Shipping: Now

Diamond Multimedia's newest portable MP3 music/audio player, the Rio 500, has been amassing awards from several print publications over the past month, including a prestigious "Editor's Choice" award from PC Magazine.

We have been very excited about the prolific rise of portable MP3 players over the past year. We love their practical small size, and generally good quality audio reproduction. At this year's Consumer Electronics Show that took place last month, we saw literally dozens of different MP3 players on display from multiple vendors, most of them coming from companies based in Taiwan.

Diamond Multimedia is no stranger to small MP3 players, they literally invented the genre (for North Americans anyway) when they introduced their Rio PMP300 player late in 1998.

While the PMP300 was a solid unit, we felt that its sound clarity and overall options didn't rival the levels of quality that were standard on several similar-sized MiniDisc-based portables available at the same time.

"Wait till you see our next one" was the response we got at the time from company representatives off the record, and today's Rio 500 is finally the fulfillment of that promise.

Sporting more customizability, a fantastically improved backlit LCD screen, and far more ergonomic practicality, the Rio 500 aims to reestablish Diamond as the preeminent manufacturer of portable MP3 devices.

While Diamond was designing and preparing the Rio 500, several competitors were busy prepping their own MP3 players, most notably Diamond's arch rival, Creative Labs.

By early 1999 Creative had fired their own shot back across Diamond's bow, as their new "Nomad" MP3 player arrived on the scene to critical raves. The Nomad added features like a digital FM radio tuner and better sound customization to the portable MP3 player mix, and suddenly Diamond's original PMP300 player seemed somewhat obsolete.