Sonicblue touts a number of automated playback features on the Riot. For instance, it can quickly create a list of your most-played tunes, or of songs from a certain decade. But I found these things to be gimmicky, and they don't work well unless you first run your song collection through a piece of add-on software called MoodLogic, which isn't included.

The Riot purportedly has a battery life of at least 10 hours, which might put it close to the iPod's 12-hour battery life. But I couldn't test this, because the evaluation unit Sonicblue sent me wouldn't hold a charge. In fact, my test Riot, a production-level unit, was plagued with defects.