The Rio 300 I got was bundled with two small earphones.
I wouldn't call these headphones because there is no band
that connects the two earphones. At first glance, they
look like they have a quality comparable to what you
might expect to have bundled with a $25 portable AM/FM
radio. (I never used them -- immediately swapped them
out for a higher quality ($70) set of head phones.) My
impression is that the unit sounds great.
I'm a little surprised that the only improvement in one
year has been to add USB support and a larger memory
chip. The 300's parallel port downloads music pretty
quickly, although there is a perceptible delay per song.
And 32 MB holds several songs at CD quality, although
you can never have too much memory. Therefore, some
new customers may choose to get a substantially discounted
300 rather than a 500 (while supplies last).
I'd like to see more on the software front, e.g. support
for Linux and NT. It would be nice to have a "lock"
button that holds the current settings in place, because
the Rio's buttons are easy to press and they sometimes
get pressed accidently. Plus, the AAA battery lasts a
long time, but it would be nice to have a re-charging
docking station option, like cellphones. Even better
if the docking station can fit in a car (where the car
radio usually goes) and play music over the car's
speakers. I don't think that an integrated voice
recorder or integrated AM/FM radio are as important
features. After all, if you want to listen to AM/FM
music, wouldn't you buy a $25 AM/FM player instead of
a $150 Rio? However, I would guess that AM/FM and
voice recording features will eventually become a
standard with these devices if only because they
are relatively cheap enhancements to the devce and
competitors will probably have these features. |
