The Karmas many features and small size set a new standard for high-capacity players. Its 20GB* drive can carry over 5,000 songs*. Powerful tools include Cross-Fader, 5-Band Parametric Equalizer, Ogg Vorbis and FLAC support, and a huge, backlit display capable of visualizations, animated menus, and 16 shades of gray. USB 2.0 provides fast transfers while the included docking station also adds drop-in charging, RCA Line-Out, and an Ethernet port for networking. Simple menus and intuitive controls make it easy to pick up and use. Helpful functions like Auto-synchronization with Rio Music Manager, Rio DJ, and dynamic playlist generation make the Karma as effortless as you want it to be. Features: 20GB hard disc drive provides up to 330 hours of MP3 or 660 hours of WMA music Auto DJ finds, mixes and plays back tracks on demand Included docking station supports: dual RCA line-outs and ethernet port for network capabilities Includes MP3 player, Sennheiser MX-300 stereo earbuds, docking station, USB 2.0 cable, ethernet and stereo RCA cables, rechargeable Li-Ion battery with power supply and installation software CD
1 Easy and Small
I bought my mp3 player two months ago, and i'm very happy with.
Easy to use and is nice to your eyes, no problems so far.
2 Karma
I Bought my Roi Karma in june of 2004, and it just died on me in may of 05. bakc around december the scroll wheel got pushed in after i accidently droped it and it landed on the scroll wheel. this didnt really matter because i didnt use it anyway. it still worked fine after that. i was quite careless with it, droping it all of the time walking down the street and it falling on the hard pavement. it survived a good 15-20 drops, but the other day it finaly broke. when i turn it on now it makes noises and feezes on the starting screen.
after using my friends ipods, and using my rio karma, i cant tell a difference in the quality. so if its between the karma and the ipod, DEFFINATLY go with the Karma. it dosent matter if it dosent have a carrying case or how ugly it is, beacause its in your pocket or in you hand most of the time. i listened to my karma all of the time. i would turn it on when i left for school in the morning, set up a long play list to last all day, and turn it off when i got home about 8 hours later.
this is a great buy i would rate it the #1 mp3 player out there.
3 OK MP3 player for a great price
I got the Rio Karma in January of 2004, and it died on me on November 2004. It served me well.
The Rio Karma is a pretty good player overall. The controls are fairly good, and the menus are easy to navigate. They don't look the best, but they suffice. There are plenty of features on the Rio to last you a while. It has a stopwatch, Rio Taxi (which allows you to transport files) and others.
I don't really like dealing with the Rio Music Manager to transfer my music to it. But you really don't have a choice.
Upgrading firmware is pretty difficult if you're not tech savvy.
Rio's tech support isn't very good either. A fall of two feet brought my Rio Karma into oblivion. Apparently Rio only supports their product for 90 days, so after that you've got a $250 paperweight. They only offered a refurbished model to me for half price. For the record, it was the scroll wheel that got pushed in. Imagine navigating the menus with the stick.
The Rio fits nicely in your hands. It's a little thick but it's very small. It looks a little ugly compared to players like the iPod.
The Rio Karma plays a plethora of music formats, such as MP3, OGG, WMA, FLAC, and WAV. I mostly use MP3 but if you use other formats you will like this about it.
After it broke I purchased a 40 GB Apple iPod to replace it. I really like it more than the Rio. The menus are easier to navigate and the iTunes software is easier to use than the Rio Music Manager. Upgrading firmware is easy as cake. The battery life is a little weaker though.
One thing I really didn't like about the Rio Karma was the lack of a case. It does not come with one nor is one available for purchase. Rio includes this little gray bag that does not do the job. Because of this the screen got very scratched and dust got under the screen.
I do like the MX300 earbuds though. They sounded very well. After a few months the right channel blew out so I had to replace them.
The Rio Karma has come down in price a little, so it's more affordable. If you cannot afford a player such as the iPod or the iRiver, the Rio Karma would be an okay choice. Just be careful with it. Rio's tech support isn't that great. They will only support it for 90 days, while Apple supports the iPod for a whole year.
4 Eww! Come On.. wheres the style??
I wouldn't use this thing even if I got it for free. Its UGLY! It looks like some video camera from the 1980s. Eeekkk.. Shame on you Rio!
If you want a Rio that is not only great quality and STYLISH.... try one of the Rio Carbons. This little gal who needs pretty things in her life selected the Rio Carbon Pearl.... Nice alternative ladies to the "cute" Ipods.
5 Good Price, good Karma
Purchased my Rio Karma re-newzed. After I got the hang of all the different uses....
I am rockin'!
6 I love good Karma
I had this over a year now and I still love it. Battery can go for 18 hours, you can play WMA-DRM files, plus Mp3! It will resume where you left off when you power down, good for audiobooks. If you tag all your files with genre and dates, the RIO DJ software built in can give you good entertainment by letting you hear just 80's, or just 1985, or just classic rock, ect. Buy this player and you will not be sorry. I paid $220 for mine, at $179 it's a steal.
7 On my second one now
The first one the hard drive crashed and the second one looks like it is about to do the same. I end up spending money shipping it back and lose the usage time. Horrible product that I bought through Amazon. Wish I had not done so.
8 Easily broken
I've had my Karma now for 14 months without a problem. Then I made the mistake of taking it for a jog. Now it doesn't work. Tech support advises that this is a common occurence. Apparently the magnetic heads go out of allignment when subjected to this type of jarring. It cannot be repaired. Rather, for the low low price of $124.95, they will replace it with a new one. Also, the battery cannot be replaced, so when it finally wears down, you'll have to replace the unit. Considering that the competition now has players with much more memory, I'm not sure that I'd purchase this again (I'm not even sure I'll replace it).
9 A perfect juke box for home stereo!
I own this player for a couple months already and I`m very pleased with this thing. First off the purpose for this player for me is a home juke box, and it handles that task just perfectly-docking station+RCA hook up...Excellent. The only beef I have so far is a lack of remote control ( whis is the case with any mp3 player out there ), it would be very useful. But other than that I can`t complain-after I tuned the equalizer ( which is very sofisticated ), it sounds very, very good.I can simply transfer any music to it and that`s enough to enjoy the music at significantly better quality than from a cd player, believe it or not. Mainly that is so thanks to its amazing equalizer. And 20 GB is more than enough to keep an entire collection on it-you save your CD`s, no more scratches...As for the hard-drive crashes, as it was indicated before, it only happened to my player once, and only because it fell on the floor ( thank god on a robber mat ), so there was a legitimate cause for that, other than that-there are no crashes or glithes or anything of that nature what so ever. So I highly reccomend it for anybody who is much into a good sound like I am.
10 Best Player
If you are looking for an easy to use, quality sounding player, with 20 gigs of room, buy this player, Windows media player Picked it up as soon as I plugged in the usb cable, I was transfering music within 2 minutes of opening the package
it is easy to use, one of the best players I have come across.
When I am not using it on my walks I have it hooked up to my stereo with the provided audio cables, I end up with my whole cd collection at my finger tips, I disconnected my cd player from my receiver and use the rio instead. What a sweet piece of electronics. Thank You RIO..............
11 Trust the reviews on this one guys... it sucks.
I bought a Rio Karma from elsewhere due to an attractive price of $144... I was aware of past reviews of problems with the harddrive and how people were saying their experience was extremely poor. I thought to myself, maybe it won't happen to me- since I take pretty good of my electronics. Well, the first 3 days of use was good, however I noticed that the player skips every so often like a CD; I'm simply walking down the street when this happens. The 5th day, I was transfering songs to the player when it suddenly shut itself off. Now my player simply turns on and abruptly turns off and loops in this manner- rendering this player useless. (And I just bought this!)
I suggest people to avoid this product. Don't bother taking chances, the reviews are right- this product sucks. Better to spend more money and get a iPod or iRiver. Now I don't know what I'm gonna do with this piece of junk...
---
Edit (April 8):
As it seems the remedy to get my player back in action was to format the entire player. After loading some more music, soon after it happened again when it would just automatically boot. Perhaps it has faulty ways in editing/generating the database?
12 A waste of money!
You guessed it. About the 3 1/2 month mark the hard drive goes out. A piece of crap. I refuse to pay $175.00 for refurbished job. The customer service support is awful. I know the price is inviting especially for 20 GB Mp3 player. Look at all the past reviews and you will see a common thread. If I pay $220.00 for a MP3 player I can reasonably assume it should last for a decent amount of time. I am currently deployed in Afghanistan and as of today without my music. Buy elsewhere there are plenty of choices. Say no to poor quality and to a company who outsources their jobs.
13 Ipod Killer
I purchased the Karma, and from the moment it came out of the box I was very impressed. It looks very nice, and has a good shape for one handed operation. It also has a solid weight and a large screen. The interface on the player is very well organized as well:
-You can delete songs/albums right on the player
-You can create/edit playlists on the player
-It features RioDJ, which has many different selections for playing songs; eg. songs from the 70s, songs that are new on the player, songs that you haven't heard in a while. For a high capicity player, this is very useful.
For computers, transfer is lighting fast, it did an entire ablum in about 30 seconds.
Also inclueded is a dock, loaded with features. From this dock you can:
-Hook up to a network using ethernet
-Charge the player
-Hook up to a USB port
-Hook up to a stereo
All nessecary cords are included. Additionaly, the dock has blue lights on it that look pretty cool. They can be set to pulse to the music, or stay on steadily.
I spent about 5 days researching this product before I bought it. I talked to friends whose Ipods always broke, and looked at other similar players. From what I found, you cannot beat the price. You get tons more features, than an Ipod or other player. If you purchase this, you will not be dissapointed.
NOTE: I have read reviews on other sites about the Karma, complaining about how it borke after jogging. AS with most hard dreve players, they are extremely fragile. Jogging or other bumpy activities are likely to break it. It is ideal for weight lifting, stationary bike, etc. According to Rio, it is intended as a jukebox, that is, hooked up to a stereo and used instead of CDs.
14 Poor reliability/durability - good format flexibility
I have had the player for over a year and recently had the thumbwheel break for no identifiable reason. It just flops around in the slot making navigation of songs problematic. Rio wants $124 to fix. I have also had intermittent problems with the hard disk freezing. My use has been largely in the context of airplane flights, so it really hasn't been subjected to significant jostling or abuse. I found the ability to play FLAC (lossless audio format)far superior to MP3 format and thought the size and features of the Karma were ideal, so I am disappointed that the product is so poorly constructed. I will be buying an iPod.
15 Bad Karma
Seldom worked. Thrice replaced. Company's customer relations department played the telephone hold game while a supervisor was allegedly being located.
Save yourself a long distance fortune and try a different MP3 product. Life will be less aggravating . . . or maybe I did something bad in a previous life.
16 Nice, works well
First of all, I did not buy this player and if I had bought an MP3 player I probably would have gotten an Ipod. As luck would have it a friend gave a Rio Karma to my father who admitted he had no use for it and gave it to me. I'm glad he did. I have lots of friends with Ipods and it has a notable advantage compared to the Ipod- the software is light, easy to use, and I don't have to worry about formats.
Mine was very easy to install and since I have three computers I installed it on all of them without any trouble. Some MP3 players don't allow that. The main gripes I have with this is that the button system isn't that great and the random feature is troublesome to access. It's easy to use otherwise; I admit I never even touched the instruction manual. The screen is easy to see and the songs are easy to access. The transfer rate is fantastic (USB or Ethernet) and it holds enough for the average person. Classical music buffs will appreciate the lack of gaps between tracks. In the Ipod that seems to be a problem and if you listen to things like long symphonies it's annoying. The battery life is great and lasts more than enough time for both school and homework. I do wish it charged faster and the dock's blue light is considerably annoying; removable batteries might have been nice too. Another downside it that the original software is a bit buggy and you REALLY need the firmware updates on Rio's website. The ripper with the software isn't my favorite either-I recommend using Windows media player for that. The sound quality is fantastic, so ripping at high bit rates is worth it.
The player itself is kind of unattractive and there aren't any cases made by the company. However, I made an attractive and functional cover out of duct tape and plastic wrapping only for security. A store bought case would probably be thicker, but I haven't needed one. Mine has handled quite a bit of abuse without a problem including the time my little brother managed to steal and "play" with it. It's not designed for physical activity though, as I learned when I tried to run with it. A lot of the reviews here mention faulty devices, so maybe I've just been lucky. If mine does break I'll update this review.
I would remind buyers that it seems the Mp3 market hasn't been perfected and most people I know with Mp3 players have had them break.
17 Love my RIO Karma
I got mine a few weeks ago. I have dropped it four times once on concrete. (I've got to get a case or make one). It never missed a beat. It works marvelously. Good sound quality and volume. I have never come close to running out of battery life (15 hours). Charging with the cradle is a cinch. The only problem I have is when transferring MP3's to it from the computer. It's a problem with the RIO Music Manager software. If the file doesn't rip properly it will lock up the Karma during transfer. All you have to do is cancel the transfer, pull the USB cord, and restart avoiding the defective track. I have found about 1% of my CD tracks produce this problem, and the problem repeats on that tract every time.
I use mine for scriptures and music. I'm a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the Mormons) so I have the Bible and modern revelations 11 Gigs worth. This thing is awesome. I've gone through the whole quad in under 3 months. I just did the OT in 2 weeks. I can organize the books easily within albums to my pleasure. There are multiple ways to look up your tracts and go back and forth within a track or song. Really great when studying scriptures. When it shuts down because of being in idle, you can set it to come back at the beginning of the track you were on, right where you left off, or neither. I love this feature.
Great backlight and display. The display is full of presentation options.
I use a set of Koss clip-on headphones, $9.99 at Radio Shack. They let me hear what's going on around me (phones, people etc.), have excellent sound, and are incredibly load. I heated and bent the clips for long wearing comfort.
Rio recommends Real One to do the Ripping. I found Microsoft Media Player 10 to be quite a bit faster. I do most of my labeling edits inside Media Player and then finish them up in Rio Music Manager. Rio's program allows bulk changes; that's really nice. It creates a translation database. Basically, it doesn't care where the music came from. You rip it into your computer and Music Manager goes and finds it automatically and in real time. Then you can tell it what it is and it remembers it that way and transfers it to the Karma that way. For example if you are loading disk 3 of the New Testament and it has the Books of Mark and Luke on it, You go into disk three in Music Manager, select the Mark tracks, and rename the Album to NT 2 Mark (in properties, right mouse click) and it transfers them into a new Album with that new name (in it's data base not your computer). That way all your Scriptures are in order and by book. Or for example I put all the short books of the OT in one book with the artist being the book name. On your computer it still stores the ripped tracks as disk 3 of the New Testament.
Be sure and update the software when you get it, I've heard complaints about the down level versions it usually comes with.
Expect to spend 15 to 20 minutes per CD to rip, label, and transfer the music. You can do all three concurrently.
The instructions are all on the CD, no quick start so you have to read manual on screen. They have an excellent knowlege base on their web site.
When you copy music from the player back to a computer it doesn't keep it separated by album. So do that one album at a time.
Bottom line I would recommend this player without hesitation. The only drawback is the case situation; you have to look to third party vendors. randi566@msn.com
18 BEST MP3 PLAYER OUT THERE!!
ok, i got this player a couple of days ago but i already know this thing is so much better than anything else. a couple of my friends have ipods, a 3G and a 4G, and another one has a dell jukebox. when they first saw it they were skeptical but now both realize that mine beats theirs hands down. its very user friendly and easy to use (my friends were amazed at the left handed capability). rio really did a nicce job on the dock too,i have it hooked up to my tv so whenever i play video games, i dont have to listen to that music, i listen to mine. rmm, is also really easy to use and very helpful, you can copy a cd onto the comp, transfer to the rio player and play music off of the computer or rio at the same time.i highly reccommend this to everyone!!!
19 Don't belive the other reviews..the Rio Karma is AMAZING!
I know I am just a kid, but I know more about mp3 players than a lot of people do. I recieved the Rio Karma for my birthday. All of my frinds have Ipods, but this was cheaper and held more songs. (...)
Anyway...I run with my Rio Karma everyday and have even dropped it on the ground a few times, but it still works. It isn't too big to hold and uploading songs takes seconds. It is very user friendly, also. I let one of my friends use it and within minutes, she figured out how to use it w/o the manual. The battery lasts over 10 hours, and charges completely within an hour and a half. My friend owns an Ipod, and her battery is always dead. The sound is great, and it conveniently fits in your pocket. Once, it froze, but it quickly recovered.
I would recomend the Rio Karma to anyone because it has a long battery life, it very good sized, and has TONS of memory for a minimal price. I would not recomend buying ANY mp3 player with under 1 GB of memory, because they are WAY to expensive to hold 150 songs. Your space runs out faster than you think.
I hope this helped!
20 This little thing is a giant
I bought the Rio Karma because I liked the files supported, the price, the size, and the battery life. I had it for one day, my daughter, the audiofile, tried it, asked me for this to replace her IPOD, gave me hers. I bought another Rio Karma for me by the end of the same day. What a surprisingly great little thing!
21 A Good Player - Compared with the iPod (NOT bashing either)
I'm sure you're all sick of these comparisons to the iPod, most of which just say "iPod sucks!" or "don't get this, go for an iPod!" I, however, have used the iPod extensively (and I really DO like it), and have recently purchased a Karma. Thus, I hope this review helps as a real comparison between two fairly similar products (and yes, they ARE similar - they're both 20 gig mp3 players with comparable functions, though the iPod does have some more extras).
Size - Like I said above, the capacity of the Karma and the iPod are the SAME. Really, there's no difference here.
Design - It depends on what you're looking for. Style is, of course, a matter of personal preference, but the general consensus is that the iPod is prettier. It's also slimmer, but the Karma is shorter. Moreover, the Karma is easier to navigate with - it has a highly hand-oriented design, dedicated volume buttons, and both a joystick and a scroll wheel. Both players have a "Hold" switch, so again, no big difference there.
Portability - The iPod definately wins here. The Karma is, like I said, a bit thick, though it is rather short to compensate. Also - there are a million different cases available for the iPod, while you really have to look for someone to clip your Karma to your belt.
Battery Life - The Karma claims to have 15 hours, compared with the iPod's 12. I haven't put that to the test yet, however.
Note - BOTH these players have NON-USER-REPLACABLE batteries - if you want a replacable battery, go with the Creative Zen Xtra (which is a good deal bulkier than either of the two players I'm discussing here).
*Sound* - Here's the kicker where I'm concerned. I have always been (and, honestly, still am) partial to CD's - So, the second I got my mp3 player, I downloaded a few songs to check out the quality (with a pair of decent headphones). I listened to the Karma and to my personal CD player with the SAME pair of headphones, and the sound of the Karma was, if not the same, then very close. The iPod, even with a good pair of headphones (rather than those silly earbuds), cannot compare in that respect.
Reliability - All I have to say is that complaints about hard drive failure are much fewer in number than some of these reviews would have you believe. Also, there is updated firmware, and you typically get a 90-day warranty in case anything goes wrong. Still, I haven't had my Karma that long yet, so I'm in no real position to make a definitive statement. Just don't be scared out of buying this player.
Overall - I really do like this mp3 player. However, like the iPod, 300 dollars for ANY 20 gig mp3 player is just too much. I probably would not have bought it had I not received an amazing deal through another seller. If you buy it off Amazon, however (the current price on this site is 200 dollars), it's definately a good deal. That being said, I highly recommend this player if what you really want is your entire cd collection in the palm of your hand with CD-quality (or almost cd-quality) sound.
If you want neither the iPod nor the Karma, you should also look into the iRiver, Creative Touch, Creative Zen Xtra, or the Dell DJ.
22 DO NOT BUY THIS PLAYER!!!!
I am very dissapointed with this player. I am now on my third player. I sent two back to Rio and I have no intention on sending a third.I was told not to go running with this player because the pounding can damage the hard drive. So I got this player specifically to use while travelling. Songs started to skip after three weeks of use and finally it got to the point where the hour glass stayed in a perpetual spin mode. I could not even shut the player down...had to wait till the battery ran out! For what I paid for this player....what a waste!!! Most likely I will end up throwing it out and purchase a player with a flash and no hard drive.
23 The first player that justifies really high bit rates
The sound on this little puppy is excellent. I'd not bought a digital music player because every time I listened to one, I was acutely aware of how poor it sounded compared to my CD player, and often even compared to FM radio. Then I ran into someone with a Karma. With cheap headphones it sounded way better than most units. I tried my really good traveling headphones on it and it sounded even better. I tried my very nice over the ear headphones that I use to listen to music off my home stereo (with a headphone amp) - it sounded even better.
My wife has an iPod, and the "sounds better stops at good traveling headphones. After that, the better the phones, the more you become aware of the shortcomings.
The upshot - I'm now re-ripping a lot of my music at very high bitrate ogg vorbis or wma, because the sound quality on this player is so good, you can tell. Now my crisis is that I want to wear really first rate headphones all the time...which looks kind of goofy on the subway, if you know what I mean.
24 Cases are available
You can find cases for this particular model (along with many others, including the creative nomad zen nx) at vajacases.com. Just expect to shell out a few to get you own customized case
25 Very satisfying player, but losing the war with iPod
I've had my Karma for about a year now, and have had nothing but good experiences with it. The year included a deployment to the Persian Gulf, and being limited on space it was a great help to burn my whole CD collection to my Rio and leave the CDs at home. I've got about 3500 songs on board now (mostly .wma's) and still have plenty of room for more. I do not agree at all with other reviewers' assertions that it's a fragile player. I dropped mine several times while running aboard ship, and it (literally) never missed a beat. It has very good battery life and a much more user-friendly interface than the iPod. My only beef - or regret, I suppose - is that there's very little in the way of third-party support for it. The entire industry seems to have decided Apple is the winner. I could find an iPod case in aluminum, neoprene, or ostrich skin, but I couldn't find a single case for my Rio. I wound up using a CaseLogic universal PDA case. I've likewise had no luck finding a car charger, yet in every electronics store there's a wall of support gadgets for the little white devil. So I can give the Karma a very strong recommendation, but caveat emptor. It's by far the best of the high-end mp3 players on the market, but you may be buying the next Betamax.
26 Owned for over a year -- No problems
I received this over a year ago for Christmas. I have had no problems whatsoever. I've even dropped it a few times. The only downsides are no case, and the front is a little scratched due to this.
27 2k5 and karma's still going strong
If you're looking for a portable music player and your priority is storage, rather than small size, this is what you should buy. Aside from a few tiny things that make this player imperfect...it's perfect.
**Compatability**
Mp3 isn't the best sounding format, there are lots of others that sound better. If you have a cd you really like, you might consider converting it to FLAC or OGG which sound much better. With the Rio Karma you don't have to worry about not being able to play some of the wierd formats because it can play all sorts of formats that other players can't.
**Storage**
It has enough storage for anyone. No one listens to 20 GB of music and gets bored with it before getting a chance to return home to switch up their beats. Don't think you'll fit whatever number of tracks is advertised though, it just doesn't work out that way, what with varying formats and song lengths.
**Design and Software**
They thought of everything. Tons of features built into it. The program that comes with it to load music on is well-thought out and hasn't crashed on me yet. One annoying thing is that whilst in the docking station, the player keeps charging even after it's fully charged, you can tell because it stays warm. It's not a huge deal, but it doesn't seem great for the player.
**Battery Life**
I haven't been too good about watching the clock so I can't say for certain how long the battery life is, though I'd venture to say it's a little less than advertised. Which is still quite good considering it charges up fast and you don't have to buy batteries eva. And you can charge it up in the docking station or with just the charge cable, for travel purposes, so you don't have to pack the dock.
**Compared to the ipod**
The Ipod is nice. This is very close to the ipod that's of the same GB capacity (or nearest capacity). The main differences are that the karma can play better formats, making it sound better and that it's not as cute as the ipod (so i guess if you're a girly girl you might prefer an ipod). The karma is a little bulkier than the ipod. The ipod is sleek and fits nicely into a pocket whereas the karma is more square, and while of comparable weight (pretty durn light) a little more noticable in the pocket. Though it doesn't bother me because I wear slightly baggy pants. Yes. Slightly baggy.
**Overall**
I bought mine about a year ago when it was $300 and I don't regret my purchase. It's held up nicely and its pretty rugged, i've dropped it a couple times and it's fine. The only reason to not buy this player is if you want to use it for snowboarding or jogging or something, a smaller cheaper player would be better for that. RIP Mac Dre
28 rio bad karma
worked fine for 6 months then started locking up. To unlock I needed to reloaded the firmware. This worked several times but the last attempt to reload didnt work until I slammed the thing down in frustration. Somehow this magically fixed it and I was able to proceed with the firmware reload. Spend the extra money and get an Ipod unless you like frustration.
29 Rio Karma Flaws
I'm 26 yrs old and military, so this is a pretty adult review. I've owned 3 Rio Karma's inside of a month in a half. The good points of the Karma is like every Harddrive MP3 player, you can practically put your life's collection of CD's on it, completely eliminating carrying around CD cases in your car. I had 677 songs on my Karma and I still had 16.2 Gigabytes left on it (notice the verbage "had"). Now...The bad. This thing is about as durable as dropping a newborn, that's the reason I've owned three. One took a bump from about 5 feet, and would no longer boot up past the beginning screen, I called the Rio Help Desk and was told to take it back, it's done. The second one was a replacement from the store for returning the damaged one. This one completely shutdown on me after a morning 1 1/2 hour PT run, in about 30 degree weather, needless to say it went back to the store. The third one hasn't went bad yet, i brought it for my girlfriend and she's had better luck than me with the device. The bad thing is this device is not designed for physical activity, it's harddrive based so it needs to be stable. The device fails the durability test completely, one good drop and your going back to the store with it, the case hasn't enough protection to keep from jarring the harddrive on impact, making it lousy for all us physical activity people. Another thing is this device tends to freeze up at times, but just reset it and it's fine (hopefully you'll have a small enough pin to fit into the hole they provide). Overall I was very impressed in the beginning with the device, but now that I know the flaws, I would consider an IPOD over the Rio Karma any day of the week, I'm very disappointed considering it's a sony product and I always buy sony first. Overall:
Sound: 5
Battery: 5
Display: 5
Accesaries: 4 ( needs a carry case or something )
Durablity: 1
Recommendation: Not this player unless your a couch potato
30 Here we go again
Usually I check out the customer reviews before I buy a product but unfortunately have no control over those buying me Christmas presents. Evidently looking over this section of Amazon.com, my father bought a Rio Karma for me and I was certainly excited to use it upon delivery. But within a week, the device froze for the first time. Before it was a month old, the Karma froze beyond user repair. I haven't contacted customer service yet, but I'm certainly worried having read many of these reviews.
31 Rio should comp the buys
Like the rest of the horror stories. The hard drive issues are so bad that I had to RMA for a second unit three months in. Get this; the second unit died with-in two months. Now first off let me note my use of this unit I would classify as light use. At work or in the car (using an FM modulator) were the only times I really used the unit. I really don't know how this product made it to production. It's weak at best and really needs to go back to R&D. Outside of the hard drive issues here are a few more worth mentioning.
1. The screen covers scratches very easily. In my opinion to easily.
2. WHERE ARE THE ACCESSORIES? No case, no cover, no clip, etc.....
3. The 90 day warranty is a big fat joke. I had to speak with the RMA company several times with issues. They sent back a refurbished unit that looked liked it had been dropped several times. Returning a refurbished unit is expectable just not a ragged out looking unit. I couldn't believe they sent the unit to me looking like that.
In ending I spent full price on a unit that's not worth $50. I WILL NEVER buy a Rio product again.
Like the rest. I-POD here I come.
32 I love this thing!!
As I was reading the reviews, I was very surprised about how many bad reviews there are. I bought my Rio Karma back in June'04 and I have had no problems whatsoever. I don't even think I have had to reboot it ever. The battery life is amazing and it lives up to its 15 hour promise of battery life. I don't use the playlist feature because i perfer to listen to the whole album. Some bands I listen to, like Pink Floyd, have to be listened by the album, not the song. It pays the songs like they were on a CD, where there is no stop in play when listening to albums. The sound quality is great and the amount of time it takes to charge is very short. It takes about 2 hours to have it fully charged starting when the battery was dead. That is a very fast time, I think. To get a partial charge that lasts for a few hours, it only takes about 20 minutes. I have seen and used an IPod before and I will take my Rio Karma anyday of the week. I have dropped this before, once while it was on and once while it was not on. It worked perfectly fine when i dropped it the first time on a tile floor and the second time i dropped it on concrete and it still works fine. This IS the hard drive MP3 player to get and I got mine from Amazon.com.
33 The Best Around
I've made 3 motorcycle trips from New Hampshire to Flordia with this player. It's rugged, dependable and plays for about 18 hours on a charge. I couldn't imagine traveling without it.
This week I did a 800 mile loop through Flordia and South Georgia, the Karma makes those flat miles fun.
34 Rio Karma
The rio karma is actually an excellent Mp3 player
-the harddrive space is unbelieveable, ive put in over 60 cd albums into it and i only took up 2gb, amazing
-it also has many features that are cool, like playlists, rio dj, and the ability to load doccuments and files onto the rio and use it like a thumbdrive(rio taxi).
the problem with the rio is the shell around it...which is a piece of s***.
- a fingernail can put a sizeable scratch into the back
-the players screen is very prone to getting scratches and scrapes
-the shell can't fall more than a foot without the case itself breaking in two (which is a pain to snap together)
rio HAS to make a protective case or a better shell for the karma...
because if you dont treat it like a god and handle it with upmost extreme care, you will break the case.
35 Sorry-- Too Many Failures
I originally got my Karma about a year ago. I researched the available players, and I thought it had the richest feature set at that price point (20GB drive for $270, multiple music formats, etc.). I was ecstatic about it.
For about 3 days.
The unit started crashing like crazy. I returned mine to the store within 10 days (J&R), and they replaced it with a brand new one. I felt okay about this because I also had purchased an extended warranty. I spent the hours neccessary to customize the new unit, upload the songs (did I mention that, if you're somebody who NEEDS all that storage space, replacing music can take a LONG time?), and was merrily on my way.
Until the next crash. As some other users experienced, I actually couldn't get my unit to turn on or off consistently. I had to carry a paper clip with me all the time, and sometimes, even the forced shutdown wouldn't work. Fortunately, my experience with Rio was quite pleasant. Since I called within the regular warranty period, they replaced it with a refurb within about 2 weeks (I did have to pay for posting, but that was it).
Karma #3 was okay, until it, too, started having problems about 2 months later. Rio, to its credit, replaced that one as well, and I'm still using #4. About 3 months ago, the navigation wheel fell off the track, vastly reducing the amount of "music-on-the-fly" you can enjoy. This is because the Karma forces you to move through longs lists of songs one by one if you don't use the scrolling wheel.
Why didn't I use the (extended) warranty to replace it? Because this unit hasn't crashed, frozen, or otherwise died. While I'd love to have a fully functional Karma, I've learned to settle for a functional one. Karma #5 could have been an even worse lemon.
A number of users have posted positive comments, and I'm happy for them--they're lucky. It's also possible that based on the feedback, Rio has addressed some customer concerns. But I still wouldn't recommend the Karma. Why?
Let's suppose Rio has fixed all of the manufacturing defects on this unit:
1) You STILL should pay no more than $250 for it. Comparable units are in this price range, and I bought my Karma for less than $250 LAST YEAR (about $275 with extended warranty).
2) You would be better off with a unit that is less fragile. Extended warranties don't always cover everything, and they add to the cost of the unit. Most importantly, the warrantor has no direct relationship with the manufacturer, and they've already made their money off of you. So they don't have the same incentive to make you happy, and you could get screwed down the line.
3) You should opt for a unit with a removable battery (sorry, iPod). Your rechargable battery will eventually die. People who opt for the big jukebox/hard drive digital players usually use them in the house car, and on their person. When the battery finally dies permanently, replacing it can cost another $100, because the manufacturer has to open the case and replace the battery for you. New players have been released that allow you to replace the battery yourself. Those are a better buy.
4) If possible, look for a unit that is backed up by a strong manufacturer's warranty. Preferably something that guarantees replacement with a NEW (not refubished) unit. I like the fact that with the iPod, your extended warranty is through Apple itself, which makes it more appealing. Hopefully other companies will follow suit.
It's just not reasonable to expect a user to spend $300 on consumer electronics and then have them spend the majority of the time servicing the unit instead of enjoying it. I've read some good things about the latest offerings from Creative Labs, but older reviews show that they haven't built the perfect mousetrap, either.
I understand why the iPod lovers recommend their product so zealously, but some of us want a product that is less proprietary. I'm going to work Karma #4 until it dies, and then I'm stepping up to something better.
UPDATE: Jan 31, 2005--Karma crashing lots..."I can't hold her! She's breaking up! She's breaking up!!!"
Good riddance to bad rubbish
36 Other Reviews Must Be Insiders
Based on the positive reviews I purchase the Rio Karma. It is absolutely horrible. It is very big and heavy for a 20Gb MP3 player. Maybe 2X an iPOD.
It skips very easily with very little motion. Absolutely can't be used during exercise.
It locks up easily. The only way to reset is let the battery run out.
Easily the worst electronics item I have purchased in the last 5 years.
37 Buggy, tempermental and rude tech support
I couldn't stand the Karma. The first one I had froze up after only two months. Since it was still under warranty, the manufacturer sent me another. After about 8 months I started having problems with it again: it was tempermental about downloading music from my pc, it would freeze up, it took too long to switch from one album to another, and then eventually it just seized up and stopped playing. When I called tech support they said that my warranty had expired and tough luck. After two unsuccessful tries, and an unresponsive help line, my recommendation is for interested MP3 buyers to stay away from RIO.
38 Real good MP3 player.
This is a real good MP3 player that I would recommend to everybody. I owned this one for a year and just bought another one for my wife. Great quality, great sound, good battery life. It is easy to use and transfer music using the included software.
39 Bad Karma
Got this player about a year ago and was very happy at first. I have had Rio players in the past but this one had all the features I wanted and it appeared to work very well. Right after the 90 day warranty is when it first locked up. I searched the internet and found that this is a very common problem and wished I had researched this unit before I bought it. Am VERY disappointed that it freezes up all the time but have learned to carry a paper clip with me to reset it. And for anyone interested I am NOT a fan of the Ipod. The Karma would be excellent if only it worked...
40 Good Player
Overall I really liked my Karma, its never crashed and has great sound. My only problems with it were that I found it a little bulky to have around and in the hand, and it fell once and the scroll wheel broke. When this happened I had to get it in the right position and sometimes it would still shut itself off because of this. Also the lack of the case is annoying, I cut a piece out of a Visor screen protector to put on the screen. My only other problem is that it has been stolen. The palyer is also not on the cutting edge in terms of size. It came out over a year ago, and whiel other players have been reduced slightly in size or remodeled, the rio hasn't. However it was a great mp3 player and i was sad to see it gone.
41 An Expensive Paperweight!
Caution! It's a LEMON! I just want to add my 2 cents worth to all the other (very truthful) warnings already out there. I bought a Rio Karma, thinking it was a better priced player than iPod. Which it would be if it didn't turn into a paperweight in less than two days after purchase. For a paperweight it is a bit pricey. So, all in all, I would say it is overpriced.
I returned it once the hard drive starting acting up (one day after purchase) and maddening little whirring sounds started to intrude on my listening pleasure (loud little whirring sounds popping up in the midst of my tracks, every couple minutes, enough to give one a tick in the eye after a while). I'm not an expert, but it seems like a terminal case of bad engineering to me!
Thanks to all the (totally accurate) negative reviews on Amazon, I didn't make the mistake of replacing it with another Rio "bad" Karma. Instead I took a deep breath and bought the higher priced iPod (20GB with docking station and remote included).
I am now in love with my iPod. Happiest purchase of my life! Nothing is perfect, but iPod comes pretty darn close (I've had it for 5 blissful months now, with no problems... I even use it all day at work without any glitches or hitches). I recommend the iPod HIGHLY. I know it is spendy, and accessories add up (but that is what Christmas is for, right?). In spite of the cost, it is well worth it. The iPod works flawlessly, the music quality is wonderful. Who needs the aggravation of bad engineering when trying to enjoy hours of awesome music.
Well, that's my 2 cents worth. A big thank you to all those others who took the trouble to put their warnings on here. It saved me lots of further aggravation, without a doubt.
42 The Best in the Market... when it works
The Rio Karma is the best portable audio player period... when it works. But alas, reliability is terrible.
I've had mine for about 3-4 months. First one died at precisely the 90th day of the 90 day warranty. I call the Rio RMA office in Texas, which btw is not an 800 number so you'll have to make a long-distance call. I was put on hold for about 10 minutes, and since it's a long-distance call it adds insult to injury. When I finally get through I get a customer service rep who can't speak english properly, thus making a aggrevatingly long phone call even longer.
So I'm stuck calling them for 2 weeks straight, getting the runaround each time. They tell me to send proof of purchase, which I do, then nothing happens. I call for 2 weeks and each time they ask for proof of purchase, which I'd sent a 2 weeks earlier. Finally, one day I get a female rep (I guess girls are better at everything after all) and she sorts it all out in one day! It turns out that my proof of purchase has been sitting at the fax machine, unattended, the entire time.
So I finally get a refurbished model. It's a great player again. Gapless playback makes album listening perfect, the sound quality is top notch, and battery life is commendable. But, it just died. And as I speak I'm about to go through the RMA process yet again. Both times the harddrive has died on me, and I'm none too confident about the next one that I get (If the RMA is approved...)
It's a shame that the Rio Karma is such an unreliable player, as if it were more reliable I'd recommend it ful-heartedly. But, given reliability issues, I advise that you stay away.
43 Do NOT buy this player
My Rio karma crashed after the 90 warranty was up. Do not buy from Rio, they do not support their products. I wish I had realized that it came with basically no warranty. This is unacceptable in such an expensive item.
44 One year and still going
I'm really surprised to see all of the negative reviews on the Karma. I've been using mine for about a year and it has performed almost flawlessly. One of the nicest features is the long charge time. I use mine plugged into the aux input of the car stereo and don't bother with a car charger because it will normally last until I reach my destination, even on long trips. I've had it come out of my cup holder a couple of times and skid across the floor with hardly a skip. I also use it as the primary jukebox for my home music system. With the RCA connectors on the docking station plugged into one of the aux inputs I'm good to go. Sure beats fumbling around with all of those CDs. I use the red stick for virtually all of the functions and it is very easy to get used to. The wheel is okay for skipping forward/backward through a track. One of the coolest features of the Karma is the file formats it supports. The Ogg Vorbis is absolutely amazing, the sound is much higher quality at lower bit rates so more tracks fit on the drive. The desktop software is easy to use and will satisfy most music transfers. I have also used iTunes and RealNetworks to pick up a few tracks. Although iTunes forces you to burn/rip to another format. This player will work with just about any system, such as Linux, since it also has a web interface so you can plug it right into your network. I recommend getting the latest firmware upgrade (v1.68) from the Rio site. It takes care of any reset problems (at least it did for me). They also have a good user community site which has been helpful. The Sennheiser MX300s are pretty decent too. So to summarize. Pros: great sound quality, long battery life, multiple formats, easy navigation and ease of use. Cons: questionable quality.
45 the rio karma is janky
I got my Rio last December and by January I had problems with it.
it would freeze up and I would have to wait for the battery to die before I could use it again. I sent it back to the manufacture and 3 months later I had the same problem not to mention that my 6 year old cd player skipped less when snowboarding then the karma. yeah I realize it's a MP3 player but it would hick up after I hit a kicker or rail. I then sent the second one back and I'm now on my third. It to is just as janky as the first two! it freezes at the startup and wont play anything! I HATE THIS RIO KARMA. Damn a pox on Rio for ever making this piece of #@$!. So don't be like me kids save you money & your hair, get an ipod.
Pablo
46 I love this player
I first bought this player last january and had a hard drive crash after just two months, I called RIO's tech support and sent the player back, I had a brand new player within 3 weeks. Since upgrading the firmware to this player it has worked perfectly. I love how easy it is to navigate and all of the accessories which come standard with it, such as the dock. I too looked at Ipods first... but the price, battery life, and the fact that it was an Apple product turned me away. I am very happy with the Karma even though it did malfunction and I would buy one again but would definitely purchase an extended warranty with it. It really is a great player.
47 Don't own but...
I have to question the number of 1-star, hate-filled reviews that all start and end with doom and gloom. It's as if scores of Apple employees were being unofficially recruited to post scathing reviews agains iPod's biggest competition!
48 Really poor customer service
Rio has really poor customer service.
You'll need free long-distance because you'll wait 20 minutes per level as you try to get to someone who knows what they are doing (I never did get to anyone who could actually help). I strongly suspect Rio farms-out CS to the lowest bidder.
Woe unto you if your Rio product is last year's model. Rio is in the selling business not the customer satisfaction business. I'll be looking for a different manufacturer after Christmas when I replace this ... item.
49 Poor Reliability X2
Love the design but my hard drive failed 1 hour after I opened the box, it took months and many phone calls to get a beat up replacement. Customer service has poor communication skills and I had to go through several layers of supervisors to get results. Second device had it's hard drive fail as soon as the waranty expired. Now I'm out of luck, no help from RIO.
50 i'm just not a pod-person
I fell for the Rio Karma for its combination of price, battery life, ogg/flac support, ethernet dock and java management software (works on linux for everything except firmware upgrades), and unique and ergonomic design - and a contrarian nature. A year later I'm still in love with it.
There's a great online community, with regular participation from Rio employees, and I'm really impressed by how much thought they've put into the details of the player. It has superb audio characteristics, gapless playback, a 5-band parametric EQ, a robust filesystem, and an on-board web server. It supports some of the copy protection schemes for online music purchases - not iTunes, of course.
You can use either the USB (on Windows) or ethernet (any operating system) to transfer and organize music or non-music files. It's not a plug-and-play USB hard drive like some other players though - you have to use the software. The ergonomics are great - it's palm-sized, and the major controls are perfectly situated for thumb and index finger. The screen reverses for left-handers. Both player and dock have nifty blue lights.
Minor beefs: You have to dig into a menu to turn shuffle-mode on or off; the Audible audio-book format isn't supported. I've had to "reboot" it a couple of times after freeze-ups, but it's always recovered beautifully without any data loss. I hope they come out with an larger-disk version before I run out of space!
51 Do you listen to songs or albums?
The answer to that question will go a long way in determining what DAP to buy. If you tend to listen to albums more so than simply listening to individual songs, then the Rio Karma is the only player in which you can hear it as intended by the artist. The Rio Karma has gapless playback. What is gapless playback and why should you care? Well, gapless playback is the ability to play an album continuously without artificial space (gaps) between the songs. If you listen to classical music, jazz, or various type of rock music, you undoubtedly have albums in which one song `bleeds' into the next with no gaps intended between the two. If you like live music and have recordings of your favorite artists, there should not be gaps between songs. All other DAPs (outside of the Rio Karma) present gaps between songs - some more than others.
If songs are your thing and gapless doesn't matter or you want an FM receiver or the ability to record, then perhaps this isn't the best player for you.
In my case, I was looking for a player that was gapless, could play FLAC and Ogg Vorbis file formats and was at least 20GB. The Rio Karma was the only player to meet all three requirements. I would have preferred 40GB and a digital out from the base unit (for connection to a stereo), but that total package was not available elsewhere either.
I bought an extended warranty with my unit to be safe, but I have not had a single problem to date. It is a truly wonderful player with outstanding playback quality.
52 Don't even think about it.
I purchased a Rio Karma for my daughter last year for Christmas. It failed in the first thirty days with a software problem Rio's help line in India called "common." It weighs a ton and is not very durable. The track wheel failed several weeks outside the warranty period. The initial warranty period was not extended after we had to ship it in for repairs. I really really wish I had gone with the IPod. Not an impressive effort.
53 Not Necessarily Bad Karma
Well I have had my Karma for a total of about a week. It has already locked up on me. When it does this just remember that there is a reset button on the bottom, where if you push it with a paper clip then it will turn off. Dont try and remove the battery unless you are good at taking strange new things apart and putting them back together. Luckily enough I have had a little experience with this. But to the problem at hand. My Karma locked up on me. I tried to reload the firmware like all of the manuals say, well I couldnt. The player wouldnt be recognized by my computer. So that didnt help. I was reading another review on some other page and found that another guy had this problem and about 75% of the other people that have bought it. All you have to do to get your Karma to work again is beat the crap out of it. Just slam it down on your tabletop and all is well. You have to do it hard enough to get the hard drive unstuck. Because that is basically what is wrong. Your hard drive was stuck in a certain spot and just needed a lil talkin' to. If you have never seen a hard drive apart, all it is a thick CD that spins. So you just need to get it spinning again.
When the player works it is pretty awesome. But you have to get it to work.
54 Great player -- if it works...
After a few months my Karma started developing intermittent problems, requiring frequent resets and one or two reformats of the hard drive. After 10 months it gave out completely. Luckily I'd bought a product replacement plan. I bought an ipod with the refund.
I like the ipod fine, but I liked the Karma better when it was working. Navigation was superior and the parametric equalizer was much better than the ipod presets. Karma's battery life is *much* better than the ipod's, even with the improvements for the ipod 4th generation.
Karma deserves its reputation as the best designed hard drive mp3 player. It's a pity that hard drive malfunctions put a damper on things.
55 Its Failure is Inevitable
I was one of the people who dismissed all the early negative reviews of the Karma as a fluke. I didn't want an Ipod (I think they're ugly and there's something freakish about them, like if each religion adopted an MP3 player, the Ipod would surely belong to Scientology.) I assumed most of the people complaining about their Rio Karma either misused it, or maybe got one of a batch of "bad" builds, or just liked to hear themselves complain. I bought mine in November 2003 and used it quite a bit. Never had any problems. Travelled to Europe and Mexico. Was even thinking about writing a letter to Rio to tell them what a great product I thought it was. AND THEN... after six months it stopped working properly. Started freezing on me incessantly. Then making the clicking sound that so many hundreds of others have complained about. No amount of reformatting or flashing firmware or software upgrades would help. It got so bad it wouldn't even boot. And, of course, by that time it was out of warranty. The Karma is a product that had so much promise, and could have been so great -- and has been ruined by truly substandard build quality, and even worse customer service and support. My guess is that Rio was very shrewd in limiting its warranty to 3 months -- because they'd have a lot of broken Karma to replace. The company should be ashamed to have their name on something so shoddy, and they should be taken to court and forced to compensate all of the people they've ripped off. (Why aren't companies held accountable for this type of behavior?) There's simply no excuse for this. The Karma ended up in the trash, and guess who ended up spending $400 on an Ipod?
56 My First Player and it Rocks
Like someone else said, I must have gotten a good one. I don't know how someone can write a negative review about this player. I have had only a couple lockdown problems but that was before I knew how to use the settings menu. The extremely long battery life is also a plus along with the sheer ease of use. The only downside for me is the absolete lack of accesories made by rio for this product. However, despite the one minor downside, I'll take the Karma over an Ipod any day.
57 DO NOT BUY THIS PRODUCT
When the Rio Karma works, it is fine. Sounds great, has neat features, easy to use, downloaded music from my computer with minimal trouble. However, the caveat is WHEN the Rio Karma works. Within weeks of using it, the player began to lock up without warning. The only way to unlock it is sticking a paper clip, or something similiar, into a small hole on the player. Calls to the maufacturer were useless - they simply said to make sure I had all the newest downloads, both the firmware and the software. I cannot tell you how many times I downloaded the same firmware and software, in hopes it would solve the problems with the player. But it typically would play for 5 or 6 times, them myseriously lock up, giving a variety of messages - bad sector, bad song (even though it had played that same sector/song many time before, and would play it again, once I was able to reboot it). This went on for about 8 months, and it was consistently frustrating; I estimate the player locked up, withuot any rhyme or reason (I didn't drop it, it would happen whether it was moving or still, and it could happen at any time, with any song) about 20 times in the 8 months I had it. I had to carry a paper clip around with me whenever I used it, because invariably, it would lock up. Talking to someone who had an IPOD, they said that in the year they had it, it had locked up only 2 times. Finally, one time it locked up, and would not turn back on. I tried everything in the manual, and on the website. I called the manufacturer, and they had no additional advice; they mostly parroted what was on the website, which didn't help. The customer service representative advised that my disk was "dead" and that I would have to buy a new one, since it was outside the 90 day warrantee. He offered to give me a "refurbished" one for the low low price of $179.95, which is only about 70 bucks cheaper than a new one. I asked the rep why he thought I would buy another one of the same players after mine died after only 8 months - he had no reply to this. Not only would I not buy this product, I would not buy anything else by RIO, or whoever owns the company now. They do not stand behind their product, and if you read other tales of woe here about this product, you will see that this is true.
DO NOT TAKE A CHANCE ON THIS PRODUCT. I know what happened to me does not happen to everyone, but it has happened to too many people, as evidenced by the reviews here, to be a fluke. It's too expensive an investment, and too expensive a product to have a disreputable reputation like this, and it certainly should have more than a 90 day warrantee. Though, since it seemingly doesn't last more than a year for many people, maybe 90 days is all this company can afford to give.
58 Buyer Beware
My third Rio Karma in the last nine months has died. Similar to the previous two, a malfunction with the hard drive (each suffered a fate slightly different than the other). But, nonetheless, the player has locks up in start mode and refuses to initialize (it's a sickening and monotonous click and grind). I have become an expert at the various methods of resetting the player (resetting with paperclick, reinstalling firmware, etc.), to no avail this time. Three strikes and you're out. When this thing worked, I LOVED it, but I just can't deal with the poor track record and will never buy another. I have done a lot of research and understand I am not alone with these issues, so all I can simply say is BUY AT YOUR OWN RISK. The warranty stinks and the unit's tendency to break is too great a hurdle to get over despite the great features. Now I'm looking at Creative's Zen Touch. Hopefully, I'll have better luck.
59 ipod vs karma
if u were like me and are trying to decide between an ipod or rio karma i highly recomend the karma.
-the ipod has 8hrs of batt life the karma has 15 hrs
-the karma can create playlists on and off the computer the ipod can do neither
-the karma has the "rio dj" which allows the player to create custom playlists with different preferences such as random play, genre, age of the song, etc. the ipod can not even do random play
- the karma supports "wav" files the ipod cant (bad news for kazaa users who got an ipod)
-the karma has much better sound quality than the ipod
-the karma is smaller
- and if u like all the nice accessories that the ipod has think about it the prices are insane for what they are selling when u could get a similar product for your karma for a lower price.
- and if u want a smaller player like a mini ipod
-Consider the rio carbon which is the smallest 5gb player out there and it is 1 gb more than the mini also it is lighter and looks better.
- in conclusion the most important thing is EVERYONE HAS THE IPOD BECAUSE THEY ARE DRONES the karma is newer and better
- just tryin to help but the choice is still yours
60 No warranty..........Beware!!!
When I bought this player, I was very happy with it for about 3 months, I ould put all my songs on it and it worked great. Then, one day the software crashed on the player, I called the customer service which is not a 1-800 number then tried to get something out of the person on the other line which most likely was in India. They had no idea of what to do and their only solution was to send back the player with $15 to get a new one!!! I should have bought a IPOD, at least they have a 3 years warranty. This player has a 90 days warranty!!! For something that expensive this is ridiculous!!!
Save time and money, buy a IPOD!!!
61 Sounds great, until you move
After reviewing everything I could get my hands on anout the hard disk jukeboxes, I decided on the Rio Karma. In an effort to avoid going throught the hassle of emails and mailing back a broken player, I decided to go to an established electronics store (the one that ends in City). I'll admit it, the main reason I got the player was to listen to music while I ride my motorcycle. The Karma was great in that I could load a ton of music so I wasn't hearing the same stuff over and over again. And the long battery life was great, beaing that it is really hard to change batteries while riding down the freeway at 60mph. The sound quality, even over small helmet mounted speakers was pretty good, usually loud enough to be heard over the exhaust pipes. The sound quality sitting at a desk indoors was great. My problem is that my motorcycle vibrates, especially at high speeds. The price I pay for riding a Harley, I guess. This is why I kept the player on myself, not mounted to the bike. Even after fixing up one of my jacket chest pockets with anti-vibe materials (Dr. Scholl's gel shoe inserts) the darn thing would lock up needing a paper clip to reset it. This went on for a week until it finally gave up the ghost. Upon start up the RIO logo would spin a couple of times, then there would be an audible 'click' and the machine would turn off. I never dropped it or banged it around. Oh, and that major electronics store? To return anything you have to fill out a form online and ship the item back. Hard disks are great for sitting at a desk, but I'm thinking Flash memory or mini-disc might suit my needs more.
62 Rio worth it
Bought the Rio a few months ago and still enjoying it. Only managed to fill up three of the 20 gigs of storage so far, capacity will not be a problem. The wheel on the side is great for jumping ahead in long playlists. The little red knob, similar to those on laptops, took a little getting used to but I am now a big fan. It's more durable than the reviews have indicated, I dropped mine twice onto hardwood floors (followed with an accidental kick across the room on the second occaison) and it still works with no problems. I typically leave it in my back pocket while working in the yard or around the house and it's survived all those bumps as well. Originally I bought this model because it was compatible with Win98, and lower price than others on the market. Very satisfied, would recommend buying. My brother in law even prefers some of the features compared to his ipod. Especially using the blackberry-esq wheel on the side for menu navigation, vs. the red knob.
63 I must have GOOD Karma
I've been using this player daily for a little less than a year now. I have had very few problems with it. It has locked up a couple of times, but they were partly my own fault. Sometimes it'll slow down a bit while thinking about what it's doing. If you hit the power button or try to make it execute too many commands at once, you may actually cause it to lock.
I take it to the gym, run with it, rode the STP with it...never a single skip. I set it on the treadmill when I run at the gym and it bounces happily along with my steps playing perfectly the whole time. 5-band adjustable graphic EQ is great...very easy to tailor the sound to my taste. I really love the Rio DJ function, I time my breaks at work by it...2 hours of music...break...2 hours of music...lunch...etc.
Best part: I've dropped this thing on the cement, on the treadmill (it fell off the front, landed on the tread, and slammed into the wall behind me), and off my desk at work, but it keeps on playing. I'm having a hard time deciding to replace it, because after having dropped it hard enough for the scroll wheel to break off...tearing the whole thing apart and using superglue to reattach the wheel...dropping it again and irreparably breaking the wheel...IT STILL WORKS!! By this time it's so ugly, though, that I think I'm going to have to move on...I can hardly read the display through all the scratches on the front!
64 Don't buy also had a hard drive failure
Also had a HD failure after 5hr of use. Called Karma and they said too bad, that I could send it back with 230 bucks and they would fix it, some kind of stand behind your product company!!
Anyway unless your willing to have an 300 buck paperweight like me an the other guy buy from a better company.
Mine is going it the trash since I don't like to be reminded of getting ripped off.
65 Beware - HD failure at 179 days!
I bought the Karma after reading several favorable reviews - I could not have been happier until the hard-drive crashed at the start of my week-long vacation recently. The re-set button shut the karma down, but restart did not work. No music on holiday...Even worse I tried to re-install the firm-ware but my computer no longer recognizes the device. I contacted the RIO customer service a week ago - still no response. Basically I have a $300 paperweight. I am moving on to a Creative Zen Touch...
66 This must be bad karma
First, I highly suggest you live in the Contential US if you buy this product. The Rio customer service is good, but their services are limited. So, when your Rio locks up, the only place they will ship to is the USA.
Within two weeks of purchasing this item, the drive froze. I was told that I could have it shipped to somewhere in the USA. Which, currently I am not in the USA. I was highly disappointed with this product. First, to freeze that quickly isnt a good sign. I am now looking for MP3 players with removable memory and removable batteries. This was an expensive lesson for me to learn. Hopefully, you do not make the same mistake.
This product had great potential, decent price for MP3 players, but the problems with it freezing and options with this product are a big letdown.
67 Falls short of a good player
First thing you notice with the Rio Kharma,is the red control laptop style stick. It's uncomfortable to navigate and does not feel natural to use. Rio Player designers should have made the controls similiar to the Rio 600. Whats worse is that it skips when jostled a bit. You can walk and listen, but not for any strenous activity. Flash memory or even CD players fit that purpose. My player locked up, and later the menu button sank below the case and did not return. Right now I have to settle for the replacement from Rio. If I had to do it over again, I would certainly not purchase this player even though the docking station is cool and the RCA jacks to plug in to your stereo is cool, but lets face it, the negatives outway the positives for this player.
68 tech, support, and guarantee policy systems are awful
Rio Karma, MP3 player, by Digital Networks of North America.
Digital Networks North America (DNNA)
2600 San Tomas Expy
Santa Clara, CA 95051-0953
It would be a great product by DNNA (Digital Networks of North America), only if DNNA supports this product properly. Unfortunately their tech, support, and guarantee policy systems are awful and misleading
Better Business Bureau for Silicon Valley, main page bbbsilicon . org If this link doesn't work properly, just click on the company reports button on the main page and fill the name of the company "DNNA", city "SANTA CLARA", state "CA" that will give the complains report for DNNA.
You can also file a complain on line, on the main page by clinking the file complain on line button. It's easy and it's free.
Important to note:
DNNA, supports Rio Karma:
For 90 days only, from the day of purchase (and or counting since the date of order is placed, according to one their customer reps)
After 30 days you'll might have to pay for the repairs of your "new unit" or they might send you a refurbished one and probably in a bad shape.
No guarantee/supports at all without proof of purchase. This is really bad for the do's that bought this unit on second hand and or at ebay.
69 Do Yourself a Favor
This is a great machine if you take the time to upgrade the firmware and the drivers. I found it to be much more reliable and better sounding than the Nomad and the Lyra. The customer support for Rio admittedly sucks, so look to others on the internet to help with problems.
70 HD broken after six months - questionable support
Though initially thrilled with the feature-set: ogg, flac, 20gig, 16 hour battery, ethernet -- my enthusiasm for this company and this product has sunk very low.
Although I never did get the ethernet port to work, I was quite happy with the karma's performance and usability until, after six months, the unit's hard drive said its last hallelujah. Only then did I notice the suspiciously short warranty on this christmas gift. A 90 day warranty on a three hundred dollar mp3 player?
I've kept the firmware up to date and have not abused the Karma, though I have regularly used it while jogging and in the car. Sure, maybe you're not supposed to jog with it, but if the karma is that fragile, who would want it in the first place?
I'm forced to wonder whether Rio knew they were selling an unreliable product.
Update: Just talked with Rio Customer support. They called me back within 24 hours of my support call. Their response was slightly better than other reports I've read, with the following option being extended:
- Return the player with a copy of the receipt and receive a refurbished replacement for $125. The 90-day warranty is renewed for the replacement commencing on the unit's ship-date. No extended warrantly is available for purchase, so if the unit fails again, another replacement must be purchased.
The customer service representative was unable to tell me whether Rio had determined the cause of the many hard-drive failures that plague this product, or whether they had found a solution.
Given that, I'm very reluctant to spend $125 plus shipping to receive another karma that is very likely to suffer the same fate as the first.
I would raise my rating from 1 star to 2 since the support, though very poor, could have been worse.
71 For $250, I can take a few occasional crashes
Isn't it amazing what we expect of technology today. My Karma has frozen a couple of times in a year, but so has my PC, and it cost a lot more. The Karma always rebooted after a 10-15 minutes break. For the money, I like the simplicity and the battery life is much better than the IPOD. It's missing a travelling A/C cord, but other than that it's been a great buy. Coupled with Bose Headphones, I am now looking forward to relaxing on the plane for a change.
72 Do not buy from Rio
What a horrible company! I bought this product thinking I would be able to transfer the music from the program I used for my Rio Riot. No such luck. The two units were incompatible. I, too, had problems with the hard drive crashing. Then, the dial on the side broke off through normal use. I wrote to Rio twice and complained about their product and never received a reply. I wrote one last time and told them I would let everyone know not to purchase their products. So, here it is- Do not buy a Rio!!!
73 There are other things in life than IPODs
So your friend has an IPOD, you saw one at an Apple store or whatever, and you want one too. Well, LOOK AROUND and take into consireration the RIO KARMA. It is a GREAT player, great volume, great features, great sofware to choose what to play and how, very comfortable commands including the click-wheel AND it plays formats for PC lovers, MAC lovers AND LINUX lovers. What else do you want?
Well, if I was asking myself that question, I want 2 or 3 years to go by and all players with more than 10 GBs to get LIGHTER, but oh well, we are in the year 2004.......
Look around for prices, there are VERY good prices at "not very well known online stores". Unfortunately, I cannot tell you where I got mine, but I guess I can tell you it was brand new, $235 and not from any major online store, though it WAS an online store, SO LOOK AROUND, by the time you read this, I am sure you will be able to find probably even better prices than the ones I got.
I am not going to tell you about the spects of this MP3 player since you can find that anywhere, though I will tell you that the base that comes with the player is very comfortable, looks cool and it is included with your player, you do not have to pay extra or buy an "upgrated" product for it.
You can use USB 2.0 to transfer files to the player, you know how amazingly fast that is.
20 GBs MP3 player + cool looking base + good controls + good earphones - 65u$s - Apple = RIO KARMA
So, if you are reading this in the year 2004, seriously consider the RIO KARMA before going ahead and buying an IPOD.
If you are reading this in the year 2006 or 2014, go look for
something else, this MP3 player (and all 2001-2004 MP3 players) are old.
74 Buyer beware!
I read a lot about hard drive MP3's before buying the Rio Karma in Dec 2003 for my son for Christmas. At that time, there was a lot of discussion online about systemic hard drive failures, but I chose to ignore that information because the product sounded so good & I figured Rio would most likely be anxious to fix such a wide-spread problem. I was mistaken. The first time my son's Rio Karma died was a month after Christmas. In that case, JR Computer & Music World (the Amazon vendor) fixed it after we sent it in for service, but of course we lost a month of use and had to reload all the music back into it. Now, only 6 months later, it has once again completely died, so we basically got only about 7 months of use out of it. This week, I called Rio, and after waiting on hold for an hour or more and speaking with several "supervisors", they insisted that I should have known that it only had a 90 day warranty and there was nothing I could do except pay $175 to get it fixed. I asked to speak to the next level of supervisor and was informed that this supervisor was in a meeting, but would "definitely" call me back "within 24 hours". I have never received any such call. My point to them would have been that if a company has a systemic problem with a product like Rio has and is trying to build market share against iPod, that they should be bending over backwards to help out loyal customers by going above the letter of the so called warranty. But that is obviously not Rio's mentality. They simply don't care. They want your money & don't care at all about customer service or loyalty. Although I had planned to buy the new Rio Carbon for myself, I will never purchase another Rio product again, unless they begin to understand customer service and loyalty. This is unfortunate, because I do think the product is superior, WHEN IT ACTUALLY WORKS!
75 MP3 player with WORST quality
If you want your player lasts over 3 month, DON'T BUY this piece of junk!!
I know, this player looks pretty good on paper with some good reviews from various magazines. But realize this, these reviewers or these happy shoppers wrote their reviews right after they started using the player! I felt great the first 3 months too, with the seemingly nice UI, networking capability and all that.
But after 3 months, it became a total piece of crap!! I needed to bring a paper clip with me to the gym because this junk locked up every few minutes! You can't simply turn off the power when it locked up. NO! I need to bend the paper clip and use it to poke the tiny reset hole to reset that junk, again and again during my running!
By fourth month, the player battery can't even maintain 1/3 even I charged it all night long. When I call the customer support, I realized this "great" product only have 90-day warranty. The support at Rio literally told me you are on your own since already over 90 days!
Bottom-line is, this is a flashy product with the WORST QUALITY to back it up. Rio people understand that so they only have 90-day warranty for this junk, otherwise they will be flooded with return requests!
76 Worst Mp3 Player ever
I have this player, in the course of the last 8 months it has been broken 6 months. I had to have it replacecd twice and both replacements crashed irreparably as well. Customer service at Rio is a joke, they say they will call to rectify the problem but they never do, they don't even have an 800 number. At the end of the day don't buy this $300 paper weight
77 Great Player-I Have Had No Problems With It
I bought the Karma used from Ebay for $200.00, it was two months old. I have had no problems with it at all. I have been using it heavily for about 6 months. The amp is very powerful, the sound quality excellent, music is easy to find, playlists are easy to make, the rechargeable batteries seem to last a very long time.
I have read all of the negative reviews, I have had occasion to use their tech support to ask a few questions, and found them competent, and very helpful.
I don't know why people are having such a bad experience with it, from reading the reviews it sounds like they are all breaking after a few months of use.
All I know is that Rio is now manufactured by DNNA which is a division of Denon-Marantz one of the top tier suppliers of audio equipment.
Sonicblue the original mfr. of Rio products was a nightmare to deal with, but they are long gone.
Time will tell , I guess, how good this product turns out to be.
78 Solid, but just isn't up to everyday living
After becoming sick & tired of burning mp3 disc after disc for my portable CD player I decided to take the plunge and invest in a HDD player. I was stuck between the Rio Karma and the iRiver iHP-120. After much research and standing in the store for quite awhile, I walked away with a Rio Karma. At first I was quite enthused with the unit, as I am with any new toy...but after only a few days I started to notice its shortcomings.
The Good:
LEARNING CURVE - Easiest piece of hardware to operate I've ever seen. The navigation and menu system are excellent and the controls are intuitive.
A SIGHT FOR SORE EYES - The screen on the unit is large and uncluttered. All the necessary info is right there.
NO PLACE LIKE HOME - The included docking station is awesome. Not only does it provide an easy hookup to your computer and a power source, it also provides an output to your home stereo. And the base has funky blue lighting that can pulse to your music!
NEVER MISS A BEAT - Changing songs is instantaneous. There's no pause in between at all due to some excellent memory management.
WING-IT - Create playlists and delete content without the need for a PC. Or if you're lazy, let the Rio DJ handle the playlists for you. Also, there are a variety of EQ presets and a five-band parametric EQ to customize the sound to your liking.
The Bad:
JUST DON'T DROP IT! - The player has some good heft and feels solid, but also fragile at the same time. I've heard a lot of complaints about hard disk problems as well. Also, the screen looks as if it wouldn't be that difficult to scratch.
ACCESSORIES? - Rio includes a cloth case with the player which is TOTALLY USELESS! Who would ever store their player in a cloth case? Also, there is a connection for an in-line remote, but I don't think there are plans to introduce one, although it would have been nice. I can't comment on the included earbuds as I never bothered taking them out of the box, opting instead for my trusty Sony MDR-EX71SL's.
ALL THAT SPACE... - 20 gigs is a lot. I doubt I'd ever fill it up entirely with music, so I'd like to put it to good use for other files. Unfortunately, the Karma doesn't allow for drag and drop transfers. However, you can download a utility called RioTaxi that will transfer other file types onboard but you cannot transfer these files to another computer without RioTaxi.
ORGANIZATION 101 - If your ID3 tags aren't up to snuff, you might have a hard time finding that specific song as the player organizes all files by their tags.
The Ugly:
No glaring problems that I've come across, but I'll remind you that many people have had drive problems with this unit. Personally I haven't experienced any problems though.
The Bottom Line:
While the Karma has a lot going for it, it just doesn't seem cut out for the daily bump & grind. Maybe if you're just planning to keep it in its dock all the time, then by all means, buy it. However, what would be the point of that? Personally, I think the iRiver iHP-120 has better functionality and loads more features (such as an in-line remote, FM tuner & voice recording) for a only a small increase in price.
79 Buyer Beware
This is a great player while it works, which isn't long. 7 months of sitting next to my stereo, not being tossed around in a backpack, not being subjected to wear and tear while working out, not being dropped EVER, and the thing up and dies on me. One minute it was playing, the next minute frozen and buzzing like an electric razor. I called Rio's "tech support" which is completely useless and frustrating. One tech actually asked me if I had tried changing the batteries! Another told me the solution to my problem was holding the player face down in my hand and beating on it until it worked...I'm not making this up. After realizing that it was broken beyond repair and that the hardrive had failed, Rio's only offering to me was to charge me $175 for a "refurbished" unit, or 10% off a new unit, after I'd already paid $350 for my original unit that lasted all of 7 months. If you think this is just an angry reveiw of someone who is in the minority of Rio Karma buyers, go to www.riovolution.com. This is a website that is supposed to be pro-Rio yet almost everyone on the site is discussing how many times their Rio froze, how many different players they've had to go through, and how hard they had to beat it to get it working again. Don't waste your money on this junk. Trust me.
80 A great player, so far...
I waited to write a review, to see how well the unit worked over the first few months of ownership. The unit was shipped to me from a previous owner (so it had some use before I started using it) in an uncushioned box. The player was only protected by its felt carrying case and the cables that come with the player - hence the word "uncushioned". It made the trip fine with no startup problems.
I've had the unit for a couple of months now and it works fine. I take extra care to not impact the unit very much, and I don't take it outside with me, or take it to the gym or anything like that. I treat it like a would treat any other computer component. Other people have had trouble with the unit from the start, or in the first week of ownership. I have not seen similiar issues with my unit.
The software works great, as long as you don't rename songs on the unit or computer after synchronizing, because then the software will re-load the tracks with the new names and you will have duplicates. Also, just run the software on one computer to avoid other duplication problems (tried it on a home computer and a work computer - bad idea).
The docking unit works great with my stereo, and I've successfully made playlists and RioDJ sets (recently played tracks, forgotten tracks, 1980s tracks, etc.) I recommend a basic car casette adapter like a Panasonic which worked fine in both a Jetta and a Mercury Cougar.
I only give the unit a "4" rating, rather than a "5" rating, because the problems that some have had with this unit make me leary about how long it might actually be functional. Other than that, I give it high marks for both price, design, and functionality.
81 Horrible Company!!!
Bought one of this company's mp3 players and I lost my cord which connects it to the computer. I ordered a replacement and waited WEEKS to get it despite the next day air priority shipping. For over a week they showed that it was ready to ship, but they still didn't send it out. If you buy this item, pray you never have to replace a part!
82 Wont last long
I have purchased 2 Rios in the course of 2 years because they both BROKE. With all the rubber
casing you would think one drop on a rug would not kill the player. But it did. I had the Rio
Nitrus and recently (3 months) purchased the Karma. They're now both in MP3 player hell. If
you want something that will last, Rio products are not the one.
83 Horrible support
The warranty is 90 days. I bought mine in December '03, and the power button stopped working in May.
I called customer support, spoke to some nice people at an Indian call center who explained that my only option, because it was after the 90 day warranty period, was for me to buy a refurbished unit for $175. I decided not to sink more money into a company that has a 90 day warranty, will not perform out of warranty service, and does not have representatives of the company with whom I can speak.
I'm certain that my problem can be fixed easily, but they won't do it. I really liked the Rio Karma, but I am going to buy something else. Rio will not get any more of my money.
84 Better than over-rated iPod, but buy extended warranty!
This player is better in each aspect then the iPod. It has a much better sound quality, much wider range of EQ functions, easier navigation, better playlist management, the one-of-a-kind Rio DJ(which is the player's best function), better dock, easier software, better battery life, and better visualization. The only thing it may not be better than the iPod at is its look, but that has nothing to do with playing mp3s.
The Rio DJ is the best function out of all functions in all players on the market. It generates playlists based on which option you choose. For example, the Entertain Me! option makes a playlist of your most played songs. The Memory Lane option makes a playlists of songs before a date you choose. Deja Vu makes a playlist of the most recently played songs. There are much more options to it as well.
The dock is neat, it glows blue and pulses to the music while you play a song. Plus it has ethernet and line-out ports for networking and hooking up to your stereo.
The player is quite small, about the height of 3 quarters. It's the smallest 20GB player I know of. It is the thickest though, so keep that in mind.
But if you do buy this, as with all mp3 players and other digital devices, it is very possible that you will run into problems, like hard drive malfunction, song transfer problems, or the player just gets stuck and freezese. With an extended warranty from a store, all you have to do is bring it to the counter and you get a new one. If you don't, if the player is within the small 90 day warranty, you have to send it in for who knows how long to get a refurbished unit. If it is outside the 90 day warranty, you have yourself a paperweight. So dish out the extra 40 bucks on the extended warranty when you buy it.
In all, if this player was marketed and advertised like the iPod is, it would be the most popular player out there. The iPod is over rated and has poor sound quality and only very basic features. The Karma contains much more.
85 BAD KARMA - This product will come back to haunt RIO
I am just returning my THIRD Rio Karma in seven weeks. Each one arrives, I try to load software, make it though 3 or 4 songs and it locks up. When I call tech support -- they put me through a diagnostic that reports back on screen: BAD KARMA.
Even though I contacted them about the problem IMMEDIATELY, by the time I shipped it back and it came back to me -- it was over 30 days and then they would not refund my money. They keep sending me refurbished defective units. I feel ripped off -- and its no small amount of money. If you've had any success either:
- in getting yours to work
- in gettting your money back
Please let me know at simon@rockefeller.edu
Thanks,
86 An awesome product with a robust feature set
As you can see from the four stars I gave the Rio Karma, I think there is a lot they got right in the product. But lets get the bad stuff out of the way. Don't worry, it won't take long.
1) The scroll wheel is too easy to bump. While music is playing, the scroll wheel acts as a forward/reverse. It is far to easy to nudge it accidentally and suddenly skip to somewhere else in the song. You can, of course, avoid this by locking down all the controls.
2) Battery life is not the 14 hours claimed. The most I have gotten is 10 hours, and that was with the volume on 1/4 to 1/3 the maximum level, and with just letting the player sit in its cradle and crank through through a massive playlist uninterrupted for hours at a time. In regular daily use, when I am often switching playlists, pausing, adjusting the volume, etc, I got less than 8 hours.
3) If you change the tags for your music on your PC, the Rio software doesn't update your player with the new data when you sync. I am not sure if I am overlooking something, but I think the only alternative is to re-transfer the music to the player.
4) There is a small hair in the upper-left corner under the clear plastic case protecting the screen. While this hardly impacts the normal operation of the device, it reflects poorly on their quality control.
5) No belt clip/case. There is a cloth pouch, but this thing really needs a nice little case or at least a solid belt clip like they included with the Cali.
6) The capacity is advertised as 20 gigabytes but is actually about 18.5 gig. I'm not sure how they can get away with that, but I guess it's common practice to round up, way up, in the hard drive industry.
Each of those isn't terribly annoying in and of themselves, but added together they made me feel that there is still room for improvement in the Karma design, and therefore it "only" gets four stars.
But there is much to like about the Karma, which I found to be the most full-featured, reasonably priced, and best-looking player on the market, after the iPod, of course. Here are the main things I've liked:
1) The scroll wheel. But wait, didn't I just say that this thing was annoying? Yes, when you accidentally bump it during playback. But for normal operation it is fantastic for skipping through a song or for navigating menus and playlists.
2) The "Rio stick". Some say the little red joystick is gimmicky but I find in eminently useable and practical. Sometimes it can be tricky to nudge it in the proper direction, but on the whole it's a nicely executed, intuitive feature.
3) The deep menus. The software on the Rio Karma is packed with an amazing number of features. Other reviewers have posted very detailed explanations of the menus that I won't repeat here, but suffice it to say that they are very intuitive. You will probably spend the first few days with your device poking around all the options to figure out exactly what they do. That said, all the features are pretty useful and nothing seems thrown in just for the sake of having another feature.
4) The Rio music manager software. I was very skeptical of this because I've had bad experiences with other proprietary transfer programs. But the Rio software is simple and unintrusive, though I wish it did gave users the ability to edit song info directly, rather than having to rescan for changes implemented through your main music player.
5) Lots of cables. Of course you get the standard USB cable, but you also get a nice, sturdy cradle with RCA cables for plugging into your stereo. There is also an ethernet cable. These things are cheap enough to buy separately, but good for Rio for including them out of the box.
6) Overall build quality. Despite the tiny hair under the screen, the device is solidly built. It feels solid and sturdy in my hand, and the buttons, joystick and scroll wheel seem robust as well. I'm not suggesting it has been ruggedized or can take serious knocks, but I'm not worried at all that some random bit is going to come loose or break.
You might have noticed I haven't said much about the styling. Either you will like it our you won't, but I can say that while the Karma is thick, it is plenty compact, is sturdily built, and is ergonomic and easy to use. Sure, it's not as sexy as an iPod (what is?) but I happen to like its no-nonsense design. If the iPod is sleek Porsche, this thing is a Jeep -- boxier and uglier, sure, but capable of doing a bit more.
87 Rio Karma is a great DAP!
I know there are a lot of people posting hate for the Karma due to hard drive issues. But guess what? The hard drive is not made by Rio. It's a Hitachi Hard Drive. The Karma itself is fantastic! I've had mine for over 6 months and it's great. It is MUCH better than an iPod. I did a lot of research before buying a DAP. In my research I found that the Karma has a much better battery life, gapless playback (the ipod will insert a gap between songs. Annoying if you are into live recordings...), ogg, flac, wma, support, and value! The price difference alone is amazing enough. I think the Karma sounds better, has a better interface, and I think it looks better than the iPod. I know I am in the minority here, but I think the iPod just looks too "girly" in the white. And the ipod mini in the pastels? No thanks. This player is fantastic and I am so glad I have one.
88 Failed after 6 months
I liked everything about this unit except that, six months after I bought it, the headphone jack became intermittent. Tried cleaning, different headphones - no improvement. Rio charges close to $200 for trade-in swap for refurbished unit. So I was out of options. Bought a service contract next time, and went with an iPod, mainly because of the wider range of accessories available (got a combo charger and FM transmitter for my car that connected through the docking port).
89 Karma for the junkheap
My unit lasted for six months! Guess I should be happy, given some of the other track records. If you are going to manufacture a cheesy product, stand up to the plate and give it a decent warranty. I got the same song and dance....Hard Drive is corrupt...BAD KARMA...give us some more money and we'll send you a used one. DO NOT BUY A RIO! Waste of money.
90 Karma is Crap
Do not waste time & money on this product or vendor. I have owned & used Archos, Treo and several other hard drive based MP3 players and the Karma is by far the worst product. So bad that I have had to attach a paperclip to my headphone cable in order to reboot the unit every 10 to 12 minutes of use!!!! After 5 months the HD has finally crashed!!! Rio wants to charge me another $180 for a refurbished one (yea... right). Goodguys online gave me an RMA# 10 days after I purchased it but never sent instructions on where to return and now they are not willing to take it back. They realize it is a piece of crap as well!! 2 vendors have just lost a customer!
91 Hard disk failure of the RIO KARMA!!!
I purchased this mp3 player in March 2004. I had hard disk failure in 9 weeks. I contacted Rio which replaced my Karma for free with a REFURBISHED UNIT!!! The refurbished unit FAILED IN LESS THAN 1 MONTH!!! I am sending it back for replacement #2. If this replacement fails, I am purchasing a Dell Jukebox.
This is truly frustrating since I must continue to reload my CD's and other mp3's to the Karma.
Do not purchase this unit unless you have $300 to burn!!!!
92 Has a 3 months life
The warranty is only 3 months and thats because the life of this product is only expected to be 3 months
I always thought before that those complaining lied but now after 3 months my Rio Karma player is dead.
If you want to buy it then you must get an extended warranty.
Besides this it would be the ultimate DAP player if it had a LCD remote so you the user would not be forced to take the player out of your pocket/bag/wherever to change something simple as volume or to go onto next song.
Its database and how it stores the music files is the great, well as long you have proper ID tags on your files which I do.
I was a part of beta testing of the firmware and the newest firmware should stop MOST HD failures. However there are several design flaws such as the scroll wheel.
93 **AVOID THIS PLAYER** FAILED AFTER 1 MONTH !
***PLEASE SEE USER REVIEWS ON OTHER WEBSITES AND CHECK OUT RIO AUDIO FORUMS ABOUT HDD INTEGRITY ISSUES, FAULTY ITEM***
After researching tech reviews and magazine articles I decided to choose the Karma over the iPod for two reasons, 1) bigger HDD for less money and 2) Support for more formats. I am a student so the money issue was probably the biggest draw.
I purchased my Karma with alot of anticipation. Right after I bought it I happened across "USER reviews" on CNET.com which bashed the player. Several of those reviews mentioned an issue with HDD integrity while others lambasted the customer service and tech support. Undaunted I surfed my way over to the official website to scour their FAQ list. What I found were their User Forums. So I started reasearching. Sure enough, there were more than several mentions about the HDD that would, for seemingly no reason, lock-up or just fail completly, all of which started out the same, a skip here and there, and then FAILURE. I dismissed this thinking to myself that these people were probably just unreasonably hard on their players and treated them too rough. I appreciate my stuff so I, of course, would not do that.
I recieved my player not to long after I ordered it and was extremely happy. It is well designed, easy to use, and sounded great. Then on July 8th, EXACTLY 1 month to the day I bought the player the HDD failed. BAD KARMA the screen read. Based on what I had read on the User Forums what I needed to do was contact tech support and request an RMA. The thread also mentioned that needed to specify that I would want a new player or they would only send me a REFURBISHED one. When on the phone with the support tech. I mentioned this and he told me that was impossible, and that I would only recieve a refurb. unit. I corrected him by stating that I was still covered under the 90 day manufacturers warranty so I could still request a brand new player. He then informed me that there is a provision in the warranty that states if I purchase the player from an outside vendor, not RIO AUDIO, that the unit would need to fail within 30 days, at which point, I should contact the vendor I purchased the player from and request a new one. In the event that they do not replace it, only then would RIO AUDIO provide me with a new player at the "DISCRETION OF THE COMPANY". Barring this, my 90 day warranty only entitles me to a REFURB. unit. I was so ticked off I actually pulled out the warrenty card that came w/ the player to find this "PROVISION", it was NOWHERE to be found. I would not except this and took it up to a 2nd Teir supervisor, Sydney, who curtly told me that under NO circumstances would they issue me a new unit.
After an hour of calming down I decided to cut my losses and just go for a REFURB. Again, I turned to the User Forums for guidance, at which point I started to find many threads about how bad their RMA follow up is.
So now I'm just going to buy an iPod, hope to recieve my refurb. in less than 2 months, and sell it on eBay when I do and eat the loss.
SO PLEASE, **AVIOD** THE RIO KARMA AT ALL COSTS. SAVE YOURSELF MONEY, TIME, AND A WHOLE LOT OF AGGRAVATION!!
94 Yet another hard drive failure
I will add my own hard drive failure story to the numerous other reviews on this site since I just threw mine in the trash today. It happened, of course, after the 90 day waranty period, and I echo previous sentiment about poor/useless customer support. This product had a lot of potential and was great when it worked. I will steer clear of anything by Rio in the future. For anyone considering this product, look closely at all the reviews and note the hard drive failure trend--then look for another player.
95 Very Poor Quality/Very Poor Customer Svc/ 3mo warranty
This company is unreal--3 month warranty-ours froze up and rebooted for the 1st three months so we didn't complain. After the 3 month warranty period was over it froze and will not restart at all--they are basically charging us another $150-$175 dollars for their crappy quality product. There is no toll free number for customer svc or tech support. They are not open on the weekends for cs/tech support. Their people parrot that the warranty is only 3 months and there is nothing they can do for you--Next time I am buying a Dell with a 1 year warrenty--and a toll free number--I WILL NEVER BUY A RIO or RECOMEND A BAD RIO KARMA PRODUCT to anyone ever!!!!!!!
96 Dead after 4 months -- was fun while it lasted
I really enjoyed this device when it was working, and thought the Rio Music Manager software was well done. Ripping CDs and synchronization worked very well. Only problem I ever had was with purchased downloaded music in the highest bit rate WMA format, with the workaround of burning a CD from it and then ripping that. Device worked fine in car and on the rack of treadmill in the gym. Unfortunately, machine no longer operates properly 1 month after warranty expired. It barely boots up, requires constant hard reset, and now is totally dead as it can't load firmware anymore. I had no problem reaching customer service but they want $175 to send me a refurbished unit. I've seen a lot of similar experiences in user forums so I would steer clear of this unit unless you really enjoy the gamble!
97 This product is a nightmare
I bought this product in December of 2003 as a Xmas gift for my roommate. After 3 weeks, the product stopped functioning. The Rio would boot, but couldn't get past the start-up. So, I decided to exchange it since I was within the 30 day Amazon guarantee. What does Amazon do? They send me another Rio, but it looks like it was used and returned. Anyway, instead of making more hassle for myself, I decide to keep it. In June, this Rio breaks. Same problem: HARDDRIVE DOESN'T FINISH BOOTING. This player is the biggest nightmare. No wonder Rio only gives its customers a 90 day warranty. They know this player is going to break in 6 months! Avoid it at all costs. I really don't want an iPod (because it does not play ogg), but I strongly advise against the Rio Karma. The customer service there is horrible too. They told me that it would cost $175 to get it fixed. Now, if more than one customer is having the same problem with the harddrive, you think they would assume responsibility for their crappy product.
98 TOTAL CRAP
THE ABOVE REVIEWER HAD HARD DRIVE PROBLEMS. I DID TOO AFTER 6 MONTHS
I CAN'T GET MINE REPLACED AFTER THE FLIMSY 90 DAY WARRANTY.
THIS PLAYER WAS A COMPLETE WASTE OF MY TIME. GIMME AN IPOD.
99 Would have been tremendous.....
If the drives weren't so flaky. I ordered two of these and am returing them both. The both became unstable after less than a week of use. The internal hard drive could be heard clicking in a rhythmic fashion as the heads clanked against the platter. Great concept, but poor execution.
100 Great Features
I forget exactly when I bought my Karma, but I've had it for at least 8 months. Same Karma, never had to take it to the shop. Just make sure you treat it like what it is -- a portable hard drive. Hard drives don't deal well with hard knocks or freezing temperatures.
The Karma's internal menu features are excellent.
You can switch playlists or tell it to start playing all titles from a single artist or all titles from a single CD or just individual songs using the little red joystick.
You can build, delete and edit playlists on the Rio itself (rather than having to import from your computer). It's very simple to navigate your loaded songs and pick out the ones you want on the playlist. Then the playlist is stored and ready to go whenever you want to hear that particular grouping of songs again.
There's also a "Rio DJ" mode where you can tell it how much time you want to fill and it will randomly select a group of songs to fit that amount of time.
One neat feature in the Rio will let you display a...not sure what the word is...sort of line graph of a song. As it plays the song it will graph out the volume levels and remember it, so you can see it next time you play the song. This is very handy when combined with the next feature...
The little dial on the upper right is possibly my favorite feature. It's the fast-forward/rewind dial. When you have that line graph turned on, this dial is ideal for 1) skipping past the boring parts 2) skipping the 3 minutes of silence to the "hidden track" that some artists seem to like to do 3) doing quick rewinds to re-listen to that bit where you're trying to figure out what the vocalist is saying 4) just doing a partial rewind to listen to your favorite bit over and over. With the line graph showing you where the beat is you can easily skip right to where you want to go.
The "shuffle play" seems to have an interesting hidden feature as well. It will tend to give priority to songs you haven't listned to in a long time. So if you have a playlist with 5 of 6 CD's in it and you've been listening to that a lot, when you switch it to shuffleplay all 6 CD's, that one you haven't heard in a while will tend to shuffle it's way to the top of the list. By the same token, newly loaded songs will tend to shuffle their way to the top of the list as well, until you've heard them.
Anyway, great storage, great features. You'd be wise to get the warrenty but that's just a fact of portable hard drives. I don't think you'll find that the Karma's reliability is any different than any other internal hard drive player. The smaller Flash-ROM players will be more reliable because they're hard wired, but they also have far less memory, requiring you to swap music a lot. With 20 gigs, the Rio is a load-and-forget device, you can just keep putting more and more music on there without filling it up. 20 gigs is hundreds of CD's.
I picked up a tape adapter so I can use the Rio in my car. The battery life is so long (like 15 hours between charges) that there's no point in having a power adapter. So it's like having a portable 300-disk CD changer. My huge "book of CDs" is packed away in a box somewhere cause I never need the actual CD anymore.
Just treat it with care and it'll do you right!
