Rio Forge Sport 512MB MP3 Player

So far, so good. Looks nice although a little chea ...

Posted Jun 5, 2005 - So far, so good. Looks nice although a little cheap. Wish it came in different colors or had protective cases for it. Very easy to use and Rio Music Manager makes it really easy to transfer music. Would recommend to a friend, especially with the rebates offered.

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Own two of them! One is great, the other just crapped out!

Posted Sep 25, 2005 - I'm new to the MP3 player mania going on in this country and after doing some research decided to go with the Rio as it looks like it's the best bang for the buck! My wife is a very active body body builder/aerobics fanatic and wanted a small player to replace her cd player which skipped while working out etc..etc.. so I decided to give her an MP3 player for her birthday. I ordered online and received it a few days later. I took it out of the box and began loading music to it by dropping and dragging files into it as the Music manager kept locking up my computer. I showed her how to use it and she was on her way! I liked the player so much that a week later I ordered the exact model for myself since I play drums and was also experiencing the skip and stop of my cd player while playing along to some tunes. A week ago she complained that her player was not turning on and asked me how long the battery was supposed to last. I put a new battery in and the player powered back up and I set the battery saver feature on. Two days ago she calls me up at work to complain about the player again. This time nothing was happening. I got home and looked at it and could not get it to come on. I switched batteries and still nothing. I called my son whose friend owns one and had recommended it. They both told me to re-flash and install the firmware which I found on Rio's website. After doing that the player still would not work. The word "UPGRADER" is displayed on the screen. I have now e-mailed the online retailer I bought it from to request and exchange of the product or a refund since I called Rio customer support and ran into a brick wall. Their website is pretty much useless and when you call the customer support number they have an automated menu and give you their hours of operation monday thru friday which are not very long. Some customer support. I would give the first player (my wife's) a 1 star and mine a 5 star rating, but now after reading all these reviews and doing more research I wonder if I should have even purchased them. Looks like the company was bought out by a bigger company and they will no longer be making these players.

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Rio Forge 512 - broke after 6 months

Posted Sep 22, 2005 - Mine broke after only 6 months. Volume switch failed. Apparently this is a common problem. For a sport player, I would have expected it to last longer. Try your luck with another player.

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Just plain terrible!

Posted Feb 19, 2006 - I had my first rio forge 2 years ago but it kept turning off! Then, it simply refused to come back to life anymore (tried with over 20 batteries, none worked)! I contacted customer support and got a refurbished unit. Really appaling... this "refurbished unit" doesn't work either! I have been unable to turn it on since I got it! WHAT THE $%)$#! IS WRONG WITH THE ELECTRICAL DESIGN OF THIS PIECE OF $#"$&! ? I tried everything: i hooked it up to the computer but it still didn't turn on. I once got it to work and tried entering the upgrader mode, all i got was a quick flash saying "upgrader" on the screen and then it went blank again, dead. No wonder the company was sold out. Thank god this crap if off the market.

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Take your chances

Posted Jan 20, 2006 - After only a month of use, this product froze up on me. Tried to reload the drivers....nothing. It went kaput! Sounds like some people have had wonderful luck with the Forge, while others have had the same kind of problems that I have had. So, in my opinion, it is a gamble. You might get a good one or you might have just wasted your money.

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good player

Posted Nov 16, 2005 - I've been happy with it. Plenty of space for music, fm radio onboard, good battery life. It's very lightweight which is great for working out. I haven't had any problems with it breaking (it's been dropped) but the lightweight feel makes me *think* it's going to break. I haven't had any of the problems with skipping, volume button breaking, etc that others have mentioned. The software is easy to use and provides for quick file tranfers.

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I purchased the Rio Forge to replace another Rio p ...

Posted Nov 15, 2004 - I purchased the Rio Forge to replace another Rio player that was lost, and haven't looked back. With this Rio, I've been using the Rio Music Manager and wondered why I didn't have it on my last player. It's so very easy to use. I just drag and drop, and the music's downloaded to the Forge. And with the USB 2.0 transfer, it is so much faster than our previous Rio player (USB 1.1), and makes it even easier to use. The FM isn't anything to brag about, but neither is it too terribly horrible. I like the battery life. It takes one single AAA battery, and I've yet to replace it. I've used the player for close to 15 hours. I was also amazed at how easy it was to interface not only with our Dell desktop, but with our Apple Powerbook. When we had our last Rio player and interfaced the first time, we had to call Rio tech support. We had installed the disk, yet iTunes wasn't recognizing the player. We spent about thirty minutes on that first phone call. But with this player, we installed the software, plugged the Forge into the USB on the Powerbook, and iTunes came up showing the mp3 player. Was a nice surprise. I really don't like the stock ear phones that came with the player, so I purchased another set. The stock ones are ear buds and go over and behind your ears, and one size does NOT fit all. I could get the ear phones to stay only if i were standing still, but once I started moving, all bets were off for them staying on my ears. I wanted an mp3 player that had a larger storage capacity than my other Rio player (512 mb vs. 128 mb) and the capacity for additional memory upgrade. This unit fit my requirements, and the price was right.

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When the Forge came out in august, I immediately p ...

Posted Jan 5, 2005 - When the Forge came out in august, I immediately purchased the 256MB model (only the 128MB and 256MB were available at the time). I chose it over the other players because it had more of the features that i wanted. Unfortunately, it turns out the Forge had some design issues that caused it to restart or shutdown at random times, had weak battery terminals so light to moderate bumps caused it to restart, and the FM tuner had _extremely_ poor reception. I ended up exchanging it for a Forge 512MB two months later; I was told that the problems were addressed in the forge 512MB. I can verify that the forge 512MB does not restart or shutdown randomly, and although the FM tuner is not great, it actually works. The volume gets plenty loud and the audio is crisp and clear even with the supplied headphones. even after tweaking the equalizer settings, i would like more bass, but it is very acceptable. The forge snaps into a plastic holster that has a small metal clip on the back. This holster probably wasn't intended to be a belt clip, but occasionally i use it as such and it works pretty well. the holster clips onto a strip of leather that's sewn onto the armband. For a while, everything was fine. Unfortunately, after about 2 months, the leather strip began to stretch and tear. As a result, the holster wobbles a lot on the armband when i run. Also, it turns out that the forge is not entirely secure in the plastic holster. I wore my Forge during the NYC marathon and there were three incidents where i bumped into other runners and the player popped out of the holster. Ever since then, I use an elastic band to make sure the player stays in the holster. The feature that I like best about the Forge is that windows computers treat it as a mass storage device; you plug in the USB cable and the computer sees it as removable drives and you can drag-n-drop directly to it. I also like the buttons. The volume button is prominent and well placed so it is easy to adjust the volume. Also, the button for the keypad is also raised so you can change tracks without having to look for the buttons. I have a number of gripes 1) When you wear the forge on the armband, it is oriented in such a way that makes it difficult to look at the display without having to take it out of the holster. 2) the chrome ring in the front of the forge and the grippy rubber on the edges are purely cosmetic and does not make the forge any more rugged. In fact, they make it less so (they are very easily scratched). 3) The Forge came with a plastic cover over the USB port. However, this plastic cover is not secured to the player in any way so it fell of and was lost immediately. Ever since then, sweat and grime has been building up around that area. 4) The battery cover is secured in place by two plastic tabs. it's only been a couple months but the tabs are about to break off. 5) Although it's marketed as a sports player, the Forge is not any more rugged than the other flash-based MP3 players on the market. A moderate to hard jolt causes my player to restart. 6) The stopwatch feature is pretty much useless -- you can only see the last two splits, and you pretty much have to take it out of the holster to see the display to operate it. 7) You cannot organize your music in folders in the player; if you have a lot of songs, it is difficult to organize the music unless you setup and upload a playlist from your computer. 8) Rio's customer service is ABSOLUTELY TERRIBLE. It took 4 days for them to respond to my e-mail, and when they finally responded, it was tell me to call them. When I called them, i spent an average of 30 minutes on hold. Every time I called, I had to speak to somebody new, each time I had to explain my problems from the beginning, and they were always unhelpful. There were two occasions where they promised to have a manager and technical person call me back. For both occasions, I never heard back from Rio. 9) Their warranty period is only 90 days; most of the other players have a 1 year warranty. Documentation says that if your player is defective, they will fix or replace it. But they don't tell you that if they replace it, it will be with a refurbished unit.

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Frequent Shutdowns and File Corruption

Posted Sep 9, 2005 - I have now dealt with this product for about one year. The thing is garbage. If your battery level is close to full, it will work fairly well, but will still shut down and corrupt files for no reason. After about 2 hours on a fresh battery, shutdowns and corruptions increase. Firmware upgrades don't help. Doesn't matter whether you're using internal or add-on memory. It just plain does not work at an acceptable level. I came back to this review as I am tired of dealing with this unit and am looking to buy another flash player to replace it. This would be an excellent product were it not for all these problems with shutdowns and corruption. The paragraphs that follow were my original review of this product before I used it so long. I actually feel bad if anyone bought one of these based upon my initial review. The first Forge I received had a defective headphone jack, and I had to return the player to the vendor I purchased it from. The second Forge worked fine. I have not used the Rio Music Manager interface, as it's easier to just drag and drop or copy and paste files and album folders directly to the Rio Forge (and smart card) drive through My Computer. The USB 2.0 interface is MUCH faster than my old USB 1.1 mp3 player, and I'd strongly recommend anyone buying ANY mp3 player to make sure it has USB 2.0. This unit is advertised as interfacing well with Windows Media Player 9 and 10, but I found the interface confusing and not very user friendly. I like the organization of the interface on the unit itself. It takes a little while to get the hang of it, but after you do, it's easy to play all tracks, play tracks by album, by artist, etc., basically any order you would like to. The display is probably the best arrangement possible for a unit of this small size, and you have several display options to choose from. This player will also act as a storage drive for other files, so you can use it instead of a separate USB drive if you so desire. The stock headphones are lame, don't have good sound, aren't loud enough, and won't stay on your ears very well. I got rid of them immediately. The FM works adequately, on par with FM on other mp3 players, but nothing fantastic. Battery life is good. It takes a single AAA battery, and I still haven't run my first one (an alkaline) dead. I've probably used it for about 8 hours total so far. The sound on this unit seems a little distorted. I used the same headphones on this unit as I used on my old unit (Samsung Yepp), and the sound is definitely not as clear or full. Having said that, the sound is adequate for what I use it for---the gym and airline flights. The difference between my old player and the Forge is slight and not very significant at all, but it is definitely there. I wanted an mp3 player which had no moving parts (read: flash storage), had a large internal capacity, as well as large add-on capacity for additional flash memory, and USB 2.0. This is really the only unit on the market at this point that had all these features. While there are certainly some things on this unit that I would like to see improved, it is adequate for the price, and I would still buy this unit over other ones on the market at this point. The price was reasonable for what I got.

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I was worried about getting a flash player, since ...

Posted Feb 28, 2005 - I was worried about getting a flash player, since they don't hold as much as hard drives. After a great deal of research, I concluded that for my purposes (exercising, walking to class) I really didn't have a choice. If you are going to be active with your MP3 player, don't get a hard drive. My good friend bought a RIO Karma during Army training and it is now ruined. Active = flash player, Home use = hard drive.

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The product was purchased as a Christmas gift thro ...

Posted Mar 21, 2005 - The product was purchased as a Christmas gift through an on-line store. An external 500 MB ScanDisk memory card was purchased and installed into the RIO Forge for additional memory capability. RIO claims the ScanDisk memory card will overwrite the internal memory of the RIO and it can not be reformatted to be a usable player. RIO will not replace the unit under warranty eventhough they allow for external memory cards to overwrite the internal memory of the player. In addition, they have not released a service letter regarding their problem with the RIO Forge. This resulted in a loss in the cost of the RIO Forge. I would highly recommend buying an Apple IPOD vs. any RIO product.

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I've had my Rio forge 512 for about a week now. It ...

Posted Apr 25, 2005 - I've had my Rio forge 512 for about a week now. It took me a couple days to figure out how to use it. I couldn't figure out why I could only fit about 14 songs on it when it was supposed to hold 260. I finally figured out that I had to set the quality to the lowest bit rate (64) under "tools, options, copy CD" on the Rio music manager screen. I thought the user manual could have been more clear about a lot of things. Also, when I first tried to use it after downloading music onto it, it wouldn't play or even turn off. I reformatted and updated it a couple times. Not sure what fixed it, but it's working great now. *shew!* I got very stressed out thinking something was wrong with it and I'd never get my money back. This is my first mp3 player. I bought it because I've recently taken up jogging and my CD player was skipping all over the place. Now that I have the Rio forge working, I LOVE it! I love that I can shuffle all 261 songs and set a bookmark so that the next day when I go jogging it will pick up where I left off, even if my son played with it the night before, and it even tells me how many songs I have listened to so far. Being able to choose music by genre, artist, or album is pretty cool. The lock button is great. I used to bump buttons all the time on my CD player and screw things up. I'm also very pleased to have a built in stopwatch - one less thing I have to carry. I am going to purchase some different earphones. The ones that came with it keep falling off. I've been carrying the player in my pocket as I don't trust the clip for the armband. Looks like it would come off and hit the ground pretty easily. Will have to come up with something else for this summer when I am wearing clothes that don't have a zippered pocket (maybe a little cloth bag tied to my bra strap??). After hearing how many people lost the cover for the USB cable, I taped mine on to secure it. I was a little disappointed at how long it took me to load the music from CD to the player. I was hoping that I could just transfer the hundreds of songs I already had stored in Windows Media Player but they were downloaded at the highest bitrate and are too big to fit on the Rio (that's why I only got 14 on it). If anyone out there knows a way to change them to smaller files without having to use the original CD again, please let me know. Even with all the problems I mentioned, I still love my Forge, and I am enjoying my morning jogs a lot more lately because of it. I gave my 12 year old son the old CD player, but he's still pretty jealous of Mom's cool new mp3 player :)

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This is my 3rd Rio MP3 player; the others haven't ...

Posted Jan 29, 2005 - This is my 3rd Rio MP3 player; the others haven't failed; I've just upgraded each time and gave my previous players to family members. If you want a solid MP3 player that won't dissappoint, I'd recommend it.

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I love the tiny size of this MP3 player. It's grea ...

Posted Jun 28, 2005 - I love the tiny size of this MP3 player. It's great to exercisers. A great feature is that it uses regular AAA batteries. The FM tuner works well.

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I bought this for my wife before a long flight. S ...

Posted Jul 6, 2005 - I bought this for my wife before a long flight. She loved being able to load all her music on it and a book or two. It is a great way to listen to you digital media. It also is great for you sports lovers. The arm band is a great way to attach it to your body. It also has a stopwatch to time your run.

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