It's Rio and Creative
August 14, 2003
Rio Audio, Creative Labs Slim Down Music Players
By WALTER S. MOSSBERG
Ever since it was introduced in October 2001, Apple's iPod digital music player has been the unquestioned leader in its field. Its slick physical design, clean user interface, and great capacity and sound have won nearly universal raves from critics. And the public has agreed, buying over a million iPods.
Other companies have tried to follow suit, but failed. Their entries were lower priced, and some had higher capacity. But they were too bulky and had complicated user interfaces.
Now, two of the dominant players in portable digital music players, Rio Audio and Creative Labs, are back with a new round of potential iPod killers that are slimmer and easier to use than their predecessors. I've been testing two of the new models, to see how they compare with the latest iPods.
All of these music players are powered by hard-disk drives, so they can hold hundreds or thousands of songs. They are in a separate category from the very smallest digital music players, powered by "flash" memory chips, that can typically hold fewer than 100 songs.
One of the iPod's secrets was that it was the first device to use a radical new technology that crammed a lot of storage capacity into a very slim drive. Other players were much larger because they relied on bulkier disk drives.
But there is a new kind of hard disk on the market that's even smaller than the drives used in the iPod. Made by a small Colorado company called Cornice, these drives have much lower capacity than the iPod drives, but they are tiny.
Rio and Creative are rolling out small new players based on the Cornice drive. Both are also introducing somewhat larger players with higher-capacity hard disks. I've been testing two of these new products: the Rio Nitrus, which uses the new Cornice drive, and the Creative Nomad Zen NX, which uses a more traditional hard disk.
Rio Audio's Rio Nitrus
The Rio Nitrus, due out early next month, is a black, shiny, curvy little thing that weighs only two ounces, versus 5.6 ounces for the iPod. It's about as wide and as thick as an iPod, but is roughly 25% shorter -- three inches compared with the iPod's 4.1 inches. The Nitrus also beats the iPod on battery life, with a claimed 16 hours compared with just eight for the Apple player.
The Nitrus is the first hard-disk-based music player I've tested that's smaller and lighter than the iPod, plus it has a clean, music-oriented interface. Like the iPod, it shows key information about each song -- title, artist, album, time -- in crisp, clear text. And the menus are easy to navigate. Previous iPod wannabes were hobbled by ridiculous techie interfaces that stressed file folders and computer-type navigation.
The Nitrus comes with easy to use, simple software for transferring music from a Windows PC via a fast USB 2.0 connection. Unlike the iPod, it only works on Windows, not the Mac.
Unfortunately, the Nitrus simply wouldn't work with my brand-new Dell Dimension 8300 computer. Rio says there's a hardware incompatibility it's working to fix. The Nitrus worked fine with a 2002-vintage HP Pavilion.
But the Nitrus has two much bigger drawbacks that I think make it inferior to the iPod. The little Cornice hard disk inside the Nitrus has a capacity of just 1.5 gigabytes, compared with 10 gigabytes for the lowest-priced iPod. That means the low-end iPod has six times the capacity of the Nitrus in only a slightly larger package. The Nitrus holds around 400 typical songs, while the low-end iPod holds over 2,500.
And despite its much smaller capacity, the Nitrus is expensive. It will sell for $299, the same price as the 10-gigabyte iPod.
There's much less to say about the Creative Nomad Zen NX. It has iPod-like song capacity, but it uses a bulkier hard disk so it's much bigger than an iPod, even though Creative is touting it as "slimmed down and super cool-looking."
The Zen NX is a sliver and white rectangular box that looks more like an old Walkman tape player than a sleek digital device. It weighs nearly eight ounces and is larger in every dimension than an iPod. You'd have trouble fitting it in a pocket or small purse. Like the Nitrus, it works only with Windows, not Macs.
The new Zen has three notable features. First, like Rio, Creative has cleaned up a formerly bad interface and attempted to emulate the iPod. On the new Zen, music information is stressed, not things like files and folders and technical data. The overall navigation is much better, but still not as easy as on the iPod or the new Rio.
Second, the new Zen has a removable battery -- a terrific convenience. Extra batteries cost about $50 apiece. Creative claims a 14-hour battery life.
The Zen NX's key advantage is price. The 20-gigabyte model costs $249, less than Apple charges for an iPod with half the capacity. The 30 gigabyte model costs $299, or $200 less than Apple charges for a 30 gigabyte iPod. If you're willing to put up with a big, bulky box, the Zen NX is a bargain.
Largely due to a great design, the iPod still comes out on top, in my view. But its rivals are finally showing some promise.
Write to Walter S. Mossberg at mossberg@wsj.com
