Diamond Rio Portable MP3 Player Review

A little history on Rio

Thresh's comments in BLACK

Kenn's comments in BLUE

Thresh:
In early October of this year, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) filed suit against Diamond Multimedia, contending that "the Rio violates the Audio Home Recording act (AHRA) of 1992 which imposes technology restrictions on certain types of consumer audio recording devices." The future looked dim for the Rio. But recently, in a great turn of events, the judge recently ruled in favor of Diamond Multimedia, stating, "The Rio has no digital audio output capability, and therefore is incapable of passing on digital musical files to other Rio devices, or to other manufacturers' devices."

What this means is that the Rio, unlike other MP3 players such as Saehan Information System's MPMan (we may get into this in a future article), cannot be used as a data transferring device - Once the music goes into the Rio, it can't come out. It cannot be transferred onto another Rio or computer, not even your own, and thus, is not a device governed by the AHRA.

The Rio began shipping on November 23rd, and should be on store shelves already. Now, on to our review…

Spec Sheet

Thresh:
A good place to start is what this puppy comes with, which is after all what we really care about. Listed below is the spec sheet for the Rio PMP300:

Size

3 1/2" x 2 1/2" x 5/8"
Weight
70 grams (2.4 ounces)
Onboard Memory
32MB Flash Memory
Upgradable
Battery
Single 1.5V AA Alkaline battery
Slots
1 Battery Slot
1 Flash memory slot
Parallel Port Transfer Rate
Approx. 10 sec. per 1 MB of music
< 6 Min. to fill a 32MB flash card
Distortion Rate
0.01 - 0.1%
Signal-To-Noise Ratio
95dB
Connectors
Headphone connector
Parallel cable connector
Accessories
Headphones
15-pin Cable
Parallel Port Adapter
Minimum System Configuration
Microsoft Windows 95/98
Pentium PC 90 MHz or compatible CPU
16MB RAM or higher
256 color or higher VGA graphics

Thresh:
That's the basic rundown of what you get in the box, which is the same info you'll find on the official Rio site. Now here's our personal thoughts on what we saw after having "tested" and used the Rio.