Page 1 of Rio or Creative?

I think (!) I`ve finally narrowed my choice down to two MP3 players. I`ve been looking at the Rio Carbon 5gb, & also the Creative Zen Micro 5gb (5gb is more than enough for me).

Both players get similar reviews, but I`m not too sure which one to go for. I realise that the Rio has no Fm tuner, (that doesn`t bother me as I never listen to the radio), but it has a supposed 20 hour battery life, as opposed the the Zen`s 12 hour.

Has anyone on here got/used these players, & if so, could they share their findings?

Cheers.



"Stan is my best friend at church"

The other half has the Zen Micro, first one we had was faulty (radio didn`t work, buzzing sound from headphones), it was from the first batch mind (with the extra battery), eventually got a replacement after a lot of running around (F$**ing dabs) from savastore and have been impressed so far. We (I say we as I put the music on for her) use windows media player to synch the device, though the device does occasionally lock-up when synching (not very often), and creative seems to have quite good support on the whole. Only thing I`d say is take the sensitivity of the touchpad right down to make things easier to use.

Thanks, Roar.

I still haven`t made up my mind, but thanks for the information...much appreciated! :)



"Stan is my best friend at church"

This item was edited on Wednesday, 9th March 2005, 23:30

Hi just got the Creative Zen Touch 20GB - fantastic little player. At the moment I`ve got 970 songs downloaded onto it and I`ve stil 15GB left!

Advice is (if running XP) not to load the Creative software but use windows media player - and if you have a USB 2.0 it takes seconds to synch a track over to the player.

Amazon have them around the £150. mark.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0002TSU2O/qid=1110417045/sr=8-1/ref=pd_ka_0/202-8362021-6421464?tag=myrev09-21

Badboybez

In Madness You Dwell

This item was edited on Thursday, 10th March 2005, 01:13

Hi, Just to say I have the Rio Karma. It wsa when Dixons were doing them for £119.99. This is 20 Gig. I use MP3 pro & I bet very few if any would notice the difference. However it is a great sounding player. (Note it`s not Panasonic or RAM). However my choice would be the `i River` as it also has line in.

Totally agree with Paull.

I got the Karma at dixons for the same price and have done a head to head with my cousins 20gig Ipod and the Karma wins out on all fields.

Its one of the only players with gapless playback (a must for mix albums) it has excellent on the fly playlist generation, it uses advanced ID3 tagging so you can order the tunes any way you want them, it has an advanced EQ system, with stereo seperation and gain features and the icing on the cake is a 15 hour play time.

I know I sound like a salesman but the Rio beats the Ipod in every department, especially sound quality. Its only problem is its pug ugly.

If Rio have carried the same values over to the carbon i would suggest it will be an excellent player. Especially since the player it seems to be replacing (the nitrus) was a damn good one too. Team it with a pair of sony fontopia headphones and you will be blown away.

I have been trying to decide between the exact same two players for the past 2 months! Though am still not sure!!!

This is what I`ve deliberated on so far:

The Rio Carbon looks stylish & it`s not that common, so you won`t see every man and his dog with one.(unlike ipods) Also I think it is possible to purchase a connectable FM tuner so you can record from the radio.(Need to confirm that though) Does anyone know what the casing is made from? From every picture I`ve seen it looks like Chrome, but I`m not sure if it has got a metal casing- if it is just shiny "metal look" plastic then that is a bit crap really.

The Creative Zen has loads of Brilliant features and would be perfect, but it does look a bit like a "poor mans ipod"- not that I mind...but still :p

Decisions, decisions (:¦

I feel like that girl in the options hot choc advert... :/

Quote:
The Creative Zen has loads of Brilliant features and would be perfect, but it does look a bit like a "poor mans ipod"-

I`d like to think it as `the wiser mans choice" - ie: I`ve saved about £100.00 :D
Badboybez

In Madness You Dwell

which of the 2 is louder? I had a philps HDD60 (which broke-got full refund from Richersound even though it was 10 months old) which was too quiet. Also got a frontierlab xe 11 using compact flash cards which was loud enough, but am thinking of higher capacity like the zen or rio.

I did read that the rio is a bit quiet. Anyone with experience of the loudness. There seems to be load of new stuff coming out all the time, even one from olympus at around £170 ish from Dixons etc, looks good but again may be a bit too quiet

Some Tech info for the Creative Zen Touch - hope this helps:

Size WxHxD : 4.12" x 2.7" x 0.866"
Weight : 7.05 oz with battery
Capacity : 20GB(1)
Battery Life : Up to 24 hour(2) battery life at 128kbps MP3 or 32 hour(2) at 48kbps MP3 of continuous playtime
Interface : USB 2.0 (backward compatible with USB 1.1)
Playback Format : MPEG Audio Layer 3 (MP3), Windows Media™ Audio (WMA) and WAV
Signal-to-Noise Ratio : up to 97dB
Channel Separation : up to 74dB
Frequency Response : 20Hz - 20kHz
Harmonic Distortion Output : less than 0.1%
Operating System/Firmware: Reprogrammable(3)
Headphone out : 1 x 1/8" stereo minijack
Display : 160 x 104 pixel resolution, blue EL backlit LCD
Creative offers a one-year limited hardware warranty.

Also you can get the manuals (PDF) for all the Creative range here:
http://uk.europe.creative.com/support/downloads/welcome.asp?type=manuals"" target="_blank">
http://uk.europe.creative.com/support/downloads/welcome.asp?type=manuals

Badboybez

In Madness You Dwell

This item was edited on Sunday, 13th March 2005, 14:45