Rating: 
Summary: Great product for the price!
Review: I was pleasantly surprised by the sound quality. Earphones are for those with really large heads, but I bought another pair for ten dollars and it's fine. Radio has great reception. You can't do better for the money. Highly recommend it.
Rating: 
Summary: Great Unit - Average Headphones
Review: This unit is a solid performer. Very lightweight. Doesn't feel anymore flimsy than the 'other' non-sports models on the market. Lots of "bang" for the buck.Highs -It has a fantastic tuner - that works even in my workplace (I had 3 other radios that didn't) and has AM.
-The skip resistance is amazing - it doesn't skip, period.
-VERY fast MP3 load time.
-Plays almost any media (even very scratched ones) - I have a high-end KENWOOD MP3 deck in my auto - this PANASONIC plays discs that unit won't touch.
-Battery life is excellent - I use NMHi rechargables when on the go...and a 4.5v power adapter at work. Lows -Random function - this isn't a random function - I have dubbed it quasi-random - in a hour of listening it will pick the same song about 3 times on a group of 100 MP3s...
-Headphones - not bad sound - but bulky and very quiet. I use a pair of SONY h.ear™ Stereo Headphones MDR-J10 and the sounds is really good and LOUD - at 6 MP3s are loud, at 3 the tuner is loud... With the factory set - you have to crank it up to about 20... Figure $ 8 extra when you buy this unit and get the Sony MDR-J10s.
Rating:
Summary: Not loud enough
Review: Everything fine, except for me, critical problem - cannot get enough volume when playing a CD. Great volume for the radio.
Rating:
Summary: Almost perfect
Review: The SL-SV550 from Panasonic is a stylish, lightweight CD player that also works well with MP3 audio files and has a nice built-in radio with both AM and FM bands. This model is not the sporty, rugged type Panasonic also sells, but nonetheless exhibits the highest build quality. (Made in Japan.) Pros:
- Incredibly long battery life on two AA batteries. Takes both alkaline (1.5Vx2) and NiMH (1.2Vx2) types of batteries. The battery indicator has four levels: 1-3 bars, plus no bar to indicate low battery. I've played a mixture of audio CDs, MP3 CD-Rs and radio for over a week on two fresh AA alkalines from Walgreen's, and there are still 1-2 bars left. Just incredible. The use of standard AA batteries also means to need to buy expensive proprietary batteries or carry a charger. NOTE: if you use NiMH batteries, due to their low initial voltage, the indicator may exhibit only 1-2 bars from the start, but the NiMH batteries will actually last longer. This is speaking from my experience with other Panasonic CD/MP3 players (e.g., SX70/80). - Very clean sound. The bundled headphones are ok, but I use a set of noise-cancelling earbuds, and the sound from the Panasonic is very clean and pleasant. The bass, even when boosted, is not too strong, but that's fine with me as excessive bass gives me headaches. There's plenty of volume from the radio and audio CD plays, but MP3 audio can be a bit too soft, so you may want to get a pair of volume-control headphones. - Compatible with audio CDs, CD-R and CD-RW burned with audio CD tracks, CD-R and CD-RW burned with MP3 or WAV files. I've tried a good many number of MP3-filled CD-R discs, some even scratched, and the Panasonic has no trouble with any of them. Some notes here: 1. When creating an MP3 CD be sure to put files in different root-level folders, with no more than 12 in each folder. The Panasonic strives for simplest controls, at the expense of extensive file navigation. The use of folders simplifies skipping to the album (folder) and track (file) you want. The player does remember the last track/file played, unless you change discs. 2. This player does not display ID3 tags, only track number and elapsed time. This is more a CD player that can support MP3 files, rather than a dedicated MP3 player. For the latter, you might as well go for an iPod, Rio or RCA Lyra. - Great radio functions. Very good reception, better than my dedicated portable radio, and deafeningly loud at the max volume. Twenty FM presets and ten AM presets. Very easy to program. - Anti-skip that works flawlessly. You shouldn't drop this unit, though, as it's not designed to be dropped. - Stylish and lightweight. Only 6 ounces with two AA batteries. Minor cons: - Cannot search within an MP3 track. You can search within audio CD tracks, but not within MP3. No big deal for music, but inconvenient for MP3 audio books. - Small buttons. Buttons are responsive but not laid out logically, and they are all too small. A few times I pressed the skip button instead of volume control which I meant to. - Battery compartment is under the CD. My old Panasonic discmen had external battery compartments, but the newer models all put them under the CD, inside. If the door is not closed in place it can pop up and scratch your CD. The engineer who made this switch should be shot. Also, when will Panasonic start using AAA batteries to make these even slimmer? In summary, a great portable CD/MP3 player for the buck. Highly recommended (unless you plan to listen to a lot of MP3s).
Rating: 
Summary: Radio, Mp3 Playback & Battery Life Great; Design Flawed
Review: I've been looking for a compact mp3 player w/ AM & FM tuner. This does the trick & I use it on my 1+ hour train commute every day. Overall, not bad, but the design is flawed and somewhat idiotic and unintuitive. Here's my summary: Good:
- MP3 Playback is good, no problem with any kind of MP3 encoding.
- Tuner pulls in Am & FM signals very well
- Battery life is excellent - I get about 20-35 hours on a single charge of 1800 Mah rechargeables AA's
- Fairly light and compact Bad:
- Button layout is hard to navigate without looking at it.
- No ID Tag display - 120+ songs and no idea what's playing
- No WMA or Ogg support - too bad, you could squeeze more on a disk (sometimes you have to think extra hard if you accidentally burned some other files other than mp3's)
- No normalization to even out the volume across tracks
- No remote I suggest looking at the iriver 550 for WMA support and ID tag display, but it's more expensive has less battery life and does not have AM. So, if you want new or sports you're screwed. My ideal HD-based player doesn't exist yet (AM/FM tuner, 60GB Ipod-style player)! Anybody listening??? Let me know if you find it :-)
Rating:
Summary: Good unit for the price
Review: This is my first personal CD player, and after reading reviews of various brands and models and seeing what looked like only about 50% satisfaction I was apprehensive, but the player seems to be fine. Many reviews claimed that this and other similar models did not play loud enough and almost all reviews said the included headphones were bad. However, my experience is that the volume is plenty loud and the headphones are fine. Even my aged ears only require a volume of 14 out of 25 to fill my head with gentle guitar music. The headphones are comfortable enough. The radio sounds clear and is easily tuned by just pressing the button to go into tuning mode and pressing + or -. The unit is light (most of the weight is the two AA batteries) and the anit-skip works well. My gripes are that (1) you must remove the CD to replace the batteries; (2) play time is considerably reduced when using CD-RW, and is reduced when using rechargable batteries (they give play time of only 40% of time with alkaline batteries); (3) if I pause during playback and turn off power, when I turn power back on it only remembers the track, not the location on the track. The Hold switch is a mixed blessing. With Hold enabled no buttons work, which protects you from accidental presses, but you have to disable Hold to pause. Also the display only shows track number and time played in the track. It does not show a title. Most of these little problems have been mentioned by other reviewers. I give this unit 4 stars, because I think it is a good unit for the price.
Rating: 
Summary: CAVEAT EMPTOR
Review: the sound quality on this thing is HORRIBLE. radio reception SUCKS. the buttons have non-intuitive placement, i.e CONFUSING. going to return this thing ASAP. theres gotta be better economy choices out there. i had a bogus $20 no-name cd player with better sound and radio reception -- DO NOT BUY THIS PIECE OF GARBAGE.
Rating:
Summary: very good sound BUT VERY LITTLE OF IT
Review: Its a good thing I have some very very efficient headphones (112db/1mwatt)as this unit need it very much. I still have to turn it up to 18 to 21 to be satisfactory. It has very good skip resistance to normal active activities, it faulters only under extreme abuse of tapping very rapidly for a long time. Attemps of getting it to skip by shaking it rapidly for a long period failed to make it skip. Very good sound for type of porduct. However it has very low sound output with the supplied headset and quite low volume with most other headsets. I have found only Koss Plug headsets had adaquate volume & those require a fair amount of care as they go into your ears instead of on or over them. I still Question the reliability due to its light weight & flimsy latch mechanism it is very light weight.
Rating:
Summary: Nice but.....
Review: too bad it doesn't last. I bought this CD player because i trusted Panasonic, and liked the price tag. The headphones ok, but they always fell off my head. The radio reception is pretty nice and it doesn't skip when playing CDs. The only problem I had with it was the fact that the names didn't show when i played MP3s. However, the durability is by far the worst I've ever seen. Within a month the part that held the cd player closed had broken off, and the motor that turns the CD was broken. My friend had the same one, and the laser broke as well. I would recommend this only to people who have only a month before they go deaf and want a cheap short-term CD player
Rating:
Summary: This is a great player!
Review: I badly needed a new a new MP3 player and it took me a long time to find a good one,but I chose this one.I had few problems with this system like programing the radio stations,but all in all I had great results with it.It's battery life is very extensive and the headphones are quite comfortable.
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