The Diamond Rio 600 may not seem a natural successor to the 64Mb Rio 500, as the 600 bears only 1/2 as much memory, but what it lacks in memory, no doubt it will make up for in the future.

PLAYER

The palyer itself is small, smaller than most, and light, supposedly one of the lightest full size MP3 players on the market. It is curvey and fits comfortably in the hand, amking it a wonderful ergonomic design. The front is lightly inhabited by buttons, including the almost trademarked Rio circle dial in the middle. But appart from the dail there are only 4 more buttons on the player. The 2 volume + and - buttons, the Menu button and the On/Off/Hold Button.

The display is the normal size but isan oval shape, the acctual lettering is smaller than ever as it has a 'proper' svreen rather than a dot matrix one seen on many such as the Yepp and the MPMan and other budget players. The display will shop the Song Title, Number, Encoding Rate, Time elapsed x of y song placing as well as a scrolling title, album, artist, info section which gives loads of information

Seconddly the menu offers various options including the manufacture of playlists, play styles 10 to chose from + a customisable one, options such as display times and 'timeout settings' and an about section showing battery power, memory size, support, and the time day and date.

All of this is backlit in a cool blue glow

The player itself claims to hold 'up to an hours worth of music' but in actual fact it can hold twice as much at a reasonable quality, and will soon be able to hold around 32hours of taling books. The sound quality is slightly tell tinny than most models with a good treble reduction without overdoing the bass.

Software: The Rio software also allows you to burn CDs and Rip them as well as listen to CDs and MP3s not forgetting the making of playlists (possible here and on the portable itself) and the track additio
n system.

The Rio comes with a carry case, over ear headphones, cds, leaflets/instructions and the all important USB cable. This cable elimintates the need to have to un-plug your printer to get tracks onto the portable and allows a faster transfer time of a few seconds per track.


The Rio is durable and the black look is customisbale with added faceplates to chage the color. The player is scratch resistant and any damage is likely to show up less than with one of the trashy silver models available such as the Rio 500 and numerous competitors


In the future the Rio will be upgradable to 392 Mb, and evn further with new updates downloadble from the web. It also promises to support the latest file types and the memory backpacks will include high capacity rechargable batterys for long playback. Although the current, normal batterys are offering around 15 hours playback with the device.

Soon as well a new backpack will be available to allow a small disc, similar to MD or the HipZip to be used in the Rio offering an unmimited storage capacity

I can't wait