Why I buy this one ?
- Diamond Rio Digital Player

estategems from CA, United States offers this stuff for:

Price : $49.74 Usually ships in 1-2 business days

What our customer's say!

"waste of money!", i got one of these a LONG time ago for christmas. it was the first mp3 player i have owned and it did serve me well for quite some time.

firstly, i have to credit this piece of crap as being the first mp3 player marketed and almost didn't make it for legal problems. sound quality is ok.

now the problems: firstly, there is a MAJOR design flaw regarding the battery cradle (holder, whatever). the door fits over the end of the battery and contains the negative terminal. door is held in place by a small plastic hook and WILL break! i had them replace it once! also, as it gets older and takes even light abuse i found that the solder joint on the negative terminal breaks which forced me to open the damn thing and resolder it to the board. my solution? get a single AA battery holder from radio shack, remove the old battery cradle inside the rio, cut a nice big rectangular pocket out of the side of the case with my dremel (to accompany the new battery clip) and solder the wires of that to the board of the rio. and then i attached it to the case with hot glue. yes its ghetto but it worked way better than diamond's solution!

secondly, we all know about the lack of OS support. just sick there...there's beta thrid party software that'll do it on xp, but it sucks. 32mb of memory isn't enough. i got the 32mb flash card and 64mb isn't enough!

ahh the flash card....would be nice if the rio properly detected it even half the time. something is desperately wrong with the memory controller and most of the time it can't even detect the card let alone play anything off it. to fix that, i kept hitting it. stop laughing, it worked. but then after a while it started turning the volume up and down on its own....

so in conclusion i can't recomend this piece of crap to anyone. my final solution was to get the creative MuVo TX FM (256mb) and then i gave the rio 300 to my girlfriend. haha i know....but it still works. too poor to buy her a real mp3 player yet.

"I love it, but...", I have one of these, and I'm very fond of it. It does a good job, and is very durable (I've had mine for years and haven't been incredibly kind to it, but it's still good as new.) The design is plain but classy, and it's easy to use. It takes almost no time to familiarize yourself with the buttons so you can fool with it without looking. There aren't any buttons or switches that are easy to hit accidentally, and in general, it can take being tossed around a little in a bag so long as it's reasonable. Don't crush it and don't spill anything on it, but it's not like it's the Mona Lisa.

As many have mentioned, it holds about 30 minutes of music, unless you can find a memory card (I'm not sure if they are even made anymore, but I have seen them for sale) which will give you a whopping hour. If you're just going to use this for walking the dog around the block, or standing in line, or a quick run in the morning, this isn't such a big deal.

The USB-type cord is primitive and weird, so you'll probably be using the parallel port adapter, which isn't really a problem, but can be an inconvenience if you have a lot of things that use your parallel ports.

I'm pretty sure the company no longer supports this device or its software, since they have gone on to bigger and better things since its debut. Caveat emptor.

Also, it is not compatible with anything after Windows 98, but you can get around that easily by downloading the free program "Dreaming of Brazil" which works with XP, NT, and 2000. (Google search for "Diamond Rio mp3 player" or "Dreaming of Brazil.")

A few pointers from my humble experience with the Rio PMP300:
If the headphones it comes with break, you can replace them with any headphones that fit the headphone jack. You should also take the battery out of the Rio when you aren't using it-- it sucks energy when it's idle. If you happen to need a little bit of misc. storage space, you can use the Dreaming of Brazil program to transfer any items that will fit, which can be handy.

I imagine this is not the best mp3 player you can buy, but if you can get it cheap, it's still a pretty good one. The main problem I have is the tiny amount of storage space and compatibility issues. Shop around for an iPod or a newer Rio or something if you're very concerned with absolute top quality.

"The Diamond Rio PMP300", Think about this...[quite a bit of money] for a mp3 player that holds max. 9-10 songs. That is the most rediculous thing i have ever heard. You can get a Nomad II for [less money]with 64mb built in. I recommend getting that mp3 player. I just bought a 128mb card for the PMP300 and it doesn't work. This Mp3 Player only takes certain 32 mb cards which are [quite expensive]. When i drop the mp3 player it shuts off completely as if there was no battery in the device. Alot of times when you take the battery out and then put it back in it doesn't even register as having a battery in it. It is not a high technology device at all. Something else that made me even more mad was that there is no longer customer support for this product. I think this company should get their act together. I highly recomend buying another mp3 player b/c this one isn't worth it at all.

"rio mp3 player pmp300", i brought my pmp300 brand new but moved some time ago and have not been able to find the download cables it is a great mp3 player but i am getting bored with the same mucis thats on the player if you have one for gods sake DONT LOSE YOU DOWNLOAD CABLES because you can not get them for love nor money

"Piece of [junk] if you ask me..", I loved this Rio when I first got it, honest I did. I took great care of it, was careful not to drop it, fed it fresh batteries every time it asked, and all was well.

But then, after about a year, my Rio failed me. The battery compartment flap came loose and refused to stay closed. I tried taping it shut, but as I usually clipped the Rio to my pocket, gravity worked against me to keep the battery continually falling out of the bottom. Every time I so much as shifted in my chair, the song would restart because the battery had gotten loose and caused the Rio to power off.

What's worse is that SonicBlue blatantly refused to replace the player even though it was clearly a product defect and though I had a warranty. Their reason is that this product is a "legacy" product now..so even though they're apparently still manufacturing this thing, they won't do anything to fix it. I'm never buying from them again.

Read this reviews before You buy...

"Don't waste your money.", This seemed like such a great idea: music that won't skip; I can record what I want. Then I got it.

The software is far more complicated than it needs to be, and it's unbearably time-consuming to put everything you want on the machine.

Then it there's not enough memory to record all you'll need for a long enough stretch.

I could go on for pages but won't waste your time with it. My last straw, however, was when, after I'd purchsed some additional memory, the lid to hold the battery in won't close. So the little, grandly over-priced toy is a total waste.

Stick to your CD player. Maybe it's not all the up-to-date, i.e., the hi-tech industry has replaced it with this little thing. But you'll enjoy it more.

"Do not buy this", I bought this a year ago. It lasted a month. It's a piece of crap. When it did work, the volume was pathetic. But it is poorly designed with small buttons that can be press accidentally too often. And it just is cheap. Buy a sturdier model or wait.

"Great...while it lasts.", I've had my player for just over a year. No problems! No skipping, doesn't have a mind of its own. In otherwords, the play options (random...) never switch on me without my promt. It functions very well. Battery uses quickly. It's only just very recently that it's beginning to die on me. It plays, then won't. It's something to do with the battery and the connection. Also, the screen is fading from the top down. This may be to slight rain sprinkles, or its visit to a sandy beach in the Turks (this occured in February though). I am getting another!

"Great little device for short duration play", I got my Rio PMP 300 from my employer as a gift. It was my first exposure to MP3, as up to that point I had been dismissing it as a fad. Having the device, and about 150 CD's, I figured why not give it a shot.

The installation of the software went smooth. I found an update, and installed that as well with no problems. Then I started trying to rip and found that the included software was hardly stable. I was running on Windows NT, which seemed to be supported by the manufacturer, but with some caveats. I would start ripping and the software would crash. I would try to transfer to the device and the software would crash. I would complete a transfer to the device after several tries only to find that one or more songs didn't actually make it. Bottom line - the connectivity for this device was pathetic.

But speaking for the device itself - I loved it. The music played cleanly, without interruption, regardless of how much I shook the device. The buttons on the front are well placed, well labeled, and nicely inset just enough so they still provide easy access, but you don't have to worry about them protruding. It has all the features you might want including random and repeat. The display let's me know how much memory I have, what track number is playing, and the time of the song. There are also various other indicators that are helpfull (battery, etc.).

The memory on this device is small - 32Mb. And the manufacturer says it will only support up to 64Mb total with an expansion card. That expansion card can hold it's own set of music so you can swap them in and out without effecting the music on the built in memory. However, vendor chose the odd memory type of 3.3V for the external memory versus typical CompactFlash.

There's a convenient "lock" switch on the side that keeps the buttons from registering. This can be good in two ways: it won't get turned on accidentally and burn battery, and you won't accidentally hit the stop button and interrupt your listening. The belt clip is handy, and detachable, and the battery life (one AA) is quite respectable.

In all, I really love my Rio PMP 300. It's perfect for a trip to the gym, a jog around the neighborhood, or even for a short plane flight. If all you need is an hour (30 mins on internal memory alone at a 128 sample rate) to pass the time, then you really don't need to spend more - this is the perfect device.

"Rio excellent player", I got the Special edition 64 mb's RAM and a 32 MB flash card for 96 MB's of RAM. Very nice, and skip free so when I work I don't have to worry about skipping like I did on my CD player. Very compact, easy to fit in a pocket or even better it's got a clip if you don't have pockets. Some people complain about batteries but I get the same performance out of a single battery in the Rio than 2 in a CD player. It's not an issue to me anyway since I use rehargable batteries, but some complain anyway. Download speeds to the Rio are pretty good, would like a faster download time though. Anyone think of Firewire or USB? As far as durability I accedentally dropped it on concrete and it still works perfectly. Overall a fine product, I'd pick it up again after my experience with it.