Rather sexy isn't it? Very nice styling. Most MP3
players look like little plastic bricks. The styling shouldn't matter to a manly
minimalist type o guy like me. But I think it's almost cute. :)
Opening the box, you'll find the player, along with some
fairly comfortable earbud earphones, a belt clip soft-sided case, manual,
Rioport software CD, USB adaptor, 1-AA battery and warranty card. I was somewhat
disappointed at first at the lack of a rechargeable battery setup, but after
experiencing 9-1/2 hours of playback off of one Duracell, I would have to say
that battery life certainly isn't going to be a concern. It's incredibly light
as well, with only 1 battery to weigh it down. The on/off switch is located on
the top of the unit, while the rest of the controls for the player are arrayed
along the front face. The top three buttons, from left to right, are MENU, "-",
and "+" , with the latter two used for adjusting audio volume. The circular
control that dominates the lower left, is your playback control, with the center
button allowing you to cycle through song-name, playtime, and ID3 tag
information. The forward and back buttons can be tapped to advance to the next
song, or held down for a rapid forward or backwards scan of the song.
The MENU button, in conjunction with the arrow buttons
and the center button, are how you navigate the player's extensive menu's. You
can choose various EQ presets, or customize the EQ with your own profile, with
bass and treble sliders. You can generate playlists, choose playback modes,
enable or disable power settings, backlight settings (I really LIKE the bright
blue backlight), and other features.
With the back removed, you can see where the battery
resides, and where the back-plate connects to the player. It's unfortunate, but
the Rio PMP600 doesn't use standard Compact Flash or SmartMedia memory for
upgrades, rather relying on their proprietary backplates for memory upgrades. It
probably wouldn't be as much of an issue, if the player had came with more than
32megs of RAM. Rio's backplates will be available in larger sizes, but currently
I've only been able to find the 32meg version. At $99 list, it's almost twice as
much as Compact Flash memory, at least at their suggested list price.
Next page: Transferring songs
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