Rio 600SE

I've gone through Diamond Rio 600SE Portable MP3 players like toothbrushes.

I purchased my first one from Circuit City. I thought it was cool because it had loud volume and had a few neat features including the unit itself. Then it started to dawn upon me that it wasn't that great.

#1 The Rio has a rubberized/plastic-like grip cover that easily peels off over time. When this peels off it always does so unevenly. It makes the unit look really bad. Even if you use the included case, this problem still occurs.

#2 The Rio has a Computer circuit connected to a really stupid on/off switch. It has three positions On+LOCK+ OFF.

If you are in "On" position it is easy to accidentaly slide to off. If you are in "OFF", it can easily slide to "ON". This switch is connected to the unit by a little black piece of plastic that is connected to the motherboard. SOMEHOW, this setup has the tendency to break when dropped. It can be separated fairly easily. I know you're not SUPPOSSED to drop it but we are Human and IT HAPPENS.

#3 For the $169 intro price (that is now about $100+/-)this unit should have had a rechargeable battery pack with an AC adapter included. To make matters worse, this unit COULD have used Compact Flash Memory like the other 500 series. Instead, they released it with proprietary BACKPACKS that Rio promised would be available up to 320 MB. This was 2 years ago. They are still only at 64 MB or 128. And to be even more "dirty" they made the backpacks cost even more than Compact Flash memory even though they aren't as reliable. This Unit cannot justify its price in any way.

What's even more interesting is that Sonic Blue is selling RIO 800's and RIO VOLT SP250's at almost the same price.

Makes absolutely no sense at all.

#4 The Computer in this thing is terrible. Because of the memory design, it somehow breaks easily and needs to be reflashed...OR it will keep turning off during some songs or locking up.

I bought the 600SE 64MB mp3 player as I heard dimond rio was one of the top makers of mp3 players. At first I was a bit wary because of some bad reviews on amazon but I'm glad I ignored them. This is the best thing that I've ever bought besides my ps2.

The software is very user friendly, the rio 600 is so small its very portable, the sound is great and the life of the battery is amazing - 10 hours from 1 AA batery.

The 64mb is just right for the average person as it holds nearly 2 hours....thats enough for me cause when i listen to the songs I just load on some different ones.

Trust me if u buy this u wont be disappointed!!!