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Philips EXP103 eXpanium Portable MP3-CD Player with 45-Second Anti-Skip and Car Kit

Philips EXP103 eXpanium Portable MP3-CD Player with 45-Second Anti-Skip and Car Kit

List Price: $149.99
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Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Broke after a year
Review: I won't duplicate reports of the various shortcomings of this item, but would only like to add that mine broke after one year - soon as the warranty expired! It no longer plays MP-3's, and has become useful only as an ordinary CD player which skips a lot. Infuriating.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Impressed by philips quality and reliability
Review: I bought this system about 4 months back. It came with a complete car kit and the player. I am highly impressed by it's quality. It has played almost every cd that I have thrown in including some scratched cd's that cd-rom's refused to read ( including the new panasonic mini system I bought recently ). It refused only one cd which had some data file initially I guess. This is an extremely minor issue though. Also displays only the song number. But you can program the tracks ! Anyway even if you had song display support until you have a browser like winamp it's not much of a help. This player has never skipped in any of my decent cd's. While moving around the house it has never reacted to movement. With the car kit you can play the mp3 on cars, tape players ( I was surprised at the innocuos looking electrical to magnetic converter though). Sound quality is very good. The earphones are good but were not very comfortable after wearing for long time . You could do better buying good headphones. Overall I would highly recommend this for the price , reliability ( important ) and sound quality.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: This was good the first five seconds
Review: I use this cd player as often as I can ... but recently, I'm forced not to. It skips, actually it jumps from song one to song five playing 2 minutes and 3 seconds into the song. It always jumps, and I may not be moving the car at all. It plays regular cds somewhat ok, and mp3 cds are pretty much based on luck. It was good for the first five to ten minutes of its use with me. Now, it just screws up, gives me 'error' when I listen to cds, and jumps from song to song. I advise you to NOT buy this cd or from this brand, it's hard to trust them when they manufactor a cd player that doesn't do what the advertisements says it should.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Great
Review: This cd player is a very good product at a good value. I use it in my car and it is great. You can fit hundreds of songs on one cd and it never skips. I had the cd player fly to the back seat of my car hit the seat then the floor and it never missed a beat!It reads mp3 files as every folder is a seperate album and you can navigate to different songs in each folder.

PROS:

great sound quality for regular cd or mp3
Never had a problem with skipping.(i also run with it)
Pretty good battery life (about 9-10 hours)
good quality car kit with the tape that still sounds cd quality
some basic features like hold (so you can't acidentally hit a button, and a very good bass boost

CONS:

lcd small and hard to read if not in good lighting
can't read mp3 tags
No fast forward or rewind when playing mp3

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: worked great for a year, then it died
Review: this product was the first of its generation in 2000. it was exactly what i was looking for to make the transition from cds to mp3. i used it and loved it for a year, and then it just up and died. inconveniently after the warranty ran out. i'm going for an ipod.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: I like it
Review: I don't have any experience with other portable mp3 players (though i have quite a bit of experience with portable cd players), but I haven't had any problems with this one, and only have good things to say. The sound quality is good. Battery life is phenomenal. Rarely skips, and I spend a lot of time walking with it. I love it, wouldn't trade it for any other one out there, and I would recommend it to anyone. Sure it's a little pricey, but with so much poorly made equipment out there, sometimes you have to spend a little more for a superior product.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Great Product entry level at discount price
Review: This player works really fine, almost no skipping in my bike rides. Haven't tried it for walks or jogs.
It reads MP3 of any bitrate 320Kbps, 128, 160 , you name it , even vbr (variable bit rate) ones. That's a really important feature. My Panasonic DVD player, for instance, will freeze with some files (I had never seen an appliance "crash" before)
It comes with a car kit (cassete and & lighter adapter) and AC adapter.

Sound is OK. No hiss or other noise.

The only drawbacks are:

1. It does not display folder or file name or MP3 -ID tags. Though while cycling, I don't really care.
2. Headphones , though this is something easy to correct with cheap SONY ones or others.
3. No EQUALIZER, but sound is fine and has a bass enhancer.

In summary a great product if you find it with Amazon like prices (more than 40% off list price)

If you just want to set RANDOM and listen away this is the product for you.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: MP3 not as great as it sounds
Review: I bought the expanium expecting "magical" skip protection, which did suffice while driving, but not for walking or working out at the gym. as far as the mp3 cd's half of the time I end up hitting play three or four times as it tells me there is "no disc" quite frustrating. looking to return it and get a higher end player.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Ok, But not the best
Review: I bought this unit a year back (oh yeah, when it was 149.99) and I am a little disappointed with its temperamental attitude. I leave it in my car all the time and it serves my purpose. But... you have to be patient. Yes, this might test your patience.. Sometimes, it recognizes the CD you have put in but sometimes simply it keeps telling no disc inside even though there is a disk. You have to keep trying at least 10 times then it starts going. Once it starts then no problems. But at the time of my purchase there weren't many good ones out (like Sony or Panasonic or Aiwa) and I ended up with this one. Volume is low (even when it is in its highest setting). But for [price]it is worth buying. (Still the sony and panasonic SL-MP50 ones are in the range of [price]to [price])

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Had to Return
Review: The quality and value of this unit seems nice, however, I was compelled to return it. I bought it to listen to mp3 recordings of old time radio shows I purchased on CD-Rs. Each track is typically 30 minutes in length. I found this player to suddenly stop and start over while playing a track. This annoyance became unbearable as you are unable to scan forward or backward in mp3 mode to get to where you were so rudely cut off. The CD-Rs are perfectly replayed without interruption on every computer that I tried to use them on.

Some other observations...
1. Display is very hard to read, even in a well-lit room.
2. Because the individual tracks are labeled only by a track number, I can't figure out how the unit determines what order the tracks are replayed. When looking at Windows Explorer and WinAMP and sorting the files in every imaginable order, the order as replayed on the unit does not make sense.
3. As stated above, in mp3 mode, you can't scan within tracks. The amazon.com technical info implies that it does. I was only able to scan when playing regular CDs.
4. Included accessories make it seem to be a great value, perhaps the 40 kBit/s tracks are the reason I had trouble.


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