Rio Cali 256 MB Sport MP3 Player

 (250 customer reviews)

I was looking for a flash mp3 player to use while exercising and mowing the lawn -- and, of course, to have another neat little gadget. I have been shopping around for about a year and came across the new line of Rios that came out this past fall. The Cali looked like it fit the ticket and it seemed to get favorable reviews almost everywhere I looked. So, I started to pack away some cash in my piggy bank to get one. I'm glad I did.Here's what I like about it. First, it's a flash player so it won't skip. Sure, 128MB (or 256MB) will not hold nearly as much music as an x-GB hard drive-based player, but who needs to carry their whole music collection around on their hip? With 128MB I can carry 4 hours of WMA files around with me in a smaller, lighter and less expensive package. This is plenty of room to accompany me on a riding mower or a long car or plane trip. Second, as I mentioned, the Cali is sleek and light. The controls are easily accessible and intuitive. The joystick is a...Read more

Looked all over for a mp3 player to replace my mpio-dmk which gave out after a year. I use mine almost exlusively for working out, especially jogging. I know of almost no one who uses armbands, clipping the player to a waistband works much better, and looks less goofy. Even though mp3 players have been out for years now the clips and attachments are still often made as an afterthought, and rarely well documented on the internet, or in the cases at the store. A case in point is the RCA Lyra rd1080, which I returned for the cali. Buying the cali was still an act of faith since there were no pictures of the "sports armband" that came with it. Anyhow, I've only had it for a few days but here is what I like about it:1. It comes with a "holster" with a metal clip that attaches tightly to the player without covering any controls except the usb attachment. Perfect for jogging, it is lightweight, and the joystick works well enough for advancing tunes while on the move...Read more

I've used this Rio Cali 256 for a few months now, and it plays awesome! I added a 512MB SD card and can fit 13 hours of MP3 music and play it all on 1 battery! The Music Manager application is good for categorizing and transfers, but I used another application to rip my CD collection. You have to use the Rio Taxi if you want to transfer data files, it does not show up in Windows explorer as a drive letter. Taxi is a very tempermental application. When trying to transfer large files (over 8MB) via drag and drop it crashes. It seems to work when right-clicking the large file and choosing Save Item As, then picking the folder where you want to copy it to. Really large files (over 100MB) don't seem to copy at all; the application times out. Can't understand how I copied a 165MB file to the Rio but now can't copy it off the Rio? Copying files to the Rio gave me no problem, just transferring files back to the PC. Copy and Paste doesn't work at all. Since I use this 99% of the time for...Read more