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Sony D-CJ500 Portable CD/MP3 Player

Sony D-CJ500 Portable CD/MP3 Player

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Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Good, but Missing Key Functionality
Review: This is a great sounding player, beautiful sound in earphones or over my car stereo (with car kit). It plays all sorts of bitrates, including high quality variable. It allows you to move in and out of folders and shows ID3 or filename listings for your MP3s. Nice shuffle within folders and across entire discs. Nice display, easy to use. Good feel to the buttons. Strong, good looking case.

But here's the cons:
- No organization besides alphabetical
I have a bunch of already created MP3 discs and I don't/didn't store my mp3s with track numbers in the titles, so all my tunes were played alphabetically. There was no way for me to play tunes in the correct album order. I was hoping it would take winAmp playlists or at least the track numbers from the tags, but nope. It's all driven by the order of the tracks on the disc.

Even weirder is that on some folders, they played in a seemingly random, but constant order. So I couldn't even count on them playing in any particular. I couldn't figure out how it was deciding what to play next. (And NO the shuffle wasn't on.)

- The BEEP
I think someone else wrote about this, and I didn't think it'd be annoying. Every time you turn it on, push a button or do anything, it emits this BEEP. It's not quite that annoying with headphones, but it's very loud over the car kit. And still kinda annoying with the phones. Why would they even do that?

- No belt clip
I kept it in my pocket, which worked fine, but for 100 bucks could you at least engineer some holes where I could attach one?

Those were the big downsides. Primarily the inability to play the MP3s in a predetermined order.

I'm taking mine back.
Peter

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Great Deal!
Review: This is by far the best cd/mp3 player for the money. I have used it with CD-R's and CD-RW's and have had absolutely NO problems with it recognizing or skipping. I have used it for over a week while walking and working out both with CD's and MP3 mode and it has not skipped even once! Sony has really discovered something that the other CD player manufacturers have not -- their players pretty much never skip anymore.. it's really an engineering marvel.

Some people here have had a few complaints that I'd like to address:

I have had no problems with it recognizing my MP3 data CD's. I suspect those that do are using dodgy media or burners.

The lack of a line out is inconsequential...since you can very easily use the headphone jack.

Some people have complained about the 'beep'. Doesn't bother me, but if you READ the manual you will find that there are simple instructions on how you can turn the beep off.

It is true that in MP3 mode it plays back only in alphabetical order.. you cannot create your own playlists on the fly. But anyone who is familiar with creating MP3's realizes that once you convert a CD to MP3's you lose the order structure inherent to the disk. If this really bothers you add a number to the beginning of the song when you save it.

All in all I am VERY impressed with it. I'd recommend it to anyone with a CD-burner.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Great player and great deal
Review: This is my third CD-MP3 player and my favorite by a long shot. I have also owned a Philips Expanium EXP103 and a Pine D'Music SM200C. This Sony has the fit and finish of the Philips device, but the ID3 tag support of the Pine device.

Pros:
* Battery life. Sony claims 24 hours. I only use it for 4-6 hours at a time and in doing so I've only depleted 25% of the battery so it seems about right.
* FAST startup. It is about 10 seconds from the time you put the CD in to the time it actually starts playing. Usually MP3-CD players with ID3 tag support take much much longer.
* Great ID3 tag support. You can view the title, artist, and album information.
* Folder navigation (and shows the names of the folders as you are navigating)
* Fantastic anti-skip protection. I was unable to get it to skip without doing something that might actually damage the unit. For MP3s it actually reads the current MP3 into memory and stops spinning the CD. For the most part the CD is not spinning when you play MP3s. I assume this is how they get such long battery life.
* Good repeat options for CDs and MP3s (on MP3s you can repeat just the current folder)
* Intuitive controls
* Size: slim and very light

Cons:
* No "line out" jack (not a big deal for me, but it is for some)
* No backlight for display
* Size: while it is slim it is somewhat longer than the smaller Sony CD Walkmans. It is still smaller than the Philips and Pine players I had.
* Sort of cheap looking, especially the bottom of the unit. Since nobody sees the bottom there's no big deal. For me this is a bonus since I spend a lot of time listing in the airport. If it looks cheap nobody will want to steal it. It's not cheaply made, but it doesn't have the "cool" factor that some of the other Sony CD Walkman products have.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: BEst of the Best!!1
Review: This is probaly the best cd player that is around 100 bucks.it took me awhile to think of songs to fit on 700mb cd.u could put around 200 songs.that is better then those oringial cd players.this player is very handy.ovarall i think this is a allsome cd player!!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Great CD Player
Review: This is the 1st cd player i have bought in 7 years and it is the best one that i have used in the meantime

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Great Player!
Review: This player plays CDRW,CDR,MP3 and regular CD's! I found that it also conserves battery power by means of writing the MP3 data to memory! It does this intermittently, thereby stopping the motor after reading a section of the MP3! it saves so much electricity, also by turning off the Backlit display after five seconds! I listened to most of an MP3 disc, with Eleven Whole Albums on it and it did not register any use in battery power yet! I was told to use Radio Shack's Enercells. they do last long. i am very happy with my purchase! I can now listen to tons of music at the lake while fishing!

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Best Player, But not the Best Deal
Review: Well, what can I say... This is a great mp3 player. The sound is the best of the best. The headphone is bassy and clear, althought I personally like earbud. The body of the player is a little bigger than the others(samsung, panasonic), but so far, it is the lightest. The player support ID3 tag and can start in 10 sec(pretty fast!).

This player is the best, but not the best deal...I also prefer a remote control(there is no slot for remote), but, hey!none of the others have. Other than that, it also lack an AC adoptor and a hand strap (I can't believe sony did that!)

The feature of the player are average, despite it has an 2 level G-protection, it doesn't have an line out (wow, Im seriously disappointed!)

The playback of the player are very smooth, all the cd I wrote works fine on it. For stability, so far I haven't encounter any problem.

Any way, it is the best player without considering the accessories, features and the price. If you want the best quality sound, this is the one to go. But,if you want a player that full of feature and a lot of accessories, it's not gonna happen!(The new samsung cd yepp has a lot of features, and panasonic is much smaller! Both of them are cheap!) So, if you want a cd mp3 player, you decide!

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Excellent Player!
Review: When I purchased this CD player, I was just expecting it to be another average player with o.k. sound. But when I began listening, I discovered how wrong I was. This player has such great sound quality, it almost sounds like you are at a live concert! ALso, the G-Protection is absolutelyl amazing. You could play football with tis thing and it still wouldnt skip. This player also has an exceptionally long battery life (that is compared to may standards. Although you may not want to take my word for this because I myself have only owned two players). It is also great that with MP3 files, you can fit about 200 songs on a single CD so you barelly ever have to change CDs. The only reason why I wouldn't rate this player 5 stars is because... it is a little on the pricey side, and that means that I had to clean quite a few more bathrooms. Overall, this is an extrordinary player.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: i love this thing!
Review: When I was reading up on this player i was a little skeptical about buying it but i went for it anyways figuring if I didn't like it I could return it. I paid about [$$$]for this and it's the best investment I ever made. This thing plays awesome it barely ever skips and it holds hundreds of mp3's. the only bad things about this player are that the display screen doesn't light up and it is a bit of a battery hog(rechargable batteries are a great investment). but other than that its a great piece of equipment.


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