Rio Nitrus 1.5GB MP3 Player

Firstly, 1.5gb is a reasonable size. This size is nothing special, but I got this to hold around 300-350 songs; ripped from CD. I probably would have liked more, but at the time more would have cost me a more than I had. Maybe it was the headphones, but the sound quality from the Nitrus was average from other MP3 players I've heard. Sure, I wasn't expecting a full surround-sound stereo, but a more sharper, cleaner sound would have been nice.

This player does not act as a hard drive! No dragging and dropping in Explorer. I didn't like this, but the initial set up to get this working was not too bad, but dragging and dropping would have been far better. Transfer rates seemed to be ok. The layout of the MP3 player is good; it's compact, easily to control, looks nice. The screen, which has a blue backlight, is very nice, with sharp lettering.

So, why is this so bad? Well... three months into having this player I had some trouble with the firmware, which I was not expecting, but I updated this and it seemed to work fine. Soon after I had trouble writing tracks to the player; it had slowed down, some songs were timing out. After another 2 months of use the Rio had magically wiped itself of all the tracks. I went into its software and there was no tracks but the space was used up... I formatted the player and, ever since, I have no been able to write tracks without it timing out or coming up with "Rio command failed". Never have I neglected the MP3 Player; I have never dropped it, left it near a radiator, left it in my fridge, I've never done anything wrong with it, so this is wrong for it to happen. I have not been able to resolve these problems and I am very dissapointed with this buy.

Not recommended!

Now the good stuff. The software provided for your computer is just stuningly good. I just don't think that I have ever used a simpler program for shifting songs around and uploading or downloading. If anyone has ever used Sony's program for use with their NET Walkman, then they would cry with joy if they could use something as good as the Nitrus' software. All manufacturers should take a long hard look at this excercise in simplicity. It just does what you need very easily.

The size of the Nitrus is seriously small. It's ideal for taking out and about as it weighs less than nothing and is miniscule. I stick mine in a shirt pocket and it's just not noticible.

The sound quality is brilliant for such a small machine. It's much better than a NET Walkman in compression mode.

If you load on songs in WMA low compression you can get around 500 songs on. In MP3 you can get around 370, but to be honest it sounds just as good using WMA's.

And without a doubt it has an amazing battery life. Easily it'll go 16 hours from a full charge.

Overall, it's a reasonable buy for the money. It plays music well, has brilliant software for song managment, and is tiny. On the minus side, it's not a completely polished article. There is a definate feeling of fragility and it is a tad "cheap" to look at. In the end however it just simply plays music well and is small. That's pretty much what commuters, joggers, dog walkers and people stuck on aeroplanes want.