I appreciate everyone's honest input. Here is my situation. I currently have a VW Jetta that had the Monsoon sound system stock. I replaced the HU with a Blaupunkt MD unit and kept the rest of the stock system. While in the past I might have spent a couple of thousand dollars on an aftermarket system, my aging ears and sensibilities told me this sounded fine. I have recorded music onto MiniDiscs from CD's and off the net from 128 to 192. They all sound fine to me. However, I realized that I would like to be able to listen to all of my music, at random, without having to change discs every 75 minutes or so, thus my desire to get a hard-drive based unit (probably to supplement my HU).

I have a DIN space available in my dash, so fitment is not an issue. What is an issue is that I can get the Neo from Best Buy, have them put it in, and if for some reason I am not happy I can get my money back. The alternative is to get a Rio off of Ebay and put it in myself (I installed my Blaupunkt myself), but if I am not happy with it (yeah I know, not likely), I am pretty much stuck with it.

Now, the advantage I see to the Neo is that it is still supported by the manufacturer, I can buy it and return it and I can mount the guts of it in my trunk and use their DIN Frame to mount the remote unit. The down side is that the color of the display won't match the rest of the car and I am not sure it will sound as good as the Rio (the Neo only has 1V outs).

As for the Rio, I would have to install it in my dash, and I worry about having to constantly remove it every time I leave my car (for theft protection). Years ago I had both Sony and Pioneer removable HU's and I am convinced that the constant removal and replacement, and the associate jarring, caused their failures. Plus there is the issue of having to buy the unit off of E-bay, which is always a risk.

Cost looks to be within $100 of each other, although the Rio and am looking at on Ebay is only a 10MB model, which is more than enough for me right now (I know upgrading is cheap).

So given that I am not running a high watt/dollar system and I am not looking to "hack" either unit, what do you guys suggest? If someone told me that the Neo didn't sound good, I would get the Rio, but taking into account my system, if they would sound similar, I might go for the Neo (just for piece of mind).