Preview: Motorola M500 Digital Audio/MP3 Player

Well folks, even Motorola has said the m500 isn’t supposed to be out until November – but we just found out that’s plain wrong. You heard it here first: the m500 is out and available right now…

And, it’s available (for people in the U.S.) at your local RadioShack of all places! (So is the m25, by the way – also a cool looking unit…) I’ve tried to capture and include a variety of shots of the unit that are floating around the web, as I unfortunately didn’t have my camera with me at the moment of this fortuitous occasion.

To step back, Motorola’s new line of audio players was first caught by TWICE (and replayed by our friends at DAPreview) back at the end of July. Within the last week or so, multiple people have noticed the Motorola website was listing the first two players in the line, the m25 and m500, with full details, firmware and documentation downloads, etc.

I don’t yet know of anyone that noticed RadioShack also has them online, or anyone else who has had a chance to toy around with a released Motorola m500 unit – though I know the Engadget folks had a look at it during the original Motorola launch event. It’s pretty darn small and lightweight, matching an iPod mini closely – the m500 comes in at 4 ounces, and 3.3″ x 2.5″ x 0.7″. The RadioShack unit color is an off-green, rather than the yellow tone on Motorola’s website – I don’t know if that means there are multiple versions in the world, or just Motorola using pre-production pictures of some sort.

Rio Forge 512 MB Sport MP3 PlayerClick for GREAT DEALS!06/29/08 8:35pm

The m25 and m500 were apparently designed by Rio, and it shows given the interface and control setup (not to mention the user guides are almost the same). Since there’s a lot of people who love Rio players, I’d think this is a good thing, allowing Rio to gain more market share through producing quality third-party players under strong(er) brands. Thus, for people familiar with the current crop of Rio MP3 players, most of this feature overview will be nothing much new.

The Motorola m500 audio player was certainly targeted at one-hand use, emulating its ‘peers’ in the Rio player lineup. The m500 is actually laid out more like a Rio Forge than the Rio hard drive players: the joystick is on the front of the unit, to the right of the display. But, where the Forge has it diagonal from the screen, the m500 has it directly to the right. Aside from the volume rocker on the top edge of the unit, the m500 relies solely on the joystick for menuing control. Some might say the Rio Carbon is a better design with the joystick below the screen, for left or right-handed access – not to mention the Carbon has a scroll-wheel for volume control and to improve navigating the menus. Time will tell.