keep your IDv3 tags well maintained on your MP3s and it looks quite good on the screen of the player. The artist, title, album and bitrate are displayed by scrolling across the display.
The volume control is fine, you can go through any range of volumes unlike some players where you seem to only have the choice of very quiet, quiet or very loud.
There are more good points but that's all I can be bothered to type.
The only bad points I can think of (being a little picky) are that the battery monitor may as well NOT EXIST. Put new batteries in and it goes down to battery half empty. Then it shoots up to full after about 10 minutes. Then flashes meaning it's about to die. Then fills up again. Completely useless
The batteries that come with the player, as expected only lasted about an hour which was worse than most 'batteries included' deals.
Also, the headphones that are supplied really hurt my ears (seemed too big and uncomfortable) so I am now using new headphones with in-line volume control.

Other than the quibbles at the bottom, I love my new player and take it with me wherever I go (can even run around with it because of the excellent ESP Shock Protection)

Buy it now!

I bought this with worries, because they were no other reviews of it and rio itself isnt the biggest brand in the world, i made my cd and put it in, it loads in less than 5 second and comes up with all the track details instantly, loading between tracks is quick,. Only thing that is bad about this player is the headphones, they are terrible, i reccomend ordering better headphones with this item, also the battery life isnt amazing, but for the price, can u complain?

If you are like me you always want to read reviews from people who have purchased something that you would like to buy. I don't normally get the time to return to a site to write a review on any product that I have purchased, however I have made a point of doing so this time....

Having had my Rio SP50 MP3/CD player for about a week I can concur with all the reviews that I read prior to purchasing my player. I thought the comment about the battery life being short was a bit harsh. My batteries are still on the go. No doubt when I replace my batteries with better quality ones I will be expecting the battery life to be extended.

Between having placed my order and receving my player I was concerned about the ability to connect my player to a transformer in case the batteries failed. I was pleased to find out that there was indeed a facility for a transformer eventhough one was not supplied. (No problem as I already had one and they can be purchased for a couple of pounds).

The operating instructions that came with the player were basic and in several differnt languages, but then who reads them anyway? It would have been nice to have had a leaflet explaining the various specifications regarding recording frequencies, etc. I suppose the net is full of this sort of information.

In conclusion, I am happy with my purchase, in fact very happy!

This is a good unit. The unit reads all the discs I have tried, even RW disks written at 10x speed. It reads the list fast and seems to be one of those products which just doesn't "mess around". There is no remote control, no fancy EQ settings and no PSU. But the MP3 playback is great - good quality and it handle all the bit rates I've thrown at it. The ID3 tag display is pretty good. You can even search for files - it's a little fiddly to do this, but it is usable. Some of the selection of tracks seems a bit odd, but it's not bad when you get used to it. I have recorded a load of children's stories using my WaveFinder DAB radio and so I can now play them through the car stereo. With a 10 hour battery life, it's an ideal way to fill those long journeys - if you record at 64kbps or even 56kbps you get more than 20 hours of speech on single disk. Why on earth should you bother with a solid state player which costs more than this and has only 1 tenth of the storage capacity? OK, so this unit is more bulky, but it is so much better...