Sony D-NE300 ATRAC Walkman Portable CD Player (Blue)

Rating:
Summary: My First MP3/CD Player
Review: This is my first mp3 player, but I'm no stranger to electronics and standard CD players. I bought this player last night at Target so there are probably features and annoyances I have yet to discover. I just thought I'd share my first impression.

The D-NE300 comes with software for compressing audio files (Atrac3) but the software required updates and made my computer crash. I gave up on that for now, mp3s work just fine for me.

PROS:
**This little player is very customizable!
**LCD screen shows ID3 information, which has a customizable display - you can cycle through title, artist, and album with the push of a button. ID3 tags can be created and edited using the free program Winamp. If you don't have winamp yet and you're buying an MP3 player, something is probably wrong with you.
**There are 3 equalizer presets and a custom style that can be set in one of 21 different combinations.
**The large center button has the play button and menu buttons. The small buttons on either side of the large button are for moving through directories. I have a CD with 8 different albums, with one click I can move from one album to the next. The other two buttons on the face of the player are stop and menu.
**There are several different listening options.. you can listen to one song repeated, all the music on the disc, all shuffled, one directory, one directory shuffled, playlists, playlists shuffled, your most-played songs, your most-played songs shuffled. So many options!
**Battery life is 85 hours! This is in part because the LCD powers down when you push stop. When you push any button, the LCD pops back on and displays the last song you were playing. There's no power button! There's also a timer option, so you can go to sleep listening to music and not worry about the batteries.
**The sound is very nice, plenty of volume, and the bass is sufficient. I'm using my own Sony MDR-Q22LP headphones. The sound quality was a big improvement over my Philips Magnavox CD player using the same headphones. I've tried both music and audio books, the sound is crisp and loud. (see CONS below).
**I've heard complaints with mp3 players about a delay between songs. I have not experienced this. The jump from one song to the next is instant. I use NTI CD Maker for burning.
**The case is sleek and stylish. If appearance is important to you, this player is not lacking. The blue color does have a questionably purple tint to it. If you're a guy or buying it for a guy who would be offended, you may want to consider the grey case.


CONS:
**There is no backlight on the display. That doesnt bother me, I usually know what I'm listening to or I don't care to look at every song title as it's playing.
**The player has a loading time of about 15 seconds. MP3 players are not instant like standard CD players... at least this one isn't. Also, the loading sounds can be a little noisy. Probably not louder than the sound of a phone on vibrate, but louder than I expected.
**The headphones that come with the player are crappy and very quiet. Suprise suprise. I'm using my Sony MDR-Q22LP headphones ($15).
**The volume control consists of two buttons on the side, up and down. A bar appears on the LCD when adjusting the volume. I would've liked some sort of numerical indication of the volume. This is just me being nit-picky.

Rating:
Summary: i really like it
Review: this is one of sonys finest. as far as sound is conserned. they got the four band eq.off! im using a pair of the best koss headphones. with this player.the koss and sony are great together. its the best of all discmans.sony is in the lead.

Rating:
Summary: Very Fragile
Review: While this seems like a great MP3-CD player don't drop it. I dropped mine about 14 inches unto a carpeted floor and it's never worked since!!!