Price Paid:  $174.00 from CompUdirect.com

Model Reviewed:
Rio Nitrus

Summary:
I bought this player because of its inexpensive price, but it ended up being a horrible decision. I purchased it in February of 2004 for $174 plus a $20 rebate. Within a month of light use, it already began to have problems. It would freeze and had to be reset every 10 uses. The battery never lasted the claimed 15 hours, but closer to 5. By June, the player was shutting off and restarting every 5 songs or only playing the first few seconds of a song before switching to the next one. Several calls to tech support and a firmware upgrade were unsuccessful in fixing the problem. Now the player freezes after it is turned on and will not play any music. Tech support told me it was broken and since it is past the 90-day warranty, there was a replacement fee of $100!! To make things even worse, I never received my $20 rebate. I was told it would take up to 12 weeks to process, so after the 5 month, I called up and was told they had no record of ever receiving it. As suggested on the rebate form, I had made photocopies of every form for my records. I offered to send these in as proof, but Rio does not accept anything but the ORIGINAL UPC. What is the point of telling customers to make copies of the forms if they are completely useless!!! My whole experience with this company has been horrible. Buyers beware - any electronics company that only offers a 90-day warranty is selling an inferior product!!

Strengths:
cheap price, small size, use to use

Weaknesses:
short 90 day warranty, very problematic, bad tech support

Similar Products Used:
Rio 128Mb player