Me: I live in Silicon Valley with my wife, child and cat. I have worked at Microsoft since I graduated from College, both in the Macintosh Business Unit on products such as Outlook Express, Entourage, IE, and Virtual PC and in Windows Live on Hotmail, Calendar and People. I am currently a Principal Lead Program Manager on the Windows Live Social Networking team. I basically manage a team of Program Managers responsible for delivering features to support our web and client applications. I've been blogging since 2001 and like to play around with .NET in my spare time working on projects such as dasBlog (the blog that powers this site) and Send to SmugMug (an application for uploading photos to SmugMug). I blog about a number of technology and productivity related topics.
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© Copyright 2010, Omar Shahine
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The Rio Carbon was a device I didn't want to like. My main reason for not considering it was that it's only 5GB and I was looking for an iPod replacement. However, as I've used this device it's really grown on me. I was able to transcoded all my WMA lossless audio down to 11 GB so I can get almost half my audio on this device. Not bad.
Make sure you read my post iPod Replacement Criteria before reading this review. Remember, I have only one goal, to review this compared to an iPod. I don't care about anything the device offers that does not meet my core criteria.
Lets see how it stacks up.
Other Reviews:
Size: The size is much smaller than the iPod and even comparable to the mini
So, as you can see it stacks up very nicely.
User Interface: The device has a very usable user interface. After a sync is complete, the device builds a catalog of music (it only does this when content has changed on the device, so power on does not go through this process, much smarter than the iRiver folks). The device allows you to browse using all the usual suspects, artist, genre, album, album year (cool), new music, spoken word etc. One minor annoyance is that you cannot get back to the selection you were in after playing a song, the device always throws you back in "Play Music".
Beyond that you can control the settings on the device, and a variety of other functions like lock, etc. The keys are easy to use and the screen is very readable. Overall, Rio did an excellent job for an OEM designed user interface.
Connectivity: The Rio Carbon was designed properly from a Connectivity standpoint. It has a single USB 2.0 port that supports charging and synching. When you plug the device into Windows it detects it as a removable drive allowing Windows Media Player 10 to AutoSync with it. Beautiful. My sync experience was nothing short of perfect.
Charging: The Rio folks get bonus points for shipping a Wall Mount to USB charging device. This essentially means that you take the supplied USB cable, plug the computer end of it into the wall outlet plug, and plug the mini connection into the Carbon. Not all OEMs are this smart, and they end up shipping an additional brick to charge the device. The beauty of this method is you only need a single cable for the device, and if you have multiple devices that charge over USB (like I do) then you can just use a single wall mounted plug when traveling (or use your laptop) to charge the device.
Additionally, it's great that the device charges during sync (unlike the iRiver H320).
Sync: This device only supports sync with Windows Media Player 10 via USB 2.0. The device does not support PlaysForSure (MTP) yet, but it can support sync with Windows Media Player 10 since it supports sync with any removable media mass storage device. As such, I was able to mount the device, launch WMP10 and select sync "All Music". A few minutes later it was done.
Accessories: The device comes with the following accessories:
Unfortunately, the device does not support a remote control...
Battery Life: Rio claims the device gets 20 HOURS!!! of battery life. I probably average half of that, but 10 hours kicks ass.
Software: The device comes with a CD that I didn't even need to use. Sweet.
Price: I purchased the device for $218 which is great.
Storage: 5 GB
PlaysForSure: The device supports the following PlaysForSure logos.
Rio has announced that they will support:
By the end of the year. Sweet.
Support: Rio seems to do a good job supporting this device. As soon as I received it, I downloaded and installed a firmware update that installed flawlessly w/o any proprietary software or connection required to update. This firmware also fixed a number of issues which is encouraging.
There is an annoying problem where if you use headphones that have a metal base around the connector, you will hear pops and clicks due to some kind of short circut. This doesn't happen with the included headphones (which are crap of course), but does happen with my Bose Noise Cancelling headphones. The “fix“ is to apply some scotch tape around the headphone jack. hmm.
Web Site: The Rio Carbon web site is pretty usable and doesn't promise features that the device can't deliver.
Optional Features:
I wish the device had an FM radio (so I can listen to NPR in the morning) like the Creative Zen Micro but I've started using Audible which can deliver NPR morning edition (not in time for my 7:11 am commute) for the afternoon commute home.
Final Rating (see my post on my review criteria to understand what this means).
Good - pretty good in most areas, but missing some critical requirements. Feel free to spend money.
I almost gave this device a Kick Ass rating, but since the definition of that is better than the iPod, I would have to modify it to say "better than the iPod mini". If you are looking to buy a mini, stop and don't hand your money to Apple but get the Carbon. If you are looking for a device to replace your iPod or looking for a new device I would highly recommend this device.
Not only is this device a reasonably priced high quality music player, but it's also a very inexpensive way to get a 5GB compact flash card for your digital camera .