Product Analysis:

The Rio Forge Sport comes in three colors depending upon the size: red – 128MB, gray – 256MB, blue – 512MB. The size of the player is very small and sleek, as stated earlier in our introduction. Not only that, but the LCD screen is useful while searching through songs, working with settings and switching between the radio and actual song mode. The screen is illuminating and features a fading effect on the light, which is nice but not essential. The screen also displays the necessary information on the song or the radio station that is being played at the time. Moreover, the album name (if you have inserted one in the tag), battery meter, volume level, song number, encoded frequency of the audio file, and the file format are all displayed on the minuscule panel as well.

The exterior of the Rio Forge is well crafted with the top right area carrying the skip forward/previous, play/pause, stop and joystick buttons. You can think of the joystick button as the scroll wheel on Apple’s iPod. It’s not as smooth as the iPod, but it’s certainly rugged and will get the job done. The MP3 player also has a red LED light integrated, which lights up whenever you press a certain button. The effect is definitely a nice one, as it puts an emphasis on the buttons with the glowing outcome. Needless to say, Rio has left no stone unturned when it comes to bringing a stylish MP3 player that is targeted primarily at athletes.

However, there is one issue of concern. Since the buttons are scattered all around the player’s exterior, you will have a difficult time controlling everything single handedly. Furthermore, the buttons aren’t all that smooth either. Unlike the offerings from iRiver, Creative or Apple, you will feel the buttons "click" while you are operating them. Then again, we can possibly understand why Rio decided to make this particular MP3 player with a more rugged appeal than necessary. Nonetheless, the lack of ability to use the player single handedly is certainly discouraging; Rio is surely in need of a more organized layout.

The outer left side of the player contains the hold slider and the headphones jack, both of which blend in seemingly well with the rest of the color scheme. Rio does include a pair of great sounding earphones that are flexible and produce sound that exceeds the average quality of earphones included with majority of the MP3 players.

The bottom side of the MP3 player contains a USB 2.0 connection for transferring audio files back and forth to the Rio Forge.

The topside of the Rio Forge has the volume up/down button as well as the power button. You would have to hold the button for three seconds in order to turn it on/off. As you can tell, the buttons are located throughout the Rio Forge’s exterior, which makes it cumbersome to manage the player.

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