Rio Nitrus 1.5GB MP3 Player

Amazon Customer Reviews

(3 out of 5)

Reasonable

I bought this in the US, impressed by it's large capacity for a very small object. However it's not all roses.
I'll give you the bad news first - you can't always guarantee that it'll start. It seems to have a glitch, that occassionally it "hangs up" when the power button is pressed. This is not just my machine and if you check out Amazon.com, you'll see others complaining. Having said this, it's never not started eventually and it seems to mainly be an issue when the power is at the lower end of the scale. This may be because it uses a very small hard drive which presumably requires a higher start power than a completely solid state unit. Mind you it must be a very small drive because this is not much bigger than a matchbox. The other irritation is that the interface is not exactly laden with options. You can skip tracks, choose a type of sound effect, stop it, start it and pause.

Now the good stuff. The software provided for your computer is just stuningly good. I just don't think that I have ever used a simpler program for shifting songs around and uploading or downloading. If anyone has ever used Sony's program for use with their NET Walkman, then they would cry with joy if they could use something as good as the Nitrus' software. All manufacturers should take a long hard look at this excercise in simplicity. It just does what you need very easily.

The size of the Nitrus is seriously small. It's ideal for taking out and about as it weighs less than nothing and is miniscule. I stick mine in a shirt pocket and it's just not noticible.

The sound quality is brilliant for such a small machine. It's much better than a NET Walkman in compression mode.

If you load on songs in WMA low compression you can get around 500 songs on. In MP3 you can get around 370, but to be honest it sounds just as good using WMA's.

And without a doubt it has an amazing battery life. Easily it'll go 16 hours from a full charge.

Overall, it's a reasonable buy for the money. It plays music well, has brilliant software for song managment, and is tiny. On the minus side, it's not a completely polished article. There is a definate feeling of fragility and it is a tad "cheap" to look at. In the end however it just simply plays music well and is small. That's pretty much what commuters, joggers, dog walkers and people stuck on aeroplanes want.

(5 out of 5)

Alright, who bought the ipod!!??

I was bought this as a gift for christmas, brought over to the UK by my Auntie. I had spent hours researching this on the internet, and found this to be the best affordable player. I now take that back. It is, straight out, the best player on the market. My only complaint is the volume buttons, as they are rather fiddley, but I use the same volume most of the time, so it does not bother me much. As for sound quality, it doesnt get much better than this. The Nitrus comes with a Custom EQ, along with 5 presets, so whatever type of music you listen to, it always sounds just right. The bundled software is also one of the best on the market, so the 1.5gb hard disk feels 10 times bigger. With software like that, there is no need to buy a 20 or 30 gb player! The bundled headphones are some of the best to be bundled with any player, and produce consistantly excelent sound. If you want supperior sound, small sizes, and a great price, along with software, and storage to match, why go with anything else?

(5 out of 5)

It won't get much better than this.....

I was a little sceptical with regard to sound quality that could come from such a small sized player but after listening to the pre-loaded tracks on this machine I was impressed. After down loading some music I was familiar with I was blown away.

The unit itself and the software are both incredibly user friendly and downloading tracks is a doddle. The headphones provided are of high quality helping to give a great sound performance... which is what I wanted. The 1.5GB of memory may not seem a lot when comparing against other 20GB+ players but do you really need such a massive amout of memory ? Using WMA files doubles the amout of songs which can be stored to over 800 but if you want to stick to MP3 format then you will still get around 400 tracks on this baby which (unless you're planning to spend a long time away from your PC) gives you the equivilant of around 33 full albums.

Buy it and try it ... you'll be more than impressed.

(2 out of 5)

Rio Nitrus, huh?

I bought this MP3 Player a while ago as I wanted something to listen to, with enough space to hold a decent selection of songs.

Firstly, 1.5gb is a reasonable size. This size is nothing special, but I got this to hold around 300-350 songs; ripped from CD. I probably would have liked more, but at the time more would have cost me a more than I had. Maybe it was the headphones, but the sound quality from the Nitrus was average from other MP3 players I've heard. Sure, I wasn't expecting a full surround-sound stereo, but a more sharper, cleaner sound would have been nice.

This player does not act as a hard drive! No dragging and dropping in Explorer. I didn't like this, but the initial set up to get this working was not too bad, but dragging and dropping would have been far better. Transfer rates seemed to be ok. The layout of the MP3 player is good; it's compact, easily to control, looks nice. The screen, which has a blue backlight, is very nice, with sharp lettering.

So, why is this so bad? Well... three months into having this player I had some trouble with the firmware, which I was not expecting, but I updated this and it seemed to work fine. Soon after I had trouble writing tracks to the player; it had slowed down, some songs were timing out. After another 2 months of use the Rio had magically wiped itself of all the tracks. I went into its software and there was no tracks but the space was used up... I formatted the player and, ever since, I have no been able to write tracks without it timing out or coming up with "Rio command failed". Never have I neglected the MP3 Player; I have never dropped it, left it near a radiator, left it in my fridge, I've never done anything wrong with it, so this is wrong for it to happen. I have not been able to resolve these problems and I am very dissapointed with this buy.

Not recommended!

(4 out of 5)

Superb size & Features

This is by far the greatest piece of personal audio kit i have ever purchased. Finally a decent amount of storage on a tiny device. Its not like lugging an archos about, and it even makes the ipod look big.

The sound quality is great although you may need to adjust the equiliser to your taste, as i had to. Battery life is alot better than i have been used to, i get around 14-15 hours on a charge.

You use the software provided for your pc to arrange playlists, so you can simply choose the playlist you wish to listen to when ur out and about. Its much easier then setting them up on the move.

I also like the fact you cant delete songs or alter them in any way on the device itself, without using the pc. Saves little fingers deleting songs etc.