8. Rio Nitrus: Microdrive For Micro-player

The Rio Nitrus works with an OEM 1.5 GB Microdrive made by Cornice, a 1" format like its Hitachi rivals, but much cheaper. It is really tiny (5x43x36mm), and weighs in at just 15 grams. However, its performance is lower than the new Hitachi 4 GBs, with a theoretical transfer rate of 4 MB/s. Rio has used this extreme compactness to create a microscopic player (83x65x15mm) weighing just 78 grams. Compared to the Creative MuVo², integration is much more successful. The shape of the Nitrus is really well designed. First by its slimness, so you can slide it into a pocket with no trouble. It has the pleasant looks of the Rio range: casual and leisure and seemingly hi-tech.

The Nitrus Needs Some USB 2.0 Oxide

You connect to the PC with the USB 2.0 provided, but transmission is not as speedy as all that. It took one minute and 40 seconds to transfer our 30 MP3 files totaling 100 MB. Compared to the 20 seconds on the 4 GB MuVo², that is slow. Though, as there's only 1.5Gb to fill, it doesn't actually take all that long in the end. The Nitrus redeems itself with an unbelievable battery life of 15 hours in continuous playback. The built-in lithium-ion battery can only be charged with the mains charger provided. Storage capacity is about 25 hours of MP3 at 128kbps.