S3 Rio 600

The attraction is immediate when you cradle the contoured shell in your hand. Everything is rounded - no hard edges, the control buttons are sparse and round and the LCD is elliptical. The pleasing lines are complemented by the colours that S3 has designed as a feature point of the Rio 600. Like the Frontier Labs Nex player (Labs, Issue 33 p52) the Rio 600 has interchangeable skins, available as accessories in packs or singles.

Another feature that has general appeal is the backpack accessory concept that allows the user to upgrade their Rios memory and firmware. No fiddling with memory cards. When you want a memory upgrade owners will have to front up and purchase one of S3s proprietary backpacks which clip onto the back of the Rio. Different capacities will be available by the time you read this. Its all clever marketing, building a branding for the Rio line that will have end users coming back for more gear.

It doesnt stop there either. I had a go of the car cassette adapter kit but other soon to be released accessories are an FM tuner with remote control attachment and a travel case. The Rio 600 is also capable of handling WMA format audio like the Nomad II-family, effectively doubling the music capacity. Physical memory onboard is 32Mb, down from the 64Mb standard with the Rio 500 but if the microdrive backpack is used then total music capacity in 64Kbit/s-encoded WMA is a whopping 10 hours. The single AA battery is rated 10 hours playback life too. Operating the Rio is simpler than for the Nomad II MG, but there are fewer functions. The LCD is useful for track information and settings although the menu system is still not as intuitive as expected.

Rio Audio Manager is the one-stop download manager, ripper, encoder and music cataloguer. Software installation can be tricky but the encoder is good quality and the sound across all music styles is good - yet not quite the quality of the Nomad - although the $400 price difference is more than enough compensation for the difference.