Rating: 
Summary: it's terrible
Review: I own one, and it has been the worst investment I have done in all my life. It takes too long to read the music files, after some use it heats up and will not work. Some cds are readable and others aren't. The cover painting is not very reliable. As a conclusion, it is a very low quality product.
Rating:
Summary: Stay away from disappointment
Review: I received my unit and kept it about 3 weeks before returning it. The overall quality of construction reminds me of a cheap $29 player. The unit didn't really sound all that bad- that is when it worked! My unit was obviously defective as it would only play for about 20 minutes then it would stop unless I turned it on its side or upside down. After waiting 2 months for a replacement from Genica, I accepted a refund and am now shopping for a better unit.
Rating: 
Summary: Its a Piece, but you get what you pay for.
Review: I've had mine for almost a year, and its till works. BUT, its cheaply made, has little to no control over the sound, or files.Forget using this one at the gym. the 45 second shock protection seems to only work if the unit is flat. If you put it in a "tune belt" Forget about it. Battery life is non-existent. We're talking 3-6 hours depending on the battery. File control - There is none. Basic song skip and a directory skip that rarely works. Audio quality - Weak. It doesn't play very loud, and the EQ settings are wortheless. Now i use mine it at work, just hit play and listen to tunes all day though some cheesy PC speakers. My vote, even with the new models. Wait until the technology is there. It won't be long.
Rating:
Summary: It's not the only one any more -- thank goodness!
Review: I've had one of these things for three weeks now, and have yet to persuade it to play more than 5 seconds of mp3. Why YOU might care is because I'm a software engineer by trade, I know all about VBR, CBR, jitter, recording speeds etc ... and nothing helps. On top of that, the design is clunky, the documentation is worse, and while it plays standard CDs fine most of the time, it's an AWFULLY expensive, inferior personal CD player. Do yourself a favour and save your pennies until you can afford a hard drive mp3 player like the Creative Labs Nomad. My "Tavarua" is going back right now.
Rating:
Summary: Okay, until something better comes along
Review: It is finicky, cheaply made and poorly designed, but beyond that it is a usefull machine when you get it figured out. Mine would overheat until I started using a different AC adapter than the one provided. I never got the 8 hour battery life another reviewer mentioned. I use rechargeable batteries now. I burn 10 hours of music to a couple of cd-rws, occasionally change this mix by reburning the cd, hook it up and leave it on random all day, like a personal ad free radio station. I don't ecommend it for use in the car, not that mine skips, but it is difficult to hit the right buttons, and it usually has to be reset at a red light. I like the idea, but will definately upgrade to a better brand when a worthwhile player comes out at a good price.
Rating:
Summary: Caveat Emptor
Review: Right out of the box, the Genica was something of a disappointment. It did not recognize more than half the mp3s I'd burned to discs, and a quick read-through of the manual explained why. 1) CDRW is not supported. 2) Discs must be recorded using ISO-9660 or Joliet file systems, so if you're using Adaptec, you can't make use of the Direct CD function. This also limits the number of files in any given directory to 256. 3) You can't use larger capacity discs; 650 megs is the limit 4) The bitrates must be between 32 and 192 5) Playlist files are not supported 6) On a disc with mixed data types, only mp3s will be recognized. 7) No mp3 files following a non-mp3 file will be recognized. It took me 3 tries to burn a disk on which most of the files were finally recognized. Then the beeping started. The disc would play without pause, but the "No disc" warning would show up repeatedly, accompanied by an annoying little beep that drowned out the music. A call to tech support confirmed that yes, it was odd, particularly as the beeping didn't seem to occur when I played regular CDs. However those produced a strange clicking noise at the start of each track. I returned the unit to the place I originally bought it, (not Amazon.com, which will always be a lesson to me!) and instead of a replacement unit, I got a note from tech support saying that they couldn't find a problem and they were going to ship it back to me. So here's what I discovered when I got it back and ran my own tests: Run the unit off of the AC adaptor and you'll probably have no trouble. Run it off of batteries and it will eventually start to skip and beep at you even though the disc is playing correctly. You get about half an hour to an hour's decent play out of a pair of double A batteries. Don't EVEN try to burn discs for this puppy until you're sure you've got all the information down cold. You'll just waste blank discs. Learn the controls; they are NOT intuitive and in fact can cause a bit of confusion. Would I buy this unit again? No. Will it fit my needs until I can afford something better? Probably.
Rating:
Summary: Purchase a Different Player
Review: The only reason for the 2 stars is because it was the first of it's kind. I bought this when it first came out, when there was no other MP3 cd players. It does work faily well. But as other reveiwers have suggested, the constructions is very cheap, the user interface is confusing and the battery life is short. One great feature is the rechageable batteries. You can purchase rechargable batteries, and rechage them in the player. Skip this purchase, and buy one the is newer.
Rating:
Summary: NOT a good deal
Review: Their claim that it has a "50 second anti-skip" is an out and out lie. This is more likely to skip at the slightest bump than my early '90's Sony DiscMan, and it's touchy! I would take any of their advertising claims with a large block of salt. Buyer Beware!
Rating: 
Summary: Cool product
Review: This is one of the great innovation machine today. Every music industries will cry when this goes popular, the only problem is that it doesnt have a text scroll for viewing what song you are playing and batt life only last for 5 hr on duracell.
Rating:
Summary: Finicky, but cool.
Review: This little gem is one of the most finicky pieces of electronics I've ever had the displeasure of working with. Here are my top complaints: 1) For some odd reason, you have to burn CDs at 1x. That's real time. It takes a theoretical minimum of 74min to burn a full CD. 2) The controls are very confusing, especially if you're trying to use them without looking. 3) You can't use long filenames. Your "Tavarua" CDs are useless as backup storage. 4) It can't read MP3s ripped at higher than 192kbps and variable bit rates can't vary by more than 50bps. So, basically, you have to re-rip all of your MP3s to be sure that they're going to work with this thing. If you don't, you'll have a CD of about 80 songs that skips, beeps, and blasts your ears out in between the pleasant stuff. Top compliments: 1) It's cheap. 2) It works well if you rip and burn your music properly. No skipping, long battery life (8 hours or so). 3) Sound quality is great. Connects directly to your component stereo system and sounds almost as good as regular CD. If you've got the patience to find the perfect way to rip your MP3s and burn them to CD, this cheap device is good enough. If you don't, don't waste your money.
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