Rio PMP 600 review

Diamond Multimedia's Rio was the first portable MP3 player to grace the Buyer Labs - and we liked it.

Since then a welter of the things have been launched onto a bemused public.

In case you missed it, MP3 is simply a means of squashing digitised music down small enough to be distributed over the Net - or stored on teeny memory modules. Last month, however, we looked at Creative Labs' DAP jukebox, which can store thousands of tunes on a portable hard disk. On the downside (and unlike players that use memory modules as storage), it has moving parts - parts which drain more battery power, and get jogged about.

The Rio 600 is Diamond's third MP3 player, and arguably its best-looking. It even comes swaddled in a Neoprene membrane, which may be to your taste, but is easy to tug off if not.

But its beauty is more than skin deep. Sound quality is fine, bordering on excellent, and you can save tunes at different quality settings, enabling you to squeeze more than the half an hour's worth you'd usually fit into 32Mb of memory. And, though I've been banging on about MP3, Diamond has also wholeheartedly embraced Microsoft's alternative, the Windows Media (WMA) file format. The software 'ripper' you use to convert your audio CD files to play on your Rio 600 produces WMA files, and all the tracks you can download from the Rioport website (www.rioport.com) are in that format too. So the Rio 600 isn't exactly an MP3 player at all.

Diamond also says you'll be able to flash-upgrade to other 'emerging' formats. Using the WMA file format, the Rio stores almost double the tunes in its 32Mb as it can using MP3. It's also upgradable with little 'backpacks' of memory. You may eventually be able to add 500Mb!

Connecting the Rio to your PC is simple enough, as it uses USB. This also means downloading to your Rio is pretty fast - a matter of seconds for a two-minute track. The ripping and playlist software is simple and, although established MP3 users may rebel against the use of Microsoft's WMA file format initially, it soon starts to make sense.

The unit's upgradability, as well as its customisable graphic equaliser, make this the most intelligent portable we've seen. It may even justify its fairly hefty price tag.

Author: Paul Hales