Strengths:size, takes 1 user-replaceable AAA battery, expandable memory
Weaknesses:User manual, armband, earphones.
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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Rated 
Just plain terrible!
Comment about this review
Meh...glad i got the warrantee
