By WILSON ROTHMAN
MP3 pioneer Rio — which nearly drowned with its late parent company Sonicblue, but is now in good shape, having been picked up by the owners of Denon and Marantz — returns to the fray with a category shaker. Though it sports a 1.5 GB hard-drive, Nitrus is smaller than some flash players, meaning it can compete with Apple's iPod on size, and flash players on capacity. Nitrus was designed under the assumption that some people are looking for something that takes up less room than a 10GB iPod (which sells for the same price), and can deal with the fact that, instead of 2,500 songs, they get access to a little less than 400 MP3s at any given time (or 700 WMA files). Rio says the player gets 16 hours of life from its built-in rechargeable battery, and my own testing bore that out — after 15 hours itŐs, uh, still going. I begrudgingly admit that the included Sennheiser earbuds offer better sonic clarity than my favorite $40 headphones. And the interface, first seen on the ill-fated Rio Riot, is a wonder of simplicity. Beyond the capacity issue (you really canŐt carry all of your music with you) there are few negatives. Missing are the smart playlist functions of loftier jukeboxes — including RioŐs own brand-new Karma. You can only load playlists you made on your PC. Also, it sports USB 2.0 for fast transfers, but no FireWire. Final verdict: now there's something for Mac users to be jealous about.
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