Price: $249. Additional 16-MB flash card: $49; Additional 32-MB card: $99.
Grade: B+ (As good as they get for now.)
Bottom line: The company's pedigree and the player's user-friendliness make it a reliable buy.
Rioport's famous Rio was the product that so terrified the recording industry that its execs freaked and sued Diamond, Rioport's parent company, in a (futile) attempt basically to put portable MP3 players out of business. They saw the escape of MP3s from the confines of the computer as their worst nightmare realized.
Given this kind of history, Rio has a lot to live up to–and it does, for the most part. The unit we received was a translucent teal green. Sixty-four megabytes of storage are built in, expandable through a flash-card slot to a maximum of 96. The unit's software is slick and very easy to use. (In fact, the software that comes with all these players is a breeze. And they all come with utilities that allow you to convert tracks on your favorite CDs into MP3 format.) The 300SE presents an attractive, intuitive interface that has the closest resemblance of any player on the market to a Walkman's. One nice feature is a clip, which pays off big time when you remember that MP3 players have no moving parts and are skip-proof, making them perfect for jogging. And this player is pretty tough. When it got whipped across the gym during a workout, it kept playing perfectly. A small flaw: the Rio doesn't list full track titles like the other players do, and it's hard to remember which song goes with which number if you've put together your own mix.
The Rioport RIO PMP300 SE.