Rating: 
Summary: Potentially good product, flawed execution
Review: This was a product I was wanting to like, really. My first non-PC-based mp3 player was something I really looked forward to. Unfortunately, despite some truly attractive and useful features and generally good performance, I have now shelved the unit for good and will likely return it to Amazon.First, the Good:
* The SmarTrax navigation system worked tolerably well, a must when playing disks with 200 or more tracks on them. Enough of the track info was displayed to know what I was playing and moving through the list was easy, though sometimes a bit slow.
* Playback was of generally good sonic quality, though it became a little ragged at upper volumes on particularly "hot" tracks.
* The bass boost mode was very helpful when using earphones that are lacking at the lower end of the audible spectrum. The Bad:
* Setup menu navigation is at times frustrating as the software constantly insists on taking you back to the play screen, forcing you to invoke the menu system over and over to complete your setup.
* The track list doesn't show track titles for CDs, only mp3s. I'm sure such data are available, but the RCA just calls them track 1,2,3...
* The unit turns itself off after only a couple of minutes paused. I don't know if this is a technical requirement to avoid damaging the disc, but I do know getting to track #127 again is a hassle after you pause it to go get a Coke down the hall. RCA might tweak the next generation to allow the unit to remain powered and in stand-by if it's on the AC adapter (as mine was). The ugly:
* The headphones. Ugh. Non-adjustable, flimsy, poor phone-to-ear connection (indeed if you can even get a connection...I was only able to get the earpads to my ears when I put the 'phones on from the back of my head). If you simply have to have this player, do yourself a favor and get a decent set of 'buds or 'phones.
* Here's the thing that disqualifies this unit, IMHO: it skips. Yes, I know it has a 3/6/13 minute anti-skip, but I'm not talking about physical shock-related skipping, but software glitch skipping. I used this player at my desk at work and it never experienced a shock greater than a dropped pen or telephone handset hang-up. Yet every few minutes a 0.5 second dropout or omission occurred in the music. At times there was a short silence, but most of the time it was as if an entire quarter note was missing from the song. The drop-outs happened on both CD and mp3-encoded discs, home-burned and factory-burned media alike. CD players have been around for 20 years or more...I don't think anyone need tolerate this sort of defect anymore in a player. Normally, I would have said that for the relatively low price I could live with the quirky menus, irritating automatic shut-off and mystery track names on CDs...I was even willing to pop for a set of good earbuds. But when I found my teeth grinding at yet another sonic hiccup in the middle of Warren Zevon's artful piano riffs in "Frank and Jesse James," I knew this player's days were numbered.
Rating: 
Summary: Great, but...
Review: those headphones! They are may be the worst headphones i have ever seen.. uh after the ones from the dollar store! The player itself is great, but you should really buy new headphones for this..
Rating:
Summary: Great value - hope it lasts.
Review: Was all ready to purchase a Panasonic model (SL-MP70) having had better luck with their portable CD players in the past than anyone else's, when I came across this RCA. I've honestly never purchased an RCA product before and was unsure of their reputation these days. But what sold me was the display - with a lot of MP3's on a disc, ID tags are an absolute must and a 4 line display is certainly helpful. When I read from the comments here that it also had backlighting (the Panasonic doesn't), well, that clinched it. I have not been disappointed so far and for [the money]I feel this is a great deal. All aspects of this player's performance have been excellent. The display is bright and clear and really does give a lot of info, including scrolling album title, year and genre (provided it's all in the ID tag). The sound quality is great - assuming you use your own headphones, as the ones that come with the player are absolute trash (this shouldn't surprise you at this price point - I have a pair of Koss Portapros that I use for portables). It is loud enough to hear fine in the NYC subway, and this is often a sticking point for me in portable CD players (returned 2 Sony models to the store a couple years ago because of it). The build quality is better than I expected for [the money] and it looks pretty slick too. I only hope it holds together - it does have a quality feel at first but the more you use it the more you appreciate the engineering that went into making it feel like it's better built than it actually is. The buttons, for example, are nice and stiff - but they occasionally click oddly if you don't press them exactly right (like the equivalent of cracking a knuckle - as if you've clipped a piece of interior plastic a bit). The laser assembly makes a loud cranking noise when it's moving - it's not smooth at all. And on my player, anyway, there is dust and smudging underneath the exterior glass on the display - there's no way to clean this out. Still, except for the dirt under the glass - probably unique to my unit - this player feels like it should cost more than it does. About the only real performance-related complaint I can make is that the pause between MP3 songs is quite long - about 4-5 seconds or so - making listening to some continous albums a bit different than the way the artist originally intended. All you can really do is rip to one continuous track if you want to get rid of these pauses, as it seems the player seeks to the beginning of each track individually, loads it into memory and then stops spinning the disc. It's the constant spinups/seeks at the track starts that cause the pauses. Otherwise, though, great player for the price. The functionality of the display is better than anything else at this price point or perhaps any other price point in a CD-based MP3 player, and the music sounds great. It also has handled all sorts of MP3's I've thrown at it so far; CBR, VBR, up to 320k/sec. I haven't tried WMA (nor will I probably ever) and I haven't even tried a regular CD (I bought it mainly for MP3 CD's), but I have no reason to believe it would handle these any differently than it does MP3's. I highly recommend this as a budget player; I just hope mine lasts me a good long time.
Rating:
Summary: Love mine! Wife wants one too!
Review: Was impressed with the quality of construction as soon as soon as I removed the unit from the box. As soon as I figured out how to properly create an MP3 CD on my computer, I was amazed by the quality of the sound this little gem produces. When my wife saw and heard it, she wanted one also. Using gift certificates she received for Mothers day and her birthday, she's ordering one for herself.
Rating:
Summary: one really satisfied customer
Review: Well it all started when I got a gift certificate for amazon.com and I was thinking what I really wanted was a new CD player, so I started shopping and came accross this one and it had all good reviews and lots of good features and it looked stylish it did everything i wanted it to do plus more it has push button volume wich is a must if your tired of rolling that little wheel, but the one thing I wanted was a backlit display so it was a difficult decision but I thought what the heck, after all I'm not really paying for it any way since I got a gift certificate so I bought it and when it finally came I took it out put the batteries in it and much to my surprise it had a backlit display, so in the end it really did have everything I wanted, but if your a kid like me you proably will want some different headphones because the ones that come with it are behind the neck and don't fit very good on the smaller head but other wise they have good sound but i'll proably shop around for a different pair, but on the whole I shuggest buying it it's really cool, has really cool animations and so many features that I don't have enough time to sit here and tell you all about them you'll just have to bye it and find out on your own, and has a matter of fact i'm listening to it right now as i'm typing this letter. P.S. Buy It
Rating:
Summary: An amazing product
Review: What an amazing find for this price. From Day One I have been nothing but impressed with this unit and all of its capabilities. It's easy to use and requires no software (you can just create a data CD and put it right in). A single CD can hold up to 200 songs (hours of music). I also like the audio out jack that allows me to plug it into the auxiliary audio of any stereo system and provide hours of continuous and non-repetitive background music without even having to change discs. This product is almost too good to be true (especially for its price), and I feel extremely lucky to have found it.
Rating:
Summary: this is just awesome
Review: when i first got enough money, i had my heart set on an mp3 player. while surfing, i foind that in order to get one that held enough songs, i would have to pay 200 dollars. any 13 year kids out there with 200 dollars in their pocket? i don't think so unless youre a rich kid(which im not). so then i found this cd/mp3 player. i love it. just get different headphones( i got some big dj headphones for 10) and it is the best 50 bucks you will ever spend on anything.
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