Rating: 
Summary: Buy a battery factory first
Review: As a CD player it's so-so. No better or worse than many others I already own, or have owned. The BEEP when you hit pause is major annoyance so I would recommend against hitting PAUSE when wearing headphones. It does this to remind you that you have it in PAUSE mode, and does it about every 6-7 seconds.The big problem is batteries. It only takes one AA but it sucks the life out of it in record time. And if you happen to put it on the table for a couple of days with a battery in it, expect it to be close to drained when next you turn the unit on. Why? Good question. Ask Philips. My questions about it have gone unanswered. The resume mode works as advertised. But if you have to replace the battery you'll lose the resume memory and have to start over. And since it eats batteries, well ... Sound is excellent. I've used it for both contemporary music at the usual bit rates, and Old Time Radio programs at obscenely low bit-rates. It played most of them but has been known to stutter occasionally with OTR material at 24kbps. As I type this I'm listening to a Command Performance show from 6/30/44 encoded at 24kbps. 10 minutes in it has only stuttered once. You could do worse ...
Rating: 
Summary: Good bang for buck factor
Review: For me, it was either an MP3CD player, or a flash based system. Hard drive based systems are nice, but I cannot afford to lose or drop a $250+ unit. This is also a good unit to have if you want to get into a hard drive MP3 player ::eventually:: but want to wait for the technology to advance / prices to drop. I liked the idea of essentially having a "playlist" of songs on media that I can keep for a while and not have to erase and rewrite all the time. In the long run, managing a small collection of 8mm MP3CDs is less hassle than constantly reloading a flash based player and losing what was there before. Also, those 8mm CDs will play in 99% of computers and full size MP3CD players. The sound quality is very good. The unit has an electronic skip protection (ESP). However, I have found that even when I am riding my bike it is hard to make it skip. Leave ESP off and your battery will last about 1/3 longer. The only thing I wish this player did was display ID3 tags, but maybe I am asking for too much in a player this small.
Rating:
Summary: Good bang for buck factor
Review: For me, it was either an MP3CD player, or a flash based system. Hard drive based systems are nice, but I cannot afford to lose or drop a $250+ unit. This is also a good unit to have if you want to get into a hard drive MP3 player ::eventually:: but want to wait for the technology to advance / prices to drop. I liked the idea of essentially having a "playlist" of songs on media that I can keep for a while and not have to erase and rewrite all the time. In the long run, managing a small collection of 8mm MP3CDs is less hassle than constantly reloading a flash based player and losing what was there before. Also, those 8mm CDs will play in 99% of computers and full size MP3CD players. The sound quality is very good. The unit has an electronic skip protection (ESP). However, I have found that even when I am riding my bike it is hard to make it skip. Leave ESP off and your battery will last about 1/3 longer. The only thing I wish this player did was display ID3 tags, but maybe I am asking for too much in a player this small.
Rating: 
Summary: perfect for listening at work
Review: I've been using this for a couple of weeks now. For listening to music at the office, this one is hard to top. With the CD you don't have to physically connect the player to a computer to transfer MP3's and it's small enough to not be a burden. It takes up no space on the desk and with the AC adapter included, battery life is a non-issue. I've found that I can squeeze about 4 full-length albums onto a single CD and the playback is bearable through slightly upgraded earphones. The ones that ship with the unit are cheap, but not horrible. For $50 bucks, of course it's got limitations, but a very nice and usable device.
Rating:
Summary: perfect for listening at work
Review: I've been using this for a couple of weeks now. For listening to music at the office, this one is hard to top. With the CD you don't have to physically connect the player to a computer to transfer MP3's and it's small enough to not be a burden. It takes up no space on the desk and with the AC adapter included, battery life is a non-issue. I've found that I can squeeze about 4 full-length albums onto a single CD and the playback is bearable through slightly upgraded earphones. The ones that ship with the unit are cheap, but not horrible. For $50 bucks, of course it's got limitations, but a very nice and usable device.
Rating:
Summary: Move mountains of music with this tiny cd player
Review: I've had my Philips EXP 411 for about a year now and I have been pretty satisfied with it by far. The size of this player enables it to be easily stored in a pants pocket, or the breast pocket of your dress shirt. The mini cd may not hold as many mp3's as a full size cd, but if you are in need for such storage capacity, you mind as well go for any hard drive based mp3 player for both storage capability and size convenience, but for people know would like to carry up to 3-5 hours of music (quantity of music varries on size of music files), you will be happy with this mini CD player. If your the kind of person who listens to different music week by week, I would suggest getting some mini-cd rewriteables so that you wont have to keep burning on new cd's everytime you've obtained new music, or if you are sick of the music that you have and want to listen to something else. So what I pretty much explained is that the Philips EXP 411 can be as versitile as any mini-disc player with a mini cd-rw(they can be re-writen as much as a mini disc and cost less too!) The mini discs are also a head turner and capture the interest of those around you. The battery life on this player is up to 6 hours on this player on 1 AA battery (keep that in mind people), so this may pose as a problem to many frugal people put ther, but you can cope with this by purchasing a couple of rechargable batteries which will ultimately start to pay for themselves within the first month of jammin' with the Philips eXpanium. The built quality of my Philips eXpanium 411 has been proven to be good over the past year with some crashes and spills into concrete, linoleum flooring, asphault, and various other surfaces and to this day still works fine without any problems(it still looks new too).
Rating:
Summary: a very good choise
Review: my girlfriend gave me a 64mb samsung mp3 player which cost around $70, she told me that i could take it or not, cuz she havent paid for it... so i had this one for about a week and dont even put a song on it ... i just told her to take it back because 64 mbs is nothng .... 20 or 40 extra bucks and i could get a 128 or even a 256 mp3 player... so i started lookin for an mp3 player at amazon (very good service, have bought a lot of things and everything is alway on time and works good!) and i found out that none of the mp3s avialable fit to me, soudenly i remembered i have a sony mavica cd500 which uses 8 cm cd-r media and i looked for an 8 cm cd player who played back mp3s and i found this one, the best!!! an mp3 cd player for 50 bux is the best deal u can do i m very pleased with this product, i bought a 5 pack 8cm cd r two days before i got it and burned those cds on musicmatch jukebox plus, i almost got 80 songs on each and the sound is incredible!!!! i pretty much like this shuffle option, it rocks!
i mostly listn to punk rock music, in a 210 mb disc at 128kbps u can get around 80 tracks its weight?? dont worry u dont even feel it! i just have to advise two things: 1. the ear-plug covers comes a little bit damaged because of the way its packed, but its not that bad,
2. before purchase this cd player, u most buy a pack of 2 or 4 rechargable batteries and a charger for those, cuz if u use those standar batteries u are lost and will be mad cuz they only last about 4-5 hours, not kiddin! thank god my brother had some cybershot sony rechargable batteries and gave me a pair and my problem was solved i think philips should have think about a carrying case or a clip on for it, i usually use the expanium for jogging or walk on mornings and i have to carry it on my short's pockets
Rating:
Summary: Super Practical
Review: The best if you want little space occupied and many songs, I totally recommend it. Small, sounds Neat, etc.
Rating: 
Summary: Cool and cute, but you're better off with a 5" portable
Review: The sound is fine, and it plays MP3s beautifully. However, if I had to do it over again, I would have bought a cheap 5" CD-MP3 player. This device isn't small enough to warrant the inconvenience of using a somewhat unusual media format, and the battery life is terrible compared to a full size portable.
Rating:
Summary: Super Practical
Review: There are tons of portable mp3 players out there - ranging from solid state players, to hybrid MP3/CD players to fancy hard drive based players. Of these Apple's iPOD is hands down the perfect player. It's only problem? The darn thing is expensive as heck... and one good drop on the sidewalk will break it's delecate internal hard drive. Still, here in town I see lots of people on the bus and around the city with iPODs. For me though I don't think I could stomach carrying around a $300-400 dollar piece of equipment that I could easily break, have stolen or leave in a bar. Solid state players are certainly sturdy, and although entry level players can be bought for less than $100 bucks, if you want any type of realistic storage (256 megabytes) your price point will get very close to an entry level iPOD. At the bottom of the portable MP3 player bucket though are the mp3/CD hybrid players. These are essentially standard cd players that happen to play burned mp3 disks like a standard audio cd. As far as raw mp3 storage goes they are the bargain of the century - some models can be had for as little as $30 bucks. And the media (a CDR or CDR/W disc) is nearly disposable. Unfortunately a cd player sized object is way bigger than what I'm looking for. Sony has had an interesting player on the market for sometime now - it's NetMD line are essentially compact mini-disc players that also play mp3s. The catch is again price point. So I had pretty much been relying on my Palm Tungsten for mp3 playback - which has the side of effect of really sucking the battery down - when I happened across Philips' 8cm expanium disc player on Amazon. It works almost exactly like the mp3/cd hybrid players, except it uses small, 8cm CDR/W discs... what that means is that it's cheap storage with a small footprint. And best of all is the price. I've only had it for about a day, but so far it works great, slips easily into my jacket pocket and if I loose or break it I won't feel that bad. The 8cm discs are cheap and available just about anywhere regular CDR media is sold - they hold 210mb which is enough to fit 2-4 cds worth of mp3s on depending on the bit rate at which they were encoded in - and because they are so small they won't weigh you down like full size discs. Battery consumption might be an issue for some folks - but a pack of AA batteries are cheap enough at discount stores and is a small price given this player's initial low cost of ownership. (This player comes with an AC adapter too - so if you use it at home or the office you can always just plug it into the wall.) Also - battery life can be nearly doubled by disabling the shock control - which you should only use if you're running or doing some other jarring activity, not sitting on a bus or train. The sound is great - I tested with mp3s that were encoded at 320kbs and it sounded nearly cd perfect. The player also sports 2 levels of bass enhancement. The navigation buttons aren't that complex, but it does allow you to fast forward a track & skip to the next album (folder on the disc) - two basic features that I wasn't really expecting.
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