Rio Carbon 5 GB MP3 Player

General thoughts about Music Playback:
It's great at its main purpose, playing music. The Rio Carbon is small and incredibly lightweight so carrying it in your jean pocket, jacket pocket, tight jeans' pocket, etc... is easy and comfortable. The metal back scratches a little too easily but that is something you have to expect with this kind of shiny surface. Just love the battery life for playing music (not recording! - see below). The way the music files are organized requires me to really use playlists. Otherwise, I'll often play the same album 20 times in a row. Shuffle could be a little bit more random but really can't complain. I mainly bought this device because of its potential for super multi-tasking so I'll leave the music playback comments to other reviewers.

As a Portable Hard Drive:
I've used it to replace my USB memory drives (since I either lose them or they stop working after 6 months) and it interfaces seamlessly with the computers I use...Read more

I bought the Rio Carbon after buying and canceling my order several times. One of my main concerns was that the lithium ion battery cannot be replaced, as it can be on the Creative Labs Muvo^2 4Gb player. I had considered that one for some time, but after seeing that Dell, the IPOD, and nearly every other new MP3 player has a permanent battery, I decided to take the plunge and the risk. So far, the player is very nice, with an amazing amount of storage(I cannot imagine a 30GB player....my computer is 30 gigs!). I put all the songs on my computer onto it(~720) and yet only took up half of the available space, so I don't envision me filling this up anytime soon. Sound is excellent, and battery life appears to be very good too. Other features like a recorder and stopwatch are there, but I don't think I will be using those. An FM tuner would be nice, but again, that is not necessary for me.

This is my third MP3 player. My first was a Rio 32MB in 1998(how far we've...Read more

I own both the Rio Carbon and the iPod Mini. Personally, I prefer the Carbon. I'm sure many of you out there are deciding between the Rio Carbon, the iPod Mini, and the Zen Micro. As far as I'm concerned, the offerings from Dell and Gateway aren't nearly as competitive. Here is why I bought the Rio Carbon (for myself). I got an engraved iPod Mini for my girlfriend because it was shiny and pink.

Pros
1. 20 hours of battery life (Manufacturer estimate) - way longer than Mini or Micro (Micro has removable batteries though, but you'll need 2 of those batteries to equal Carbon battery life)
2. 5gigs of memory - 1gig more than Mini, does not need partitioning for file storage like Micro
3. Drag and Drop interface - easy to load and unload than Mini or Micro
4. Does not need Drivers - transfer files to or from any computer
5. Smaller/Lighter than Mini and Micro
6. Nicer looking (unless you like the different colors)
7...Read more