mp3-cd players

I bought this CD player looking for an MP3/CD player with long battery life and durability. I got pretty much what I wanted -- the player's survived a couple tough falls (though it'll roll a bit if it lands on its side) and the batteries have held out over periods when I forgot to stop the music. I do have a few doubts as to whether they last for 48 hours, but they're good for at least 20, which serves my purposes fine. The claim of resumable playback is also questionable -- I've had some trouble getting it to work consistently.

One major feature that's lacking is fast-forwarding on MP3 CD's -- you can only do this on audio CD's, as holding down the seek buttons just move you up and down the folders in data CD's. But my only other complaint would be the lack of a LCD backlight -- it's really difficult to figure out what I'm doing in the dark, though the button configuration is still intuitive. I'd also have prefered a scrolling (vs. the button-based) volume control, but that's not all that important either.

The playback of MP3's and WMA's is useful, though if you have no use for the latter just save yourself some money and get the MP70 (unless you like the concentric ring design of the MP80 to the MP70's blue gradient). There are no problems with sound, a hold button exists, skipping has never happened to me, having ID3 tags is nice, and read time is good.

Priced on the lower end of MP3 CD players, I'd say this one is a good buy, but I'd shop around a little more to make sure you get the features you want. There's no remote or FM tuner on this one, and some players boast even higher battery lives. But if all you need is a reliable MP3 CD player that'll play everything on it reasonably conveniently (as long as you don't need to see song info in the dark or be able to search within an MP3 track), this may be the one you're looking for.

I bought this as a gift and I was looking for something less geeky than the iRiver ChromeX, which was the first choice. I just wanted a player that got the basics right and didn't involve dozens of settings. The brand name was there, I knew it was made in Japan, and the price suggested good quality for the features you get.

Based on my experience of the few weeks while it was still in my hands, my impression of this player is generally positive. The sound quality is good. I didn't look at the watch, but battery life was totally decent. The antiskip protection has passed several tests which have probably been more strenuous than real-life situations. And unless you're a geek, this player has pretty much all the features that you will need. I bought it last year, it's still being used and I haven't heard complaints so far.

There are a few things about it that I didn't like. I will mention them in order of their importance.

First, the lack of the fast forward and rewind functions while playing MP3s. I knew about it from the manual, prior to purchase, but I underestimated how important these functions are. It may vary with your listening habits, but if you listen to audiobooks or if you find yourself frequently skipping back and forth in a music track, this is not the player for you. Again, it only applies to MP3. Fast forward and rewind does work for audio CDs.

Another issue was the occasional overlapping between the end of one track and the beginning of the next when playing MP3s, but this happened randomly and it may have something to do with the quality of the CD.

A shortcoming that seems to be common to many CD-MP3 players are the "clicks" presumably generated by the buffering/antiskip algorithms. This player makes no exception. The clicks are there, very weak but still audible. They tend to occur when silence follows sound abruptly. If you pay attention, you will hear them at the end of music tracks. You may notice them if you listen to voice recordings even without paying attention. But you may not care about this. Audiophiles probably don't expect much from a portable player.

The browsing of MP3 CDs is limited to jumping by track or by folder/album. CDs with deep directory trees are not easy to browse, but otherwise you'll be fine.

The design is okay, but there's nothing "slick" about it. A little dull and bulky, actually. No back light on the LCD display, which makes it harder to use in the dark.

The included headphones have a wide spectrum, but they accentuate lower frequencies, which I find unnecessary, since the player itself has a bass-enhancing mode. However, many people like that, and if you don't, you can always replace the headphones.

(...).

This CD player is amazing for one simple reason: you can fit up to 15-17 CDs worth of music on it. I am fairly experienced with computers--I used Windows Media Player to 'rip' songs from 11 CDs from my CD collection, then burned them to ONE CD. Windows Media Player was able to automatically download song/album information using CDDB--navigating from CD to CD and within each virtual CD is a breeze. Now--I *have* put my MP3s onto a CD and I will acknowledge that many, many mp3s will fit onto a single CD. However, I am amazed that so many MORE WMAs will fit onto the same CD. The manual recommends ripping songs at 96kbps and this is fine for me. I notice no sound degradation at all.

The sound is very good. (...)

This is a very cool piece of technology and I am very pleased with the sound--but I am so over-the-edge happy about the WMA format and functionality.

This is a must-get.