Remanufactured Rio Carbon 5GB MP3 Player

First off - this is a great MP3 player from the company that could be responsible for the affordable portable mp3 player market. The Carbon stores a lot of music and data and sounds great. A _huge_ bonus to this mp3 player is that it is a 5GB harddrive. You can literally take this mp3 player and plug it into the usb port of any computer and all of a sudden you have a portable 5GB diskdrive at your disposal to transport data. Yes, that's right, you can listen to all your music as well as store data on it (I do it all the time.)

An even better thing about this mp3 player is the drag and drop feature. You don't need any music software like iTunes, Rio Music Manager, etc to put music on this great player. All you need to do (if you don't like messing with music software) is plug your Carbon into the USB port and start dragging music onto the player as if you were moving files from one disk to another - it's that simple. Once you're done and unplug the Carbon from the...Read more

I purchased a NEW Rio Carbon and from the beginning the controls are extremely sensitive. Just brushing against a button will cause a playback to restart or skip. I have to hold it out in front of me by the edges to be sure I can get through a book without having to refind where I was. Got it to use while walking but I can not put in in a carrying bag but have to carefully hold it. Very frustrating.
Also the power button is held in place by a thin narrow piece of plastic that flexes each time the Rio is turned on or off. Shortly after the warrenty period was done the plastic broke from repetitive use. Rio will not repair it, but offered to exchange it for a considerable cost. I now use pen or pencil tip to turn it on and off.
When it works it is OK but I would not buy another Rio unless the controls were protected from accidental use and there was better quality design and materials.

Hi,

I have had a Rio Carbon for 6 months. Its a great little player - it has everything you need, great user interface, and just works perfectly.

Unfortunately, I dropped it, and the volume dial broke off and pushed inside the device. Considering the volume knob is on one corner, there is a 25% chance that if you drop the device, it will render it useless by breaking off the volume dial. The volume dial is not very robust, and is the only sensitive part on a device which is otherwise very robust.

The Rio has a rubber strip around 60% of its exterior - all other times I had dropped it, it landed on the rubber strip, with absolutely no damage.

I now have an expensive paperweight, I can't really do a lot with it, as theres no way to change the volume without the volume knob.

A firmware upgrade to allow you to change the volume from the menu system would fix this problem.

In the mean time, I will have to...Read more