Rio Karma User Review

FuzzyBad-Mofo writes "On 8/24/2004, I took the plunge and bought a Rio Karma digital music player. My needs were simple: Decent storage capacity, Linux friendly, and Ogg Vorbis compatible. The Karma has a generous 20 GB capacity, decent battery life, is OS-agnostic, and plays a wide variety of file formats, including Ogg." Read on for the rest of FuzzyBad-Mofo's review.

Despite living in an urban area, I had a little trouble tracking down a retailer with the Karma in stock. Best Buy was sold out, but Circuit City had them (for full price, boo hiss). I was impressed with the solid feel of the device, and promptly started setting it up. Since I currently only have Linux machines at home, the included software was useless. Fortunately, the Karma also includes Ethernet connectivity through the docking cradle. In minutes the cradle was connected to my Linksys router and a static IP assigned using the Karma's joystick interface (not fun).

Once this was done, I connected via web browser to the Karma's IP address and was greeted with a nice splash page, and a couple of links to download the Java-based transfer software and to visit Rio's Karma page. I initially had trouble with the transfer software, but eventually found the developer's site on the internet; he has improved the software greatly from the version that ships with the Karma.

The docking cradle also has stereo line-level RCA ports, which is nice for integration with a home stereo. I ended up buying a 20' CAT-5 cable to give my Karma a permanent home next to the stereo. It's pretty wonderful to select 4 hours of random music for the evening, and not have to worry about changing CDs. Later, I also bought an RF adapter for use in the car, which works by broadcasting on an FM frequency you simply tune into.

The Karma is not bad to walk around with either. It is a little bulky, and I would prefer a narrower body, but it fits ok in a loose-fitting pants or jacket pocket. As with any hard-drive based player, jogging/running/biking with it is probably not a good idea.

Lockups: the Karma has taken a lot of flak for locking up, and I can't say that it's not justified. The player has locked once when I was loading music on it, in which case I simply reset with a bent paper clip and it was good to go. However, several days ago I was walking with it, attempted to change songs midstride, and it locked hard. Since I was on my way to work with no paperclip in sight (and the unit won't turn off when it locks up), the hard drive spun and seeked for 40 minutes until I got in the office. At that point, the unit was warm to the touch and had drained half the battery. After reset, the unit would not power up properly. Going into rescue mode showed that it was having trouble reading the disk. (crap!) After reading some message boards where others have experienced similar problems, I decided that I had little to lose and smacked it flat down on the desk. The Karma made a little grinding noise and booted up! It has worked perfectly since then, but I'm somewhat concerned about my purchase. Rio only offers a three-month warranty by default, so I would recommend going with an extended warranty if you decide to purchase a Karma.

Scary lockups aside, this has been a great little player. I believe it is Rio's first HDD-based player, and I'm looking forward to seeing future revisions of the Karma.

Thanks to FuzzyBad-MoFo for the review!

Comments

FYI rio has really bad quality control

[spacerodent]

I bought a RIO nitrus and had it's hard drive fail within 2 weeks of purchase. I had it replaced 3 times over the next few months and none of the models lasted more than a month when all they did was ride in my back pack as I walked to class. Recently I bought one of the new Rio Forges and it also has problems. Despite being sold as a "sport" model it shuts down regularly during use and Rio refuses to admit any problem with the design despite several pages of experiences just like mine on their forums. I strongly discourage anyone from buying Rio products without an extended warrenty. Here is a good forums to read about Rio products: http://www.rioworld.org/yabbse/index.php?board=16

Rio Karma

[lintocs]

These things are crap... Everyone I know who bought one has returned it at least once because of the 1" HD "hard locking". One friend has been through 5 units so far, with the average lifespan being 7-10 days per unit.

I haven't heard similar things about the iPod (anyone?), but I suspect it's the 1" HDs that are to blame, rather than the design of the unit housing them.

Rio Good Karma

[saundo]

I own one of these beasts too.

The number one thing that I love about this device is the Rio DJ - Entertain me! function. What it does is looks at the most played tracks in a certain time period (15 minutes to everything on the Karma) and then plays a random mix of them. Awesome!

The second best thing is the crossfade feature under the Equalizer function. It basically makes a nice seamless mix of music that fades in and out of each track.

Battery life is great! I regularly get 10hrs of music out of it.

The only downsides I've discovered are that the little stick selector is flimsy, and the ethernet port is very flaky when it comes to working with switches. Neither my D-Link or Netgear 10/100 switches work with it, so I have resorted to loading the Windows software to load music.

Re:Does not inspire confidence

[ProfaneBaby]

I own one of these little devices, and I'm very unhappy with the harddrive performance. Not only does it suck battery life while playing, the drive performance seems to suffer after a while - I can't tell if it's fragmentation from being nearly full, or running while the battery slowly drains is causing hardware failures. The sound, though, remains decent. The multiple formats are nice. The software is actually quite good. It's not the type of player where you throw it out after you buy it because it's garbage, but you may want to think carefully before purchasing it.

Not much confidence, but still a good player.

[LiberalApplication]

Regarding the lockups, this is a pretty well known issue, and my Karma itself has locked up a few times, but the whack-and-smack solution is just as well known and is surprisingly effective. It's mentioned here:

http://forums-riovolution.com/index.php?showtopic= 4109

Basically, you have to whack the unit hard enough that it turns itself off and restarts. Sure, it's unsettling and even embarassing if you have to sit there in a rush-hour subway train spanking a lump of plastic for ten minutes, but it works. And the strangest part of it all: each time you spank it into submission, it will be a significantly longer period of time before it crashes again. After the fourth and last spanking session, it hasn't locked up once in the past five months.

As for the upside, it has several nice features. The author of the review failed to mention one of the highlights of the Karma-dock's ethernet jack - that it can be used to communicate with any computer that can run Java apps. This turns out to be great, because while the management software can only be installed on windows machines, the Java applet that the Karma serves up via HTTP can be run on Linux and OSX machines. When I get into the office (which is a primarily Mac environment), I just drop it into its cradle, have it DHCP-obtain an IP address (an automatic procedure), fire up the applet from my Power Mac, and I'm free to manage it.

On the usability side, I've been extremely pleased with the Karma. I never quite understood why all of the manufacturers have banded behind Apple's design of placing the display above the main control cluster. It results in the center of gravity being above your hand, making the device much more likely to slip or be knocked out of your grasp. On the Karma, the controls are placed above the display, so that your thumb wraps around the Karma's upper edge and the entirety of its mass is cradled in the palm of your hand. It might look counterintuitive, but I think that's largely because all of the other players out there have the scheme reversed.

The firmware is nice, with three user-adjustable 3-band EQ settings slots that you can flip through to best suit the genre of music you're listening to at the time. The main "menu" button on its face can be customized to drop you at one of several menu levels. For example, if you tend to select music by genre, the main menu button can be set to take you right there instead of to the root level menu. The GUI is consistently themed throughout, and while not as minimal as the iPod's, is not aesthetically offensive. One feature I found very cute was the ability to set the play screen (which you'll be looking at 90% of the time) to be dominated by a pair of mostly useless but amusingly retro-styled VU meters. Unlike the iPod, the Karma *IS* capable of gapless playback, which is great if you listen to a lot of mixed compilations or live performances.

I have only two gripes personally with the unit:
1) The setting for "shuffle"/"normal" playback is buried several levels deep in the menu system.
2) The unit has a 4pin jack next to its headphone jack which is obviously intended for an in-line remote control, but no such item exists. Pooh.

HTH in your buying decisions.