Rio Volt MP3 CD Player

But in general, the sound is very good quality, bass is excellent, the headphones are surprisingly good for "Supplied with goods" standards, the OSD is extremely simple to operate, firmware upgrades are easy to perform. Magic.
Buy it from Amazon because you're likely to surrender a significant amount more money on the high street.

For a start, it has a 15 hour battery life. Really! Because it plays MP3s, which are much smaller in size than CD tracks, it can load about 3 minutes of music into memory and stop spinning the CD. So it saves vast amounts of battery power, and runs for hours on end on the same batteries. I use it at least twice every day on my journeys to and from work, and one set of batteries last more than two weeks.

I have my whole CD collection on MP3 now, and each of my MP3 CDs has about 200 tracks on each, with up to 20 hours of music. It reads both CD-Rs and CD-RWs for maximum flexibility.

The Remote Control is limited compared to the snazzy ones you see on other players, but who cares? It's functional, and with the latest firmware upgrade, the Equalizer button can be configured to perform any of the tasks that the fascia buttons do.

The shock mechanism isn't great on 10 second ESP, and a brisk walk with it in my pocket causes it to skip occasionally. But with the 40 second ESP, you'd have to be in a John Woo action sequence to get it to skip.

Sound quality? Superb. The preset equalizer settings allow you to listen in whatever mood you desire, and if you don't like any of them, you can set your own (with the upgrade). I have my MP3 files recorded in VBR, and unless you're a hardcore audiophile, you won't be able to tell the difference between this and CD quality.

I have to stress that you need to get the latest firmware upgrade though. Not only did it iron out any niggles that I had when I first got it, but it allows support for Winamp playlists, which is invaluable.

If there are any criticisms, I would have to say don't buy this if you want to use it as a recording source, as if you connect the Line Out to an amplifier the sound is very low in volume and you have to turn up the amp. But for personal listening, it can go loud enough to annoy the hell out of your fellow commuters. Trust me. I know.

For personal use, it is an amazing little gadget and I would be lost without it. It is a superb piece of kit and I would readily recommend it. Bottom line: Got a CD writer? Like music? Get a RioVolt.

1) Downloaded the firmware upgrade straight away .

2)Headphones are ok . Remote isn't too shabby.

3)Used WMA format - it uses half the space of MP3 and sounds better.

4) 317 songs on one CD . I could have put 80MB more on the disk too.

5)Instructions aren't great but you can figure it out with the extra details on the cd.

6)Overall - it's a top player.