Rio SP50 MP3/CD Player

Amazon Customer Reviews

(4 out of 5)

For the money this is a very good buy

- 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.

(5 out of 5)

How can this be so cheap?

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?

(5 out of 5)

superb piece of kit, forget other mp3 players!!

This is an amazing value piece of kit. The storage on CD is an excellent idea, there is not the usual limit of an album or two, but you can get up to ten on one 25p CD. The battery life is superb and the non-skip faultless. Why are there not more devices using this idea? Lack of mains supply a slight disappointment, but very, very good value equipment. Get one!

(4 out of 5)

Brilliant but battery monitor a bit dodgy

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!

(5 out of 5)

Rio Volt Revolution

I've had my Riovolt player for a few months now and wouldn't swap it for the world - I can't believe more companies aren't making CD mp3 players.

The Riovolt player itself is quite small and feels well built. It has all the features you'd expect from a normal discman - track shuffle, bass modes etc and also has a useful 'hold' button (to stop you from accidentally hitting one of the buttons when it's in your pocket for example).

It's as an mp3 player though where the unit really comes into it's own.

The main advantages are that it is tag ID compatible i.e. can read the file names as written on your PC, and the unit also has a great 'navigate' button that allows you to browse the contents of a disc, just like you would on Windows on your PC. The unit also has an EQ feature to let you choose between different settings - 'live' or rock' for example. There is also a 'lineout' jack to allow you to connect with an amp/Hi-Fi. The unit also plays WMA files and files with variable bit-rates. If you record at 128kbps (the standard bit-rate) the sound quality doesn't suffer and this works out at about 1mb of disc space a minute - between 700 - 800 minutes of music per CD! Put a disc in, press the shuffle button and it's just like having a jukebox in you pocket.

The only disappointment is the lack of a power supply, but that's a small grumble as they're pretty inexpensive to buy.

Forget minidisks and bog-standard mp3 players - CD mp3 players are the future and Riovolt are already ahead of the pack. This really is a 'must buy' for any music lovers with access to a PC / CD rewriter.

(Note - my comments are about the sp90 model, slightly more advanced than the sp50 model)