iPod vs. Rio Karma (andtheotherstooIguess): Fight!

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Leoml88

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ginalee said:
tell us about the iRiver accessories Adam, I really know nothing about them, what can you get as an add-on?
The iRiver comes with a built in FM radio, audio and voice recordings.

It has line-in and line-out jacks built directly into it and the unit comes with the cables.

It also comes with a case (although Vaja sells a case also) and it comes with a fully functional four line lcd remote.

You can buy a third party on-the-go usb thingy to hook up your camera to your iRiver, or with the new iRiver 3xx series, there is a built in slot for that.

Other than the barrage of overpriced meaningless objects, such as a purse with built in speakers (which pretty much screams "Rob me"!) there is not that much the ipod has over the iRiver
 

kevinv85

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Adam said:
3rd party iPod accessories are overpriced and underperforming. Point out one exception to this and I'll eat my hat.
Haha, I beg to differ. I believe it is the 1st party iPod accessories that are overpriced and underperforming. The biggest example? Apple's iPod case. Compared to third party offerings, it's a piece of crap, and you can get one of these much superior third party cases for half the price ...... you may now eat your hat.
 

evilgoat23

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xboxman said:
Sorry if I sound like a idiot, but what is the ethernet port on the dock used for?
It can be used to sync the Karma to a computer that is connected to a hub or router. Although much slower than USB2.0. Someone also wrote a program which allowed the Karma to stream music but I'm not sure if it ever worked as I have no use for it.
 

ImpPod

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I had a Karma

Ok now,

Here's an answer from somehow who first bought the KArma because of the "added values" that I had read about in STUFF Magazine. Here are the reasons why I changed to a 4G ipod two weeks after:

The negative side:

-From the Riovolution forum I read that Rio does not support it's products very well and literaly abandons support for fairly recent products such as the Rio Riot. This made me think like "what's gonna happen when Karma 2 comes"...There will be no firmware revisions and such and such....

-The scroll weel and rio "nip" are mechanical therefore after a while, they are bound to fail or break. I also noticed they left huge gaps in the Karma shell and lint was already starting to slip in and began to appear under the screen !!! after two weeks.... unnacceptable.

-Reports of HDD failure are abondant and frequent if you read posts in the forums

-There are NO third party accessories other than a few that look homemade such as the horrible MindKnob case.

-The Karma form factor is rather fat. I tought I could get over the fact that it was more than twice the thickness of the Ipod cause it was smaller but the truth is that in a shirt pocket, thickness counts not size.

-The front screen is made of clear plastic with an integrated screen, just like the Ipod, however, the plastic is black therefore scratches were far more visible than the one I have now on my Ipod.

-Rio Music Manager software in my opinion was a POS. No features, bland interface etc...

-Karma DOES NOT charge with USB2, only with the provided charger, period.

-3 month warranty, not that says a lot about the confidence level Rio has in its top of the line player... I mean 3 months for a 450$ CDN player, that is outrageous.

-Lack of cool factor in the design. While I liked the Karma design, I think th eIpod 4G is sooo much sexier with it's white/steel glossy body, gee I can't stop touching it... Help !!!

Now for the positive features:

-Navigation is indeed easier on the Karma with either the wheel or the nip

-Gapless playback and cross fade is really cool but I hear this could be an added feature in future firmware releases on the 4G ipod

-Equalizer is indeed user programmable. While the idea is great, I don't see much differences between the one I programmed and the ones that are pre=programmed in my 4G

-Came with USB2 connection and a charger. Now that was the main reason I went for the KArma when I bought it. At the time, the 4G wasn't out and the 3G 15Gb I had my eyes on didn't come with a charger!!, I had to buy a 40$ firewire to USB converter to connect it etc... but now with the 4G this is not a problem anymore.

-Screen resolution is a BIG plus. The font size ajusts depending on the text that needs to appear on the screen. Now that may be the only feature I miss a lot from my Karma experience.

-Ethernet connectivity is an OK feature, that's if you want to stream music from lets say your home PC and listen to it on your office PC miles away. All you need to do is use a small JAVA program that accesses the Karma remotly.

-Sound quality. Now that's one thing that can be debated. While I havent used both players side by side playing the same song file to compare, claims are that the Karma should sound better. My experience is that it is the contrary, now is this because people compare it to the 3G, I don't know but I think the my Ipod sounds soooo much better.

-Blue "glow" craddle. Some people love the craddle, I felt it looked tacky. Also, I really don't need one more craddle sitting on my desk (I have, ipaq, cell phone, digital camera already... ENOUGH!!!)

Anywho, I feel Rio has a god machine if they stand by it for a while, however the coming of the Karma 2 may disappoint a lot of new Karma 1 owners very soon, I feel I wont have the same disapointment with the Ipod. Its just like cars, some car makers stand by a design (volvo, VW, Saab) so wether you own a 98 or a 2004, there is no design obsolescence, while other car makers (ie Honda, Ford, GM) experiment with new designs all the time leaving the 98 owner sad to see his car look like a relic 2 years after.

That's my two cents...
 

Zim

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Re: I had a Karma

ImpPod said:

The negative side:

-From the Riovolution forum I read that Rio does not support it's products very well and literaly abandons support for fairly recent products such as the Rio Riot. This made me think like "what's gonna happen when Karma 2 comes"...There will be no firmware revisions and such and such....

-3 month warranty, not that says a lot about the confidence level Rio has in its top of the line player... I mean 3 months for a 450$ CDN player, that is outrageous.

Now for the positive features:

-Gapless playback and cross fade is really cool but I hear this could be an added feature in future firmware releases on the 4G ipod
Hate to say it, but Apple is offering no better support. Let's face it, Apple is NOT giving new features to iPod owners except when Apple decides we need a new music codec so we can buy more songs from the Apple store (ie. AAC).

We may get an update soon, but only so Apple can try to deflect Harmony (from Real). Funny how they could not do a product development (too much work) to bring the new menu features (and possibly the audio book speedup) to 3G owners (assuming the 3G chip can handle it), but they can do a development effort to prevent us from using music purchased from other sources.

I wouldn't hold my breath on Apple adding gapless or cross-fade. As a 3G owners I'm, still waiting for simple bug fixes (deep sleep amnesia), much less new features.

But thanks for the info. As you can tell, I'm a bit of a disgruntled owner (Apple since the II+, but never feeling less supported by Apple). I'm hoping the competitors can either produce a superior product, or at least make Apple step up their efforts.

Mike
 

ImpPod

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Yeah I know that some of us may feel let down by the hardware manufacturer, in your case Apple but I'd reather be let down by a manufacturer that has over a million units sold than one who has like 25000. This may sound stupid at first but if you look at the big picture, let's say Apple would be letting all of us down for an unknown reason, there are very good chances someone or a third party in this huge Ipod community would try to make some unauthorized firmware or softwares that will help you get the most of your "old" Ipod.

Just look at the kind of posts you get at www.http://www.ipodhack.com/ where some brainiacs are rewriting lines in the Ipod OS code to remove the EU volume block.

I'd be supprised to see things like this happening with, say .. the Karma, knowing there is far less units sold therefore less chances of having a brainiac owner trying to temper with the software.

Anywho. I am not saying I disliked the Karma, I just felt the Ipod was just right for me.
 

Edvard_Grieg

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Re: I had a Karma

ImpPod said:
Ok now,

Here's an answer from somehow who first bought the KArma because of the "added values" that I had read about in STUFF Magazine. Here are the reasons why I changed to a 4G ipod two weeks after:

The negative side:

-From the Riovolution forum I read that Rio does not support it's products very well and literaly abandons support for fairly recent products such as the Rio Riot. This made me think like "what's gonna happen when Karma 2 comes"...There will be no firmware revisions and such and such....


I understand that this is obviously a biased forum, but this is a blatant lie. From a software standpoint Rio is EXCELLENT at supporting older products. It is actually the opposite of what you stated. The Rio Riot was discontinued and end-of-lifed, HOWEVER, when the Karma was released, since it was built off a similar OS, the Riot (even though it was end-of-lifed etc) received a similar firmware upgrade and got huge new features as well.

Now customer service INITIALLY did suck goats, but that is far different than the development team supporting their products. In fact almost all, if not all of the development team frequents the Riovolution boads, ON THEIR OWN TIME, if that isn't support I don't know what is.

edit: On that note, the firmware releases actually fix problems that users report AND include feature requests. In other words, the development team listens to its user base and caters to them. I know this is a cheap shot, but how long have iPod users been asking for gapless?

-The scroll weel and rio "nip" are mechanical therefore after a while, they are bound to fail or break. I also noticed they left huge gaps in the Karma shell and lint was already starting to slip in and began to appear under the screen !!! after two weeks.... unnacceptable.
Funny, I've had mine for over 9 months now and these aren't problems for me (I take mine snowboarding and I am not exactly a 'gentle' user of electronics

-Reports of HDD failure are abondant and frequent if you read posts in the forums
While there are reports, in EVERY single poll that a new user makes (because they didn't search), HD failures amount to about 5% of the board, and keeping in mind that it is a support board which is biased towards the negative, that is a pretty low percentage.

-There are NO third party accessories other than a few that look homemade such as the horrible MindKnob case.
Yes it is sad that there aren't more 3rd part accessories. The mindknob case isn't really that bad at all, and when you consider that that was a forum member who took it upon himself to design, build, and sell the cases on his own, that is a pretty strong testament to community.

-The Karma form factor is rather fat. I tought I could get over the fact that it was more than twice the thickness of the Ipod cause it was smaller but the truth is that in a shirt pocket, thickness counts not size.
I like the form factor as it fits in my hands quite nicely (then again I also like the Xbox controller so take that for what you will ;) ) But, that is something you should try for yourself.

-The front screen is made of clear plastic with an integrated screen, just like the Ipod, however, the plastic is black therefore scratches were far more visible than the one I have now on my Ipod.
Yes it does scratch easily, but guess what a cheap PDA screen protector will fix that and you're good to go <sigh>

-Rio Music Manager software in my opinion was a POS. No features, bland interface etc...
Definetely your opinion, would you prefer the 'flair' of musicmatch, maybe sonicstage, yeah they look nice, but they are slow and clunky. I find RMM to do what it says and do it well. It will Rip and encode to any format the Karma supports (MP3, WMA, Ogg, FLAC, etc) it allows you to edit tags, and it will 'synchronize' with the Karma, so if you have 40GB of music, it will swap with the player so that you always have new tunes without having to do anything yourself. Sounds a lot like iTunes doesn't it? (Without the store or the 'nicer' aesthetics) You can download it for free from www.rioaudio.com and find out for yourself though.

-Karma DOES NOT charge with USB2, only with the provided charger, period.
True. However, the battery lasts a good 10-15 hours (depending on usage and file type (FLAC and OGG are less(10-11 hours) due to disc access and decompressing respectively) On top of that, when you turn off the Karma it does not deplete the battery on its own. I have had times when I had not used the Karma for a week or two (too busy etc) and when I turned it on, it had the same charge as before.

-3 month warranty, not that says a lot about the confidence level Rio has in its top of the line player... I mean 3 months for a 450$ CDN player, that is outrageous.
Yeah the warranty sucks, ($249 US), buy an extended warranty for $20 from Viking if you're that concerned.

-Lack of cool factor in the design. While I liked the Karma design, I think th eIpod 4G is sooo much sexier with it's white/steel glossy body, gee I can't stop touching it... Help !!!
Good point, looks are subjective, but many people prefer the iPod.

<Didn't feel like reposting the postive features you listed as there wasn't much to argue ;) >

Although I do want to comment that in regards to the EQ it is more than just 'manual settings' such as bass and treble. It is a full 5-band parametric eq which will give you A LOT more control than just bass and treble.

Anyway, my suggestion would be to get the other biased opinion and ask at Riovolution.com. Or a less biased opinion at Head-fi.org, ultimately only you can decide and it would be best to go to a store where you can try them out and compare for yourself.
 
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Ipodium

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I don't consider my opinion biased...

Hi,

It is true that opinions in this forum are more "Pro-Ipod" as well I think the opinions I read in www.riovolution.com were very much "pro-Karma". What I described is "my" experience with the Karma, that doesn't mean that it will correspond to your experience or somebody elses for that matter.

The truth is I had the Karma just as long as I've had my 4G now. I am not one to generaly go with the flow and buy whatever the others or what the futureshop saleman will recommend, I read and read and then read again before I make myself an opinion to get what best suits "me".

Originaly I had gone with the karma because of battery life, multiple format support and also as a refusal to buy an Apple product. After trying the Rio Karma, I realised that all their claim were true (battery life, sound quality, format opensource etc...) but in the end, I found that flaws outwayed the benefits. I did buy a 2 year replacement warranty but who wants to use these really?, what you want is a product that will not need to be repaired or exchanged every 6 months or so and also spend countless hours with a garanty agent to explain you were gentle with the unit and that it was not mistreated but it rather failed by itself...

I really, REALLY, think that the scroll wheel is a poor design idea and is bound to break as it sits in a corner which makes it very vulnerable if you drop the unit. The Nip is OK and sits in an area where is is less likely to break however, having gaps for these controls I think is still not a good idea unless you plan to keep this unit in a safe and dry environment.

I snowboard too, in it's most violent form : ) (scratch, jump and all) and I fell more confident carrying the Ipod around and falling with it.

To finish, please do not interpret my opinion about the Karma as "biased". I did use the unit, I am not talking out of my hat. I gave it a good and honest try and all. Again these are just my opinions, I guess everyone else here is mature enough to make theirs without listening to "anonymous nobodies" like me.

That's how the cookie crumbles.

Signing off.
 
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evilgoat23

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I second the scroll wheel being fragile. But my Karma is holding up fine. My biggest concern is the HDD and the high failure rate. I've got a replacement plan so it's really not a big deal and I think the good does outweigh the bad with the Karma.
 

Zim

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As a huge gadget freak, and terrible cynic, my 3g iPod is the ONLY device for which I have EVER bought a warranty (Best Buy). I normally scoff and laugh at such things, but I'll be shocked if my iPod makes it 4 years (the length of the warranty). So I expect to be covered.

Glad to see other devices come out that are within "debate distance' to the iPod. In the end this competition will be good for us as consumers, whether or not it is Apple that wins or someone else... we still win (Apple needs to digest this lesson)

Mike
 
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