Bij ZDNet is een round-up te vinden van 7 portable MP3 spelertjes. De Diamond Rio 500 wordt hier, vanwege de handige USB aansluiting en 64MB aan opslagcapaciteit tot winnaar bekroond:
Of the seven products here, all but two rely on parallel-port connections, which are inconveniently slow compared with the USB connections offered by the Diamond Rio 500 and the HanGo Personal Jukebox. We expect USB to catch on in this market quickly. In fact, several new USB-based players—the Creative Nomad II, Samsung Yepp, and Sony Vaio Music Clip and Memory Stick Walkman—just missed our roundup.As for storage media, most players use one of two competing formats: Smart Media or CompactFlash. Smart Media cards are smaller, but the largest-capacity CF card stores at least twice as much as the biggest SM card.
With its generous storage space, USB connectivity, and industry-standard SmartMedia, the Rio 500 runs away with our Editors' Choice. The Sensory Science raveMP 2100 earns an honorable mention for its excellent feature set and is a great choice for those who have older PCs that lack USB ports.