9. Rio Carbon Pearl: Aesthetics, But Not Economics

Here's a player that's almost ideal for computer novices! After installation on the PC, all file exchanges can be done by synchronizing the device with Windows Media Player 10, or by dragging and dropping files one by one. For controlling the player, there's a dial for the volume and a touchpad for navigating in the menus or choosing songs. Functions have also been simplified to the extreme. The Carbon plays only MP3, WMA, Audible, and WAV files, records voice memos with its voice recorder function, and serves as a chronometer. It does a good job with all of these tasks.

The sound is fairly good, even if it is slightly lacking in treble. Add a battery life that can reach 19 hours and you have an excellent player - for novices who don't want to get involved in details, that is. Others will miss useful functions like a Hold button, the ability to create playlists on the fly, an FM tuner, and direct encoding to MP3 format. And they'll also immediately change the earphones supplied by Rio. They're far and away the worst of all the ones we tested for this article - we heard parasitic noise and flattening at both ends of the frequency spectrum.

The bottom line is that despite good looks and very good battery life, the Rio Carbon Pearl has nothing to offer users that the Zen Micro and iPod Mini don't have. However, of the three, it costs the least.