Introduction

It has become the trend these days to junk the byzantine Discman (portable CD player) or the dinosaur-age Walkman (portable audio cassette player) in favour of portable MP3 players.

The portable MP3 player market has expanded a great deal lately and it is now very common to see people walking around with either a flash memory-based or the hard disk-based MP3 player hanging on their belts. Cassettes and CDs? Phish! That's the past!

Today, we'll be looking at one of the more notable MP3 players - the Rio Forge 256MB Sport! Let's see how it fares against the deluge of MP3 players in the market!

Before we get into the juicy details, let's take a look at Rio Audio first.

Rio Audio

Rio has been pioneering the world of portable MP3 players since the launch of its first portable MP3 player, the Rio 300. The Rio 300, if you recall, was launched when Rio was still under SonicBlue Inc.

After its parent company got into some financial woes in 2003, it was bought over by D&M (Denon & Marantz). Now, they are back on track with more innovative MP3 players.

The Package

The Rio Forge 256MB MP3 player came in a plastic display box.

Front

As you can see, the packaging does a good job of protecting the MP3 player, while maximizing its visibility to catch the buyer's eyes. I personally like this kind of packaging. I just hate opening them.

Here's the back. You can see the back of the MP3 player clearly.

Back

Towards the bottom, you can see the specifications of the Rio Forge 256MB MP3 player.