Product Reviews

Our Top 50 MP3 player, the Rio Nitrus, is a little beauty. It fits in the palm of your hand, sounds great, has a generous 1.5GB hard disk and isn't ludicrously expensive. But compared to Apple's latest fashion accessory, the gorgeous iPod Mini, the Nitrus looks in need of a makeover. Now the Rio Carbon steps on to the catwalk.

Gone is the boring black exterior of the Nitrus in favour of a natty silver and grey outfit. Just switching the player on was enough to elicit coos of wonder as the buttons and fascia light up with a fiery red - great for finding the pause button in the dark. The Carbon is the Nitrus's better-looking sister, and it's smaller, too.

Rio has been hard at work to make the Carbon function as beautifully as it looks. Connect the Carbon to a USB port on your PC and it appears as a portable hard disk, enabling you to drag and drop whatever files you choose to it. Leave it connected, and it'll charge in a couple

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of hours. By contrast, the Nitrus requires a separate mains adapter for battery charging, and you have to install software before you can transfer anything to it. This is a vast improvement! Gone too is the Nitrus's fiddly little joystick in favour of a simple set of buttons.

The hard disk has also grown in size, with the Carbon offering a generous 5GB of hard disk space. The player supports both MP3 and WMA formats, and the 5GB hard disk provides enough space for 800 or so songs ripped at pristine 192Kbit/s quality. Excellent! The Carbon's battery life is exemplary too, lasting over 15 hours. You'll be able to get through a hefty number of those 800 songs before the battery runs out. Another handy addition is a little microphone hidden inside the Carbon, which lets you use it as a Dictaphone.

Not all the changes are welcome, though. The supplied headphones are no longer the excellent Sennheiser MX300s but a proprietary set with a slightly tinny treble. Serious music enthusiasts will want to replace them pretty quickly.

The real sticking point with the Carbon is its price. It costs 40 pounds more than the Rio Nitrus, and 20 pounds more than Apple's delectable iPod Mini. In its favour it's a little smaller than either of those and has a greater capacity. £200 pounds may be a lot to spend on an MP3 player, but if form is as important to you as function, the Rio Carbon will have you in raptures - unless, of course, the iPod mini's slinky curves have already won your heart. Fashion is a fickle thing.