-- Roger Ebert
Reviews
EPSON Photo 820 Printer
Rio
Nitrus 
The
Collective
mountain bike free ride movie
Earthed
mountain bike free ride movie
The
Vish Files
mountain bike free ride
Schwinn
Rocket 88 Mountain bike
Ricoh
XR7 35mm SLR Camera 
Happy Days with the Naked
Chef
AxisPad
(cheap Wal-Mart Joystick)
The
Nitrus is a small size mp3 player made by Rio. I bought this device about
a year ago and feel like I can give a very accurate review of its pros
and cons. I can’t say I’ve used the Nitrus all that heavily
though, I don’t walk around the streets jumping up and down Ipod
style or anything like that. I originally bought a mp3 player to listen
while bike riding. When I started riding in February 05 I was doing so
by my self a lot and I thought a little music might motivate me. I probably
carried it on 20 or so bike rides. I took a week long bike tour across
Nebraska last year and it traveled with me, usually smashed in my bag,
which was smashed on the bottom of 50 other bags all smashed into a tractor
trailer. Lately I’ve had such dedicated riding partners that I don’t
ever ride alone and out of respect leave my mp3 player at home. My only
other major use of the device is listening to music before bed, sometimes
while I sleep.
First off lets talk user interface. The Nitrus interface works but leaves room for a lot of improvement. First off the there are two volume buttons, a menu button, a power button, a click stick, a lockout lever and a wheel. The click stick is basic player controls and also can navigate menus. The wheel scrolls through menus and can also change track information displayed. The volume buttons adjust the volume. This all works fairly well, it just seemed to me that the wheel would have been perfect to adjust the volume instead of pushing and holding down the small buttons. The click stick is OK, but very easy to hit if the unit isn’t locked. Basically you need to just get everything the way you like it and hit the lock out lever. When you are going through menus setting up the options you use the wheel pressing it selects the current menu, but after you selected the option and set it to your preference clicking the wheel again will cancel your change and take you back out. You have to click the click stick to save your changes. I always found this annoying since you just used the wheel to do everything else.
The most useful menu feature is the play music menu. You can select music by title, artist, genre, year, album, new music, or play lists.
The units display is small but I don’t recall ever having problems reading it. It is back lit and very bright at night, I could use it as a night light in my tent. It gives you track and artist information, a timeline, battery symbol, and volume level. You click the wheel to change what information is displayed at the bottom of the screen, either time and date, track encoding information, or track duration and number. I have no problems with the display.
Construction of the unit feels cheap. It’s a plastic that isn’t overly solid. The top and sides are rubberized for some reason. I think with the Nitrus Rio went with a flexible roll with the punches strategy. Instead of being reinforced and solid, it is flexible and tough. After a year of use my unit shows very little scratching and no dents or scars. I find it to be plenty tough.
The Nitrus wasn’t my first mp3 player, a few days before I bought it I got a cheap 128 MB sport type player from Wal-Mart. I found it lacking and returned it for the Nitrus. My biggest problem with the cheapy player was playback. It just didn’t sound good. The Nitrus on the other had sounded great. I should note that they came with the exact same headphones. I am not an audiophile, but the cheap player just seemed to lack any punch of volume. When I was riding with it I had the have the volume almost all the way up to hear it over the wind and cars. The Nitrus on the other hand had a clear strong sound and though doesn’t get as loud as other players, is pleasant to listen to.
The Nitrus has a 1.5 gig micro drive built in and can’t be augmented in anyway. I thought that would be plenty of space until I realized that most of my songs are larger then average. I encoded most of my cds at 192 Kbps some are larger. The Nitrus currently has 213 songs and a little empty space. If I ever get another MP3 player it will have at least 5 gigs of storage.
The player has proven to be reliable. Only one time has it ever had a hiccup, it got stuck shutting down and just hung there. I had to trigger the reset button which reset everything back to factory settings and lost all my songs. I wasn’t very happy since getting songs onto the Nitrus is its major downfall. You have to use the Rio music manager which indexes your music files. I don’t like this. I don’t need this. I already have my music arranged, I don’t need a program to do it for me. I really wish you could just drag and drop files onto this thing without the aid of a client. I can’t remember what formats the Nitrus plays and I really don’t care. I don’t want to listen to FLACs or OGGs or anything else, I am completely happy with MP3s.
The battery time is great. Many times I have turned it on at night and woke up with it still playing 8 hours later. I think I remember reading it should only last 6 hours, but as long as remember to plug it up now and again you’ll have no problems.
The last thing to hit upon is value. I paid 150 for mine from Wal-Mart. I could have bought one online for 100 bucks but that was a refurbished one. I’m sure now there is much better cheaper players out there, but I have to say I am pleased with my Nitrus and have never thought about replacing it. It is perfect for my purposes, light enough to carry while riding my bike without even noticing it and holds enough music to go hours without hearing the same song twice. If I was buying a player now I would go with the Rio Carbon which is very much like the Nitrus but addresses most of its shortcommings
PROS: Light, Tough, reliable, decent value, sounds good, battery
CONS: stupid software, interface is clunky, limited storage,
