For the past year and a half, I’ve been happily using a 20gb Rio Karma as my mp3 player. It had the great interface, a really nice docking station, and lots of storage. I even had it rigged up to the AUX inputs on the deck in my car. So why buy a Carbon? It’s only got 25% of the storage space. Well. . . I’ll try to explain.

I got hooked on Audible.com and kind of got irritated with the fact that I had to keep switching from my Karma to my MuVo to listen in the car. Also, Audible makes it difficult to rip their tracks to MP3 or WMA CDs that would work in my car’s CD player. The Carbon is Audible compatible out of the box.

Also, what’s the difference between a 20gb player and a 5gb player when you have 45gb of music on your computer? At first, I thought I’d be able to fit everything on the Karma, and at first, I could. Now, though, I can’t fit the whole collection on anyway, and trying to figure out what music to have on the player and what to leave off was becoming a chore. With the Carbon, I only have to fill 5gb with music I want. So far, I haven’t missed the extra space. That covers my reasons, I suppose.

Let’s dig in to a little analysis of this contraption. As far as form factor goes, probably the biggest thing it’s got going for it is that it’s NOT an iPod. Not that the iPods aren’t nice little machines with a great interface; I’m just sick of seeing them everywhere =). The interface is really well done, and it represents a big improvement over the Nitrus, to which it’s quite similar in overall shape. For one, rather than the eraser-head four way control, it has something more akin to the control you’d find on a PocketPC or Palm-based PDA. This makes navigation much easier. I’m also not a huge fan of touchpad-type controls, like you see on the newer Zens and iPods. The Carbon uses a scroll wheel on the upper right corner that you operate with your thumb, and this gives you a little tactile feedback. That’s handy when you’re driving or running (I assume - I only run when zombies are chasing me and to stay lean in GTA). It also means you’re not sliding your finger repetitively as I’ve seen on some of the Zens from Creative (and on one of the newer iRivers, I think - I’ll have to check). Touchpads are cool and all, but I think the little wheel is better. The wheel gets you through menus and song lists just as quickly as the iPod’s wheel does.

Another improvement over the Nitrus (and the Karma, for that matter) is the lighting. Previous Rios used a blue backlight; the Carbon now has a white light, which is much more stylish. It also lights up the Rio logo and the buttons in red; that looks sharp =).

The Audible.com playback is executed pretty much flawlessly. In the Play Music menu, there’s a new section for Spoken Word. Here you’ll see all the books or periodicals you’ve loaded from Audible Manager. The Bookmark feature works quite well, and you’ve got ten to use if you’re ever in the middle of ten different audiobooks. Music playback is excellent as well; I use a pair of Shure E2C headphones, so I’m not sure how it sounds in crappy phones, but it sounds great in mine. I don’t listen to a lot of MP3s encoded lower than 256kps, so ymmv, but I have no complaints regarding sound quality. Skipping tracks can be a little sluggish, but that’s a minor complaint.

Another major improvement over the Karma or the Nitrus is the ability the Carbon has to act as a normal drive in Windows. Plug it into a USB port, and it shows up like a normal drive in your My Computer screen. No special drivers are needed. I still mostly use the Rio Music Manager to copy music over - I’ve found it’s less picky about tracks with the same title (different versions of the same song, or a song that’s on two different albums, as in the case of Greatest Hits albums) than Windows Media Player 10. RMM is also much less picky with copy-protected content, and will rip any of my CDs right to mp3 without making a fuss. This is not always true of WMP10. Anyway, the added option to use the Carbon to transport files is a great bonus.

Now for the gripes. I miss the docking station I had, both at home and in the car. It was awesome to be able to just stick the Karma in its cradle and have it pumping tunes through my stereo. I use the headphone jack on the Carbon, but it’s just not the same as popping into the dock for a line-out feed.

The appearance of the Carbon is great, but the chrome on the back gets scratched very easily. I haven’t abused it, dropped it, kept it in my pocket with my keys, or anything else of the sort, but it’s still marked up on the back. A minor annoyance, but the OCD side of me is really bugged by that. Fortunately the more sensible sides of my personality make the OCD side sit in the corner with his face to the wall most of the time.

Well, to conclude, the Carbon is really a great little machine. It’s not perfect, but there’s not a perfect player out there. It does what I ask and does it very well.