Rio music player outpowers iPod mini

Apple's iPod mini will face another rival on Friday when Rio launches a smaller and more powerful player at the same price.

At 90g and 6.4 x 8.4 x 1.5cm, the new Rio Carbon is significantly smaller than its iPod mini rival. It also has a claimed battery life of 20 hours compared to the iPod's eight, and comes with an extra gigabyte of memory.

The first 500 Rio Carbons sold will come with a specially engraved casing and three months' subscription to Napster, as well as 20 free downloads.

"As the first company with a 5GB player on the market we wanted to offer our customers something they can treasure for a long time," said Dan Torres, vice president of Rio Audio, in a statement.

"We feel that the 5GB capacity will hit a sweet spot with our customers and the initial response from the media and our retailers to the Rio Carbon has been phenomenal."

US pricing is $249, the same as the iPod mini.

The Carbon uses USB 2.0 to download files and can handle music in MP3, WMA and Audible formats. It is compatible with Mac and PC platforms.

See also:

IPod faces competition as MP3 player sales boom

Portable flash players to shake up the market  23 Sep 2004

Sony enlists Vaio brand in iPod battle

Vaio Pocket turns up the volume with 40GB memory for music and digital images  16 Sep 2004

Microsoft lifts curtain on Portable Media Center

IPod challenger can hold 85 hours of video and 9,000 songs  02 Sep 2004

Rio looks to dance over iPod mini

Carbon player boasts longer battery life and more memory than Apple rival  03 Aug 2004

MP3 players on test

Portable MP3 players are the accessory du jour. Succumb to temptation with our round-up of these tiny objects of desire.  10 Jun 2004

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