How quickly the sands of time move to cover up the past.  Rio, the company that invented the MP3 player, has disappeared from the public consciousness.  Let us remind you of its past greatness.

The Carbon was probably the last big success Rio had.  It was arguably the best in the now-vacated class of micro hard drive MP3 players.  Micro hard drive players were popular for a brief time when flash memory was still priced exorbitantly high and hard drive players were big and bulky.  It also helped that the MP3 players themselves tended to be cheaper than the internal hard drive sold separately.  Digital SLR owners were known for buying the players just to gut it for its prized hard drive (which was built inside a CompactFlash card).

The Rio Carbon battled head to head with the Apple iPod mini in this category.  It had many advantages over the mini.  It was thinner and sleeker.  It provided to freedom of drag-and-drop music loading.  Plus, its user interface was much more powerful than the iPod’s.  Audiophiles preferred the Rio for its superior sound quality and highly adjustable equalizer.  The Rio’s scroll wheel and D-pad navigation controls were not as elegant as the iPod mini’s, but they were just as effective at quickly finding music in long lists.

In short, the Carbon was a well-designed, good looking player.  When Rio went under, Apple lost a big rival.  There is not really another MP3 player manufacturer out there that goes toe-to-toe with Apple (unless you count the Zune).  Creative and Sandisk compete on value.  Sony is just now starting to get its act together.  Hopefully the upcoming NWZ-X1000 touchscreen OLED Wi-Fi MP3 player proves to be a worthy adversary for the iPod touch, because without proper competition, innovation tends to slow down.  Just look at the iPod classic.

So here is to the Rio Carbon, a forgotten MP3 player that deserves to be remembered.

Note: there was also a budget version of the Carbon called the ce2100.  It had the same features, jsut less capacity.

Similar Posts:

• Cage Match: Zune vs. iPod
• Jamming out on an Iomega HipZip
• What happened to inline remotes?
• Following the iPaq family
• Leaked: New iPod nano