Rio Cali user reviews (256MB)

4.0 stars

"very satisfied with this little guy" on November 26, 2005 by beelissa

Pros: durable, flexible, good sound

Cons: some problems with headphone jack

Summary: I bought this on eBay, refurbished. It came with everything that the new one comes with -- really nice ear phones that hook over your ears, a "carrying case" which is actually a sort of sleeve that covers the back and sides and attaches a belt clip, and a velcro arm strap that fits through the belt clip. It runs for many hours on one AAA battery, and has a nice display. The best feature, IMO, is the SD slot -- that makes it very expandable. The only problem I've had is that sometimes you don't hear sound -- when it first happened I thought it was broken, but I fiddled with the headphone jack and I could hear it again. After more experience I have found that sometimes the carrying sleeve gets in the way of how the head/ear phones plug in, and sometimes it doesn't connect right, for some reason. This doesn't happen often, and now that I know how to fix it, it isn't a problem. It doesn't happen when I am not using the carrying sleeve, and is easy to fix when I am, just push in hard and sort of twist the end of the jack plug. I am thinking of buying more of these for gifts.

1.0 stars

"blows. display failed after 2 months. get something from apple." on February 17, 2005

Pros: well, it plays music. i can't really say anything about the other features since the display failed 2 months after i bought it. the case looks interesting. i bought this thing because about 2 years ago, it was the only mp3 player with reasonable storage

Cons: i read through a bunch of reviews on this site and it seemed basically positive. one day, after two months of use, the disply stopped working. i can sort of warp the case and it sometimes it comes to life, but basically its dead. it still plays music, but

0.5 stars

"Watch the customer service..." on January 12, 2005

Pros: It worked sometimes...

Cons: CUSTOMER SERVICE. After the player kept resetting itself after pushing play, I continually contacted online support and received replies that were childish and ridiculous. I had to eventually call them and after being on the phone with them for over 30

2.0 stars

"Zero customer service" on January 12, 2005

Pros: Nice shape and size, comfortable arm band. The Rio Music Manager is better than some others. I like the headphones.

Cons: I could get ZERO customer service from Rio. Somehow when I was opening the unit and trying to put it in the arm band, the settings were switched to Japanese text. Since I can't read Japanese, I couldn't switch it back to English. I sent three emails via