Panasonic SL-MP80 CD/MP3 Player

Rating:
Summary: Good but could be better
Review: Postives:
+Attractive price
+Looks pretty cool
+Plays CDs/MP3/ and WMA (haven't tried yet).
+Long battery life

Negatives:
-Soft (weak maximum volume)
-Inability to ff/rew inside mp3/wma files
-Having to press the ff/rew button 25 times to get to the 26th song.
-No power supply included
-No remote
-Doesn't feel durable (has panasonic lost its quality control?)

Rating:
Summary: Best one around
Review: The first one I bought I had to return because there was strange background noise (intermittently high pitch clicking) while playing back MP3. After awhile the player start skipping. (I know it claimed to be no-skip) So I thought it was my bad CD that I burned. But it was not. It skipped and click even with my regular music CD. So I returned and got my money back. The unit must have been damaged or something. After a week of no musics to listen to I did some more research on the web in hope of finding a good (better) CD/MP3 player to replace. But it seems like there's no better quality and value out there for the same price range. So I went back to the same store and give this player another chance. This time I was so impressed with the flawless performance. Battery life was long as they claimed. And I think it's longer than they said (nearly 60 hrs if you don't crank up the volume). Love the ID3 tag feature. Most of all, it's one of the rare CD players that is made in Japan. I own it for nearly 3 months now. I listen to it everynight about 1-2 hours a night. No problems what so ever. Highly recommend it.

Rating:
Summary: An excellent choice
Review: This CD/MP3 player is an excellent choice for anyone who wants to carry a large selection of music without being burdened by bulky stacks of discs. A single MP3 CD will hold eight or nine hours of music, even at the high bitrate I prefer. In theory, I could put my entire music library-- over one hundred albums-- on ten MP3 CDs and fit them in a single CD wallet.

The sound quality is excellent, easily in the upper levels for portable CD players. The headphones that come with the SL-MP80 are unexceptional but perfectly adequate, although audiophiles will probably want to use their own set of lightweight headphones to really get full performance.

Durability is another nice touch. I'm currently on deployment at Camp Arifjan, Kuwait; heat and dust make this a tough tour for electronic devices, but this one has held up like a champ. It sees particularly rough handling as I like to take my music with me when I exercise, but so far I haven't even scratched the case.

The only complaint I have is a minor one: The SL-MP80 does not read v2 ID3 tags! The older ID3 format is supported, but the newer extended format isn't. The v2 standard is hardly new, and I don't see any compelling reason to exclude it, but for some reason this unit simply doesn't support them. It will, however, read ID3 v1 tags, as well as MP3s with both v1 and v2 tags.

All in all, I couldn't suggest a better portable CD/MP3 player.

Rating:
Summary: Good Value for WMA Playback
Review: This is one of a few CD players that support WMA. If this is important to you, then you should get it, otherwise there are cheaper CD players around.

I tested the player with a CD-R with WMA files encoded at 128 Kbps, and I was happy with the playback.

BTW, the claim that the players can do 48 hours of playback for a pair of AA batteries is true only for alkaline batteries and 128 Kbps MP3 playback under specific conditions. If you are playing something else and/or not using alkaline batteries, the claim probably does not apply.

Rating:
Summary: Lacks two critical features and more
Review: This looked like a great deal, and was highly rated when I bought it. Sure looks cool, too! Live and learn.
I have two major gripes about it: weak maximum volume, and its inability to ff/rew inside mp3/wma files.
I listen to a lot of classical music, which due to its innately large dynamic range, is usually recorded several dB lower than pop music. This unit's maximum volume is simply too low to hear soft passages clearly. As for pop music, the max volume is only *slightly* louder than I can take, and I'm pretty careful with my ears. If you like to hammer yourself with a huge sound, don't buy this. It probably gets excellent battery economy because of its wimpy power output. Oh, and I compared it to my 4-year-old discman, (same disc, fresh batteries, same headphones), and the discman is definitely capable of louder output.
Furthermore, the inability to ff/rew (in mp3) is frustrating because again, classical music tends to have a few 10-20 minute tracks, instead of 12 4-min tracks... and I often like to listen to specific passages, not an entire movement. Fortunately, it *does* ff/rew on a proper audio CD.
The mega-bass EQ is acceptable, but the "live" setting sounds positively ridiculous, like the music is being played inside a gigantic trash can.
Finally, there is a slight pause between mp3 tracks, though my mp3's are encoded at 256kbit, so I'm surprised the unit even plays them.

I think I'm going to return this tomorrow...