The Rio S30S Sport MP3 player isn’t the smallest MP3 player on the market but it isn’t exactly large either. The S30S is light enough to strap onto your arm using the included arm band but we’ll have more on that later. The S30S is encased in a rubbery material that is fairly solid in construction. The S30S isn’t entirely made of durable rubber unfortunately. I say unfortunate because I am a person who tends to be rather clumsy when it comes to small devices. If it’s small –I’ll drop it. However with that said, I do believe that the Rio S30S will easily survive a number of accidents. The front surface is made of hard plastic which appears durable enough for everyday use.

Here’s a picture of the front of the S30S. The screen is a monochrome LCD display which is sufficient for displaying music information. Below the LCD screen is a directional cursor which also doubles as music track controls and stopwatch operations. To the left of the controls is the ENTER button which allows you to select actions within the menu item.

The rest of the controls align the top of the MP3 player. From left to right you’ll find the power switch, multifunction port, MENU button and volume control.

Ports	Volume Control

The rear of the S30S is the battery and memory card door.

The door itself feels somewhat flimsy. You slide the door off and then install the AAA battery and/or memory card and then slide the door back on. There isn’t much of a latch on the battery cover so you’ll have an uncomfortable feeling that the cover might just come off. However, during my time with it in the gym, the battery cover never was a problem for me. I do wonder what this door will be like after months of continuous use from changing batteries.

Rear of the S30S	The Battery Cover

Setup

Setting up the Rio S20S involves the following steps
1. Install the battery and memory card through the back cover.
2. Install the Rio software. The software is on the included CD and you will need to install this software if you plan on uploading music to the player. Unfortunately the S30S is not recognized as an external hard drive on a Windows XP system so you’ll need to install a USB driver. You’ll then need to install the manager application which will scan your music collection and manage the upload process of your music.
3. Connect the Rio and upload music to the player. Here are some pictures of the software application. There are other applications on the included CD but I didn’t bother installing them for this review.

The entire installation is very straightforward – so much so that Rio only packages a single sheet of installation instructions. There is no manual in here.