Rio S50 128 MB MP3 Player

• 128 MB of built-in memory holds up to 4 hours of your favorite music
• Upgradeable memory can be increased to 256 MB simply by adding a standard MMC memory card
• Supports MP3 and Windows Media (WMA), letting you scale the quality and playing time
• Integrated FM radio tuner, clock, and stopwatch
• Up to 35-hour battery life on 1 AA alkaline battery (or up to 20 hours with the included rechargeable battery)

I was looking and looking for a new Mp3 player, something not overly expensive like the Ipod but something with at least 128mb on board memory and upgradeable. Now with it being on sale here on Amazon.com its prolly the only Mp3 player id recommend to buy. The sound quality was supreme i really wasnt expecting much but i was surprised by how nice it sounded. Prolly the easiest software ive used. all you do is pop in your cd, install, plug the player into the usb and the transfer is clean quick and best of all easy. I didnt even know this thing had an FM tuner with it when i bought it. I came acrossed it browsing the easy to use menu. It also had an equilizer and i thought that was pretty cool as well.

Pros.

It very light weight.

128 Mb on board and upgradable another 128MB with smart media cards.

Had an FM tuner

Great sound

Cons.

the only thing i could think of mention would be the packaging. But we all know how the manufactures love to seal things up so its almost impossible to open. But nothing a utility knife couldnt handle.

Performance of transfer will vary depending on your PC for me it only took like a minute to load 128mb worth of MP3, i also have 1 gig of ram and a fairly decent processor so dont be quick to judge because of other peoples computer problems.

also. the FM tuner isnt that bad, but i live in teh city. I really was expecting the FM to be nothin but static from reading these reviews, but to my pleasant suprise all 5 of my favorite stations came in clear and good nough to listen to.

definately a 5 star product and worth the buy.

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I just got it and it already had the latest firmware (1.60)loaded. Software is easy to use and sounds great. After reading some of the reviews I was concerned about the radio reception but I bought it anyway because of it's size and because you can use 256MB SD cards. It picked up 5 of the 6 radio stations I listen to most often. Good enough for me since the tuner is just a plus, this is an MP3 player after all. I considered the Nomad IIc and the iRiver but I like the size and expandability of the RIO. Cost a little more but worth it.

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Got it about a month ago. Added a 256MB memory card. A cheaper choice for Mac. I use it everyday, including while working out...fairly satisfied.

Pros

1.Battery life

2.Light weight.

3.Easy to use.

4.Works with Mac (better price than iPod) and PC

5.Expandable

6. Very good audio quality.

Cons

1.iTunes always crash when I try to add a big group of songs. It also takes a while when you want to erase a song.

2.Every time I add a song the entire list is updated. And the process is slow.

3. I though that I would be able to search my playlist (rock, hip hop, classic, etc) on my mp3 but only gives me 2 choices. Play from a certain song or the entire list. Kind of a nightmare when you have more than 80 songs in it.

4. Cannot organize songs order after I added to the device. Even from the list that appears on the software.

5. Buttons have a slow response.

6. Radio reception kept really bad even after upgrade.

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Pros:

Integration with iTunes (Mac), Design and Build Quality, Belt Holster, Battery Performance

Cons:

poor radio reception, no audible.com support, no Apple Music Store (AAC) support

Details:

I have the Rio s50 (same product as the s35s, just different plastics and rechargable AA instead of the AAA)

I borrowed an iPod for month and fell in love with it but couldn't justify the expense, didn't like the scratch-sensitive case, would have to upgrade my Mac to get Firewire, and was a little leery of long-term reliability (hard drive and sealed battery).

Here's why the S10 is a great mp3 player...

MP3 audio quality is excellent to my untrained ear

Really small and solid, fits great in the hand

Front panel controls feel solid and give good tactile feedback

Excellent s50 padded belt holster includes a nice spring clip, protection for all 6 sides, and allows full control of unit (even recharging)...I haven't seen the s35s holster

iTunes is wonderful...lots of features for organizing music and the smart playlist feature chooses a random 128mb set of songs from my collection so I never need to decide what I'm going to transfer. Implemented using an iTunes "plugin" so I should be able to maintain compatibility with future releases of iTunes.

AA batteries are cheap and easy to find...in case I need to swap out the included NiHi AA cell on the road.

Software upgradable via iTunes

Some drawbacks:

iTunes integration is great but not perfect...you have to launch iTunes after connecing the Rio and if you try to drag too many songs on the Rio I got a series of errors and had to relaunch both Rio and iTunes.

Backlighting is a little dimmer than I expected but quite usable

Radio reception isn't great (most stations have a noticable hiss, even here in Silicon Valley)...just good enough to be useful but if this is going to irritate you get the cheaper S10 instead and live without it.

You probably want to get better headphones, the included set feels nice but my $25 Koss' sound a whole lot better.

128mb capactity is still not much space if you have a lot of medium bitrate MP3s and SD memory is a little more expensive than SmartMedia and CF (but seems to be the emerging standard). If you need to store >2hrs of songs, add an SD card (note: depending on market conditions, the S10 may offer a better price/capacity ratio...if it weren't for the Best Buy sale I would've bought an S10 with a 256mb SD card and given up the rechargable battery and radio/clock/stopwatch features)

Although earlier Rio players supported Audible.com content this model doesn't appear to handle this file format (dragging audible files from iTunes to the Rio is ignored)

Don't plan on using a standard USB cord, this unit uses a proprietary cord (since this unit doesn't mount as a USB drive this isn't a big deal for me since I'm only connecting to my iTunes machine anyway)