Introduction & First Impressions
 |
| Diamond Rio 600 Boxshot |
Not too long ago, we had the pleasure of reviewing the Rio500 as part of our
USB Portable MP3 roundup. I found the Rio500 to be a quality product with a simple, but well implemented suite of features. It was also one of the most user-friendly players weve yet to come across. Now we take a look at the newest member of the Rio family, the Rio600, which is a sportier sort of reincarnation of the popular player with an emphasis on fun and fashionable design. After playing with the Rio600 for a while, I became increasingly convinced that Diamond has some amazing guys working for them Ive praised the Rio500 for excellent ease of use, and now I am going to say that the Rio600 is even BETTER
in fact, I think that this is possibly one of the best players I have come across so far.
The Rio600 is almost like the sports coupe of the Rio series. It is styled with an organic flair, using a curvaceous design, more sporty materials, and a fun and full featured LCD display. As further proof of the fun nature of the player, the Rio600 has removable faceplates that can be interchanged with aftermarket plates of varying colour so that you can give your player a different personality. The review sample we received uses a blue faceplate, but you can instantly expand your colour choices with Diamonds RioTone Faceplate 3 pack. This is basically more of a showy sort of attraction, but with people buying aftermarket cell phone button replacements, case replacements and other customizing accoutrements, it is obvious that the industry is ready for this type of change. Its the hip thing to do ;).
The layout of buttons on the player is simple and effective. The buttons themselves are simple grey plastic, with a soft response that lacks the kind of sensitivity or tactile feedback that Ive come to love from other players. A d-pad like control similar to the Samsung Yepp players controller integrates play/pause, fast forward, rewind and stop functions into one single D-pad button. In the center of this D-pad is a smaller button which allows you to select options when you are going through the Rios menu systems. Volume is controlled via dedicated buttons that function no matter where you are in the Rios simple and effective menu system. Power is controlled by a switch on the top of the player; this same switch is used to put the player into HOLD mode, to prevent any accidental changes to the player.
Now that weve gotten through some of the mundane descriptions, Im going to start to gush about this player, because I have so fallen in love with this thing that I cannot believe anyone would not find this beauty to be one of the best players currently available.
When you turn the player on, you can get an idea of just how much thought and effort was put into the players underlying software because you are greeted with two info screens that tell you the players memory and battery status. The battery status was truly impressive, with a resource bar indicating the percentage of battery life left, and a textual indicator estimating how much play-time you had left. I love it. And so did everyone that I showed the player to.
forums
send article 
hardware newsletter 
article comments (9)
Digg this!
del.icio.us