Continued:

Features wise, the Rio Carbon is quite decent, although its features are nothing compared to iRiver T10 series. One of the things that were missing was the FM tuner. From our experience with Rio’s Sport Forge flash audio player, we noticed that the quality of the FM tuner was mediocre at best. Therefore, we concluded that it’s better if Rio skip this feature altogether instead of implementing something that was ultimately going to disappoint and reduce the value of the player in the market. From that perspective, we are actually glad that Rio decided to leave this feature off. Another thing that bothered us was the voice recording capability. Although Rio has implemented the feature, due to the microphone’s size and specifications, it’s not a feature that we would want to use for critical note-taking tasks where sub par audio quality can lead to dissatisfaction.

One of the other minor errors we noted was with the case. Unfortunately, the case covers the controls of the Rio Carbon MP3 player, which is annoying when you are trying to navigate through the menus. The performance of the features is not encouraging, but the audio quality is definitely as comparable to Apple’s iPod Mini, which comes in direct competition against the Rio Carbon.

We prefer the "pearl" exterior over the gray one simply because it’s more exuberant, and the red LED lights in the background are far more attractive on the Pearl Carbon than its gray counterpart. Furthermore, both the regular Rio Carbon and the special Pearl Edition cost the same at $199.99. If are looking for an alternative against the iPod Mini, be sure to check out Rio’s Carbon, much preferably the Rio Carbon: Special Pearl Edition.