Rating: 
Summary: The Minidisc Revolution
Review: I decided to take the plunge into Minidisc by buying this unit - the price was right and the features on this guy were impressive. First, the plus side - it has a disk drive type load/eject mechanism - other models you open up the unit and slide the disc in - this model you just pop the disc in like a floppy drive - no hassles. Second, you can dynamically change the recording level while recording - most other units don't do this. Third, has an MDlink digital input - for flawless copying from CD. This is very cool because it automatically marks tracks. Also records from analog sources and looks for periods of silence to auto mark tracks. Of course, like other similar units it can combine/split tracks after they're recorded. Also, the rechargeable batter is nice - I find it lasts about 7 hours depending on volume, skipping songs etc. This is more than adequate for even extreme situations - like an LA to NY flight. On the down side - the unit lets you enter titles for individual tracks and even the whole disc, but the interface for doing this is ackward. Also, the play modes are limitted - you can single track repeat, repeat the whole disc, or shuffle play the whole disc. You can't program your own tracks into the unit - I guess to some degree the fact that you can reorder tracks on the disc makes up for this, but not really. Two other downsides are the included wired remote control and the included headphones. I suggest dumping the included phones immediately - they're ok sound wise, but only ok, and the cord is too short. The remote is cool - it features a backlit display that mirrors all of the information displayed on the unit itself (and strangely, the unit itself does not have a backlit display) - but the controls on the remote are too small and ackwardly positioned to be of much use - also, by touch they're pretty indistinguishable from one another and since you often use the remote in your pocket, this is a big disadvantage. Also, the remote has a small aligator clip on the back so that you can attach it to your clothes, but it seems to be facing the wrong way which increases the ackwardness of the remote. Finally, one downside of this unit which you may not notice is that its ATRAC compression algorithm, which the unit uses to remove "non-essential" parts of the audio so that it will fit on the minidisc's limitted storage space, is an older version of the algorithm. Newer models from Sony and Sharp have newer versions of the algorithm which supposedly results in better recording quality, though I cannot comment on the accuracy of this.
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