The Rio Cali - the player that plays as hard as you do!

By Carol Finch

Designed for those people that love to exercise with music to keep them company or to motivate them, the Rio Cali is a rugged little 128MB MP3 player with some great features built-in. Rio promise that you’ll get ‘no skips, ever, with the Cali model - just access to your favorite digital music wherever you are and whatever you’re doing.

With the Rio Cali you can take along over 60 songs in a tiny player and, if you expand your music collection or want more storage capacity, then you can simply add a memory card (SD/MMC) into the special expansion slot. This could potentially take your capacity up to 1GB. This should help pass the time during the longest workout! The player supports MP3 and WMA formats. One standard AAA battery will give you up to 18 hours playback here which is a great advantage.

The real strength of this player really is that it was designed for sport use. You get a funky yellow design encased in rubber, special Sport Clip earphones, an armband case and a stopwatch/timer function built-in. And, there’s an FM tuner in this small package as well so you can tune into the radio if you feel like a change!

This is a real simple MP3 player to use; the controls and menus are easy to master and you can customize your listening experience via the on board 5 band graphic equalizer or use the presets if you prefer. The whole design of the Cali has been thought up to make it easy to use while you’re doing exercise, so you can use it one-handed and without looking once you get used to it!

The player comes with the armband carrying case, the earphones, an AAA battery, a USB cable, an installation software disk and a quick start guide. Current accessories include memory cards. If you shop around on the Internet it’s possible to pick this player up for as low as $50 if you’re lucky.

Pros:

Size/Design - This is a small, lightweight but robust player, so it won’t hold you back or weigh you down whatever sport you play.

Expansion - You can upgrade the model with extra memory, up to 1GB.

FM Tuner - Unlike many comparable players, you get an FM tuner built in here.

Sports Features - Like a lot of Rio products this player really was designed with sport in mind. There are all kinds of useful features here. It was designed to work well and simply while you’re playing sport and to be carried as easily and unobtrusively as possible.

Skipping - You can skip but the player won’t!

Audio - Most reviews rate Rio players with high audio quality.

Cons:

Software - You’ll have to use the proprietary software to manage/transfer your music to the player. It won’t be recognized as an external drive by your computer so you won’t be able to just drag and drop files as you can with some other players.

Transfer - You’re restricted to a UB 1.0 connection here so this isn’t the fastest transfer on the block.

Track Order - Some users have problems with the player playing tracks in a designated order - some track tag editing on your PC may be involved here.

Usage Tips and Tricks

Although the Cali technically works solely with the supplied Rio software many users have reported that you can also use Windows Media Player to do the job. This may be worth looking at if you have the software on your system already as you may be given better features and functionality and a little more flexibility.

Find more info on at this page.