A lot of fuss is made about the iPod when there are other machines about that are as able to deliver, and cost somewhat less. The Rio Karma is small in size and large in capacity. The clincher is that it has far better battery life.
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The Rio is 8x7.5x2.5cm maximum dimensions and it weights less than 200grams. The unit has a 3x4cm screen (16 shades of grey) this gives a total of six lines of information and should track details be to long they scroll.
This is a USB2 unit that works fine with earlier versions of USB and it also has an Ethernet port for those on networks. A set of Sennheiser ear buds give a nice all round sound quality, you can plug speakers into the headphone socket but there are also line out sockets on the back of the docking cradle that is supplied along with all the required cables.
A version of Rio Music Player is provided to allow transfer of files, this is the same software that was with the Rio Nitrus (entertainment 9/2/04) but it worked slightly differently for me. The Nitrus allowed ripping of files in either .WMA or .MP3 while for some reason the Karma will only rip .WMA directly. MP3 can be ripped by a third party product such as Real Player or Music Match and then dropped onto the Karma. I have had elongated conversations with Rio technical support but despite their claims that it now supports .MP3 correctly and two 34MB software upgrades (glad I have broadband) it still tells me I need an upgrade.
I installed 822 tracks onto the Karma and these took just over 70 hours to play, the claimed 16 hours battery life was never quite met although I got 14.5 hours quite easily. A total of five charges produced the power for the 70 hours to play the 822 tracks. Should you forget to charge the unit I found that just over an hour in the docking cradle produced enough charge for a normal working day.
Quality was fine and certainly better than some other .MP3 players I have used. The capacity of this unit is 20GB notional but 18.5GB formatted. The 822 tracks I copied to the unit took only 3.6GB of space so there is still 14.9GB available. The tracks I ripped were a mixture of .WMA and .MP3.
The unit is easily able to fit in a jacket or bag and a small drawstring bag is provided to keep it. The controls are easy to follow, but should you be unsure there is a tutorial on the CD-ROM. If someone gave me a choice of an iPod or a Rio Karma I would certainly choose the latter. The stated UK price is £279.99 and Amazon.co.uk are selling it at that price.
Link : http://www.digitalnetworksna.com/shop/_templates/item_main_Rio.asp?model=220&cat=53
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