Price Paid:  $189.00

Summary:
I have owned this thing since 2000. I have to this date never been able to successfully load even a single song on to it. When I finally did get it to work it attached the first sound bites it came to off of my hard drive and recorded them. Then I got a message saying (something to the affect) that in order to record more music onto the player I had to contact RIO and have them first since I had used all of my free uploads (bear with me here it has been long time since I have fought with this player so my details may be a bit off). To make a long story short Rio never replied when contacted (at least 5 attempts). I have never been able to listen to even a single song on the player and it tweaks me to no end every time I see this thing sitting in the drawer. THE WORST CONSUMER PRODUCT I HAVE EVER HEARD OF LET ALONE USED (TRIED TO).

Strengths:
I have found not a single one.

Weaknesses:
Besides it not working at all, none.

Similar Products Used:
none

Price Paid:  $8000.00 from Overstock.com

Summary:
Despite the numerous negative consumer reviews I have actually had a good experience with my Rio800 128MB. The model I purchased though was refurbished hence it came with the latest software updates which I partly attribute to my good fortune. The player sounds a degree better then my Rio300 32MB which I had owned for hand.Besides you can further tweak the base and treble using the custom eq or by choosing one of the presets. The battery life lasts me about 5-6 hours, which is fine for my workouts or jogging sessions. My only gripe with the pakage is the included Realone software which I found to be subpar. I circumvented this issue though by simply installing a patch for my musicmatch software that allows it to communicate with my player. Overall it was certainly worth the $80.00 I spent, and I am quite content with this product.

Strengths:
Sound Quality Ascetics

Weaknesses:
included RealOne software. expensive proprietary memory upgrades

Similar Products Used:
Rio300

Price Paid:  $0.00

Summary:
this player is okay as a player, but what is the point of haveing a recorder that records your voice if you can't save the recordings to your computer.? that only make this rio 800 crap, as they make a big deal of the mostly useless voice recorder

Strengths:
works well with mps

Weaknesses:
as mentioned about i went so far as to call customer support and was on hold for 30 minutes, so the person could tell me that not oly coud i not transfer my own recordings to my computer, but that not a single person had ever called to compline about that feature this i could not belive, does any one know of a third party software that would alow me to save my voice recordings, or am i just going to have to go buy a usb equiped recorder?

Price Paid:  $130.00 from Amazon

Summary:
JUNK! Had problems from day one. Shuts off on it's own, wherever and whenever it wants to. Software isn't the greatest either. I'll never buy anything from sonicJUNK again!

Strengths:
NONE

Weaknesses:
The Rio 800 is NOTHING but a weakness!

Price Paid:  $142.00

Summary:
I use the Rio 800 almost everyday and only had a few problems a while ago but solved that... The problem was the batteries won't last long so I went and brought 4 new NiMH battery for $20 CDN and since each battery will last about a year I'm thinking of having 4 years to go... anyways I'm selling it any way to change to other players for different feel. I problem I had was the plastic shell rather than metal ones like all other players do and the slow transfer...

Strengths:
Blue LCD Backlit... OH YEAH! Techy Design

Weaknesses:
Slow Transfer Plastic Shell Expensive Memory

Similar Products Used:
HipZip