Rating: 
Summary: It deserves a zero-star rating.
Review: I'm on my third MP3 CD player -- I really like the format. I have had the original Philips Expanium player and the Rio PSX100 (the original RioVolt player).This machine is a turkey. It skips when playing my MP3 CDs, and it skips when playing commercially-available audio CDs. Also, when changing tracks on a commercially-available audio CD, the alphanumeric display went into "matrix mode" -- 2 lines of incomprehensible characters. The only way out of this mode was to power off the unit. When I called technical support, they told me to "create MP3 files sampling at a lower frequency" than the 256K that I had used. Wrong answer! The device is specified to work absolutely correctly at the sampling rate I used. And that explains nothing about the failure of the ordinary audio CDs on the player. They also sent me on a wild goose chase saying I should download and install the SP250's firmware on this device. There was no reference to this on SonicBlue's website, but I tried it anyway. The device refused to download the firmware. (I had no problem with firmware updates on my PSX100 in the past.) I would complain to SonicBlue's support line about wasting my time except for the fact that they now have a recording that says that they are very busy, announces the support center hours, and then *hangs up on you*. No offer to have you wait in a queue. No offer to call you back. No nothing. This is an extraordinary statement about how much SonicBlue values their customer. I'm going to go ahead and return mine to Amazon within the 30-day return window... On paper, the specifications of this player are extraordinary. In reality, it's a total loser. And SonicBlue has categorically dropped the ball on supporting the unfortunates who got one of these dogs for Christmas. Maybe they will fix the quality on this product. Stay tuned. For now, this is one product to avoid. I plan to buy no more SOnicBlue products until I hear about a marked improvement in quality -- and that they actually answer their customer support line.
Rating:
Summary: Be Very Carefull!!
Review: I have had my sp350 for three weeks now. Looks Great, Accessories Great, Sound is Great, But it does not always work. A place a regular CD in it and it skips while sitting on a desk. Placed a MP3 CD and it skipped. Got a lot of Garbage ASCII codes insted of the songs. Tried removing the ID3 option. That still didn't work. ...
Rating:
Summary: Great until it stopped working
Review: I really liked the design and features. It worked great for 6 six hours until it came up with "read errors" on the same disc it had previously played. It won't read any disc, CDR's with MP3s or regular CD's. The worst electronic purchase I have ever made.
Rating: 
Summary: What is your guys' problems?
Review: This is an awesome MP3 CD player. All the features work. It loads every CD I put into it. It displays and navigates through all the directories correctly. The radio works perfect. The sound quality is great, not to mention the customizable Equalizer. It is not an ugly player. The case fits and provides for full functionality of the unit. The included controller even has a button that you can program the function for. I have done all the skip testing possible. I have shaken it, run with it, drop it on the carpet from 3 feet. It does not skip period. You can turn the ID3 tags on and off. You have two different settings for ESP when the songs are being loaded into the buffer: 80 seconds and 320 seconds. You can set the scan and scroll speed. The interface is extremely intuitive and easy to use. All in all, this unit is perfect. It even looks good.
Rating: 
Summary: Great features, poor MP3 playback
Review: I got this player a few weeks back, direct from SONICblue. The feature set that they crammed into that little round case is incredible; however, they should have spent more time perfecting the features that they push as the unit's high-points. The sound quality is outstanding. FM reception is decent; which is to say, better than most portable players. Now, some of the downsides... MP3 playback is horrible. For a player that claims to have such a long anti-skip buffer my player sure seems to skip a lot when playing MP3s (Audio CDs work fine, I haven't tried WMA files). The unit frequently skips to different songs and has locked up completely (where all controls stop functioning and the batteries had to be removed) once. The only way I could get MP3 disks to work correctly was to starting burning my CD-R and CD-RW disks at very low speeds (1-4x, depending on the media). Disks burnt at speeds greater than 16x skip every few seconds and disks written faster than 24x rarely work at all. It should be noted that burnt audio CDs do not seem to have this problem. The other downsides are minor at worst. I would have liked to have seen the LCD backlight be on all the time when the unit is not running from batteries (like the Sony I had before this one). Also, the manual is only available on the CD, no print copy is provided. Hopefully the MP3 problem can be fixed in a firmware update. If not, you'll see my player on eBay inside of a month...
Rating:
Summary: Sent it back after 3 days of trying.........
Review: After playing with it for I finally gave up. I really wanted FM, unfortunately the reception is so poor it's almost pointless to have it on there! I only picked up a handfull of stations, none of which I listen to. The CD player stored so many tracks into memory and once then quit playing once the stored songs had been played. It was supposed to store the next 30 or so tracks and keep playing. I only got it to continue once or twice. It plays plain old CD's fine. Unfortunately, this costs way too much for just a plain old CD player!
Rating:
Summary: Maybe I got a defective unit
Review: It looks cool, has a lot of features, comes with lots of accessories, the batteries last a long time -- this seems like it should be a great player, BUT... - The radio won't tune correctly to stations below 91.0 or so - it just keeps receiving the bottom of *its* range no matter what the station is set to
- It won't read some audio CD's that I tried, saying "no disk".
- It won't read a CD of MP3's that I burned, replacing the contents of some directories with random ascii chars.
- It seems to chop off the last second of some of the MP3's
- On one of the MP3 CD's that I burned, it chopped up about half of the songs into multiple songs, resulting in a blip as it goes from one to another -- i.o.w., it will list a song three times with playing time for each one a third of the total time
- Sometimes while playing MP3's, it will randomly jump to the middle of another MP3 in another directory
Rating:
Summary: Too little... too late !
Review: This mp3 player is no where as good as others on market. Rio took too long to get a decent product out and that too is overpriced. It skips and the sound quality isn't that great either (with better Sony headphones). Have you seen a uglier design than this ? Probably not. There are also some nice flash based mp3 player from iRiver. This product is not worth your time or money.
Rating:
Summary: Disappointed.
Review: I already have an SP250 and an Iriver Slimx iMP-350. I bought this SP350 because of the 32 minute shock buffer. The player I got was skipping songs constantly. Called the online store to get a replacement. The replacement seems to work, but it skips songs still unlike the other two MP3-CD players(which never skip). First of all, I am disappointed in the review that [Amazon.com] gave because it says that you can use AA batteries. There is no external battery case to use AA batteries like the iMP-350(Sonicblue might sell it as an accessory later). This player does not always recognize my MP3-CDs like the SP250 and iMP-350. The only good thing is the sound quality is the best out of all 3 MP3-CD players. The rechargeable batteries that did come with the player take 6 hours to recharge. I currently have my own NIMH batteries and a 1 hour charger that I cannot use with this player. Sound quality is the only good thing about this player. Way overpriced and not worth the [$] retail price.
Rating:
Summary: Good Product, but do not purchase
Review: Good Features...Not Durable at all, bad Tech Support (from my experience with the sp250 and 350..when they sent me a replacement for my 250, it did not even work, and they are very slow with emails...after 1 month of use, just started displaying "No Disc" for any type of disc, and Tech Support has not responded yet...it has been about 3 weeks since i emailed...similar problem happened with my SP250
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