All round brilliant mp3, i'm trying to buy another but i cant find any brand new ones :( i may have to settle for one of the newer Rio mp3 products but they are sure to be great.

When I first got this it was amazing. I loaded up most of my CD collection and had many months of listening pleasure. I then subscribed to Napster to Go and loaded the firmware upgrade - after this everything unravelled. Periodically the little hard drive gets fragmented which means a reformat, but many times it doesn't really sort itself out, with the firmware not installing or the pc not recognising it. Lately I have used it for drm-free mp3 and podcasts, which is fine, but it won't play well with Napster. It is a real pity as Napster is the way forward for me (unlimited music for £15 per month).
I have bought a Creative Zen V plus which is great, but I still have a soft spot for the Rio - so nearly an iPod killer! I will carry on using it for my permanent collection of music until it croaks.

I'm surprised at the other reviews: my Rio Carbon has been performing for over a year now, with no complaint. True, I only use it in public transport for listening to podcasts, but that makes it much better value for money than the extortionate iPod.
Small and light, it fits in a jacket or shirt pocket. Easy to use, great Music manager software. A happy user! Note that the same USB cable is used to transfer music and charge the battery (the power adapter has a standard USB socket), which I found very clever: why can't mobile phone manufacturers use the same idea???
It's only because I haven't compared with other brands that I'm not giving better ratings.

The Rio Carbon 5GB was my first MP3 player, and I loved it...

It was all gravy until after 3 to 4 months when the volume control dial broke for no apparent reason! This rendered the player pretty useless for portable use (I have Sony ex71's that have no in-line volume control), so I had to get it repaired. Luckily it does come with a one year warranty, but it was still a pain in the butt to get sorted, and I wouldn't be surprised if it broke again!

I think durability should be a key consideration when splashing out over £100 on something you're going to use a lot. From what I can ascertain, Rio are somewhat renowned for their lack of quality, but of course I thought it wouldn't happen to me.

Still, I must say, apart from that major fault it is an awesome device, and it also seems that a lot of MP3 players have serious durability issues. My sister's Zen Micro broke after less than 5 months, and I have heard of many people having trouble with iPod's as well.

For the past few years, Apple has worked ferociously on its iPod range, bringing out more models than you can shake a stick at. This has left them with a near monopoly on the MP3 player market, aided in no small part by their iTunes website, which is often lauded as the best music download site on the net, only being compatible with the aforementioned iPod. I am sure that many people have bought an iPod on the strength of this alone.
But the truth is, that there are more and more websites coming on to the market that will allow the use of more and more brands of MP3 player. This in itself, should be enough to threaten the position of Apple in this market, were it not for the fact that the iPod has become more a fashion accessory than a music machine.
This is a difficult situation for any manufacturer to combat, so a new machine needs to be not only as good as the iPod, but better.
Rio Audio has come up with the Carbon model. And I bought one.
When I went to look for an MP3 player, I had three priorities in mind.

Firstly it had to have a decent storage capacity.
The Rio Carbon has a 5GB hard drive, which is capable of accepting in the region of 2500 songs compressed via WMA (or about 1250 at MP3). This sounds a lot, and in reality it is a lot, but don't go expecting to get that many on the hard drive. In fact, what most of the literature on these machines seems to include in flea-sized print, is that these capacity figures are for songs of approximately 4 minutes in length at 128kbps. You can increase the number by having shorter songs, or using a faster recording speed. So if you particularly like classical symphonies, don't expect to be able to get thousands of them on any player.
So far, I have downloaded 205 songs onto the Carbon, and have used 796MB of drive space, so these figures do tend to work out.

Secondly, it had to be easy to carry.
One of the main things that put me off the iPod was the size and shape. Admittedly it hardly compares to the bulk of the old Sony Walkmans of 20 years ago, but you still couldn't put it in your jeans' pocket and sit comfortably on the bus for long periods.
I looked at some players which were barely bigger than a pen top, and almost bought one of them, but mostly they failed on my first criteria. The few that didn't seem so small that it would be too easy to drop them and not notice.
That left about three real contenders, the nicest of which, by far, was the Rio Carbon.
Its size is about 3 inches 'square', and about half and inch deep, which is big enough to notice when you put it in the palm of your hand, but small enough to put in just about any pocket without causing problems. And I say 'square' as an example only. The machine is actually tapered on all sides, which gives it an elegant and sophisticated appearance, something that is woefully lacking in all the other players on the market at the moment.

Finally, my other criteria for buying an MP3 player was ease of use.
On this score, most of the players in the shops seem very much the same when it comes to ease of download. All seem to use USB 2.0 connectivity, which gives a really good transfer speed, and the Carbon even allows you to charge the batteries via a USB port.
The Rio Carbon comes with the added bonus of having its own music manager software, which is absolutely excellent, and so simple to use that even a dullard like me can master it within a few goes. And, of course, the Rio Carbon also accepts downloads via Windows Media Player, although I haven't needed to use this facility, so good is the music manager. The other main reason for using this facility is the synchronisation aspect which allows you to choose all, or some of your music collection to download from you computer, and recognises whether you already have the song on the player, preventing duplication.
As for the player itself, the buttons are kept to a minimum by multitasking them with the Menu facility. The volume control is a small wheel along the top edge of the machine, which also doubles as a scroll wheel when in menu mode.
In menu mode, the player allows you to choose what tracks you play based upon artist, album, genre and playlists. Of course, you can also choose to just play all the songs, and it even allows you to randomise this if you so wish.
The Carbon's menu also allows you to change the graphic equaliser for a better sound should you want to, with presets and an equaliser-off setting to help. Not that anyone other than the serious music aficionado would complain at the sound that comes from the machine in the first place, which is comparable to most small music players.
On top of all this, there are options for Bookmarks, and voice memo etc... that the real technophiles will find very amusing.

Other things you might want to know about the Carbon are:-

It is Windows and Mac compatible. I use Windows myself, and had absolutely no problem installing the software on my computer.

The battery is internal, which could be a problem if you go on extra long journeys, but with a play-life of around 20 hours, it should be sufficient for a plane flight to Hong Kong, let alone a commute into work in the morning.

The charger for the machine comes in the box, and is a little different from the norm. It actually comes as two parts. There is the main charger body, and the prongs to turn it into a plug. And there are three sets of these prongs supplied (UK, Europe, US), which I thought was a very thoughtful touch by Rio, considering this is a machine which is made for travel.

You also get a USB-FireWire cable, which is used for downloading and charging, and a pouch to put the machine in, to prevent knocks and scratches.

PROBLEMS
There are two main gripes that I have found with the machine.
Firstly, the pouch mentioned above is hopeless. I would much prefer to have a proper carry case for my player, and I am in the process of looking for one.

Secondly, as appears the trend nowadays, there are no written instructions in the box. The supplied software CD does have a very comprehensive and easy to understand manual in PDF format, that you can print out, but would it be asking too much of manufacturers of this type of goods to include at least the basics of how to get started in a paper document.

VERDICT
The Rio Carbon 5GB music player is a versatile, easy to use machine, which mixes good looks with functionality. At around £120 it fits nicely in its own niche, with very few direct contenders at the moment.
With the right sort of publicity and recommendation, this machine could very easily make in-roads into the Apple monopoly.

When looking for an MP3 player I went on Ebay and was surprised at how many 'refurbished' or 'reconditioned' Rio Carbons there were. I then went on Amazon and bought a new one, which was fine for 23 days until the volume control knob fell off. Two friends have since told me that exactly the same thing happened to people they knew who had Rio Carbons - wish they'd mentioned it before...
I'm waiting for a new one to arrive, no doubt my old one will appear one day on Ebay.

First MP3 player that I've owned and a great introduction. Really easy to set up and get working, was out and about with it the next day. Came with Rio Music Manager which is the best music software I've used, and also with 10 free downloads at Napster, again this was simple to set up. Loading music is quick and easy. 5GB of space (2500 tracks) give plenty of space yet is brilliant to navigate. Also includes voice recorder. 20 Hours of battery time and recharging is not too lengthy a process.
Now I have compared it with other makes I am still confident, it is the smallest 5GB player I've seen and has a considerably better sound quality than most. I would not switch it for the world.