Rating: 
Summary: DON'T BUY IT
Review: I am an MP3 believer so buying the Philips EX103 Expanium was the thing to do. So I bought it. My excitement turned to disappointment when I realised that this device: - has very low volume ability and it is very slow to read the disk. - my casette walkman has better sound quality than it - nomatter what they say IT SKIPS - when it Skips, it does not recover until you are fed up and switch it off - It's accessories are CHEAP. The headset was falling apart from day 1. The car stereo cassette adapter keeps getting stuck in my stereo - No search feature, no way of controlling what you want to hear. You copy 120 MP3s on a disk and you will harldy listen to more than 20 unless you are on your way to Vegas.What I liked about it is the fact that it's a way to listen to my MP3s when I am away from my computer. If you are a music listener like me and you want quality, save your money for the next generation of MP3 players. Definetely DO NOT BUY THIS one.
Rating: 
Summary: Did ALL my homework and this won!
Review: Hi... I did a huge amount of research before deciding, requested and received this for christmas, and I'm thrilled enough to want to add my voice to the ratings. I'll keep it brief... Pros: Lightweight. Good battery life. Resume. Shuffle. Carkit. Cons: No backlight. No ffwd-rev within a track. No ID3 tag display....
Rating:
Summary: So what do I do with this thing?
Review: OK, I've had this thing since Christmas and all it is is a portable CD player from a company that can't support it. Like a reviewer I saw earlier, I get the DATA message when I try to use CD-RW. All I could get from Philips customer support is to make sure I use audio-only CDs, which I am, but still no luck. The single biggest appeal to me was the ability to use CD-RWs, but I have been unable to make it work so far and they can't help. If this will do what it claims, it will be awesome, but if you buy it you better be well-versed in how to create the MP3 CDs. I have made lots of CDs from MP3 via wav files, but still can't figure out how to do this with just MP3s. And good luck if you have to go through Philips customer support! I've been trying for days and they can't give me any answers.
Rating: 
Summary: Great Player with one drawback
Review: I've been looking for this solution for over a year & I'm happy. It sounds good. It looks good. I've heard people complain about audio quality - I'd suggest encoding at 128Kbps or better - I've only heard good sound quality from this unit. It Works great with my CD-RW's It has intelligent random play - it makes a random playlist, and allows you to step back and forward - I've only seen this feature with a computer. There is only one complaint - The LCD is crap, It's probably the worst display I've seen in years. The background is just too dark. I think Philips could have done much better. However, since the display is basic, it is useable for getting around.
Rating:
Summary: ultimate
Review: The first thing I need to do is dispel something written in an earlier review. If your MP3 titles are more than 30 characters they can be read, and are read by mine (one of the titles is "Mindless self Indulgence - Frankenstein Girls Will Seem Strangely Sexy - 17 - Last Time I Tried to Rock Your World.mp3") The thing can also take a whole lotta shaking, I jumped around and shook it like a maraca with no skipping. The headphones aren't that bad at all, and I use them just fine. Like has been said earlier, if you have a CD burner, you MUST buy this, it's amazing. The storage space is great. Using a 700MB CD I managed to put these FULL albums on ONE CD: NIN - Pretty Hate Machine NIN - Broken NIN - Downward Spiral NIN - Fragile (left and right) NIN - Things Falling Apart Korn - Korn Korn - Follow the Leader Korn - Issues Radiohead - Kid A Primus - Antipop Mindless Self Indulgence - (see title above) Static-X - Wisconsin Death Trip System of a Down - self titled This is a total of 184 tracks, approximately 700 minutes (11 hours, 40 minutes) of music on one CD. These are organized into folders by artist. There are only two incredibly minor complaints, 1 is that the battery life is 10 hours, which could be better, and the other is that the battery case pops off every time i open the darn thing. But on the whole you cannot beat this.
Rating:
Summary: One of the best first-generation major brand CD/MP3 players
Review: I've received this unit as a Christmas present and I already love it. I haven't had any of the long-name directory and file problems that some of the other reviewers have described. In fact, on one cd with 14 albums and over 170 tracks, I've got albums and tracknames that are in excess of 20 characters with spaces and special characters... the eXpanium can read and play every single one of the songs. It's lightweight and has a nice, simple design. I'm one of those folks who got a solid-state mp3 player and the eXpanium makes it look like a garage-sale trinket. I fit over 10 hours of CD-quality music onto a single CD-R. Gorgeous. But, it's a first-generation from a major name-brand. There were a few things missed: 1. ID3 support: Everyone keeps hammering on this and it's for a reason. I can name what song's playing if I hear about 2 seconds of it and if it's one I've listened to for awhile, but if I want to take a big collection of new stuff with me, I'd have no clue what's playing. A larger display with ID3 support is needed for the next model. The display should at least show the following: Track Name, Artist Name TrackNumber 00:00 That'd be enough for starters. Ideally, it'd end up being: Album Name Track Name, Artist Name TrackNumber 00:00 2. ESP on/off: Philips informed mp3.com's hardware reviewers that the device is unable to have an off-state for ESP when in mp3 playback... it's a "limitation of the chipset" ... The powerdrain when I'm sitting down and not jarring about is uneeded. 3. More buttons: the device needed to have "next album" and "previous album" buttons so that the forward and reverse buttons could be track-focused. Holding down the forward button should fast-forward through the track, not hop to the next album. That's a SMALL cons list for a great product. When you compare the amount of storage to the price, it's EXTREMELY competative. Sure, you probably won't have good results if you're playing it while jackhammering like you could with solid-state players, but the ESP is good enough to handle most situations, including jogging.
Rating: 
Summary: Not but so pleased
Review: I've bought this mp3 player,and it has nice quality sound on regular music CD albums, but it seems it will not work for me on mp3s, I am using CD-RWs, but for some odd reason when i put the CD in, it with flash 'disc' ofcourse, but then turn ino 'Data' and will never play. I'm pretty sure the sub directories and names of the mp3s are correct, and have read the instruction booklet throughly. If anyone has any help with this, please contact me at magick_karma_@hotmail.com its very much appreciated. Thanks and happy shopping! :)
Rating:
Summary: Love it love it love it
Review: This Christmas (2000) I found a Philips Expanium underneath the tree. I couldn't have asked for a better gift. I love my music, and I love taking large amounts of it with me in a convenient package. This product definitely delivers. Yeah, yeah, it doesn't display id3 tags, but since I mostly just listen to my music on shuffle anyway, that's not an issue for me. Besides, since you are able to fit a very sizable amount of songs on a single CD, I'd get frustrated trying to skip around between songs if I didn't have a full size keyboard. And I know the name/artist of any song I'd select to put on a CD-R (or CD-RW, woo!) so recognition isn't an issue with me either. The included headphones are not so super, but keep in mind that most portable CD players do not include decent headphones either. Also, people complain that the unit is too quiet when they hook up their huge studio monitor headphones to the unit. It's important to keep in mind that battery life is important, and the unit does live up to what Philips claims it does in battery life. Also, I would have preferred a metal case over a plastic one. Despite that, the unit is quite sturdy and durable (not to mention attractive). Load time for mp3 CDs is a bit long, unfortunately. However, once the CD is loaded, the sound quality is quite good, and almost entirely skip free. I really had to toss it around to get it to skip on an mp3 CD. All in all, I am extremely pleased with my Philips Expanium. It does have its flaws, but I am more than willing to overlook them for this extremely high quality unit.
Rating:
Summary: Please Wait For Next Generation
Review: I received this as a gift and was really excited about the promise of being able to play CDRs full of MP3 files, since I've been archiving my MP3s onto CDRs for about a year now and I've got close to 200 albums stored in this manner. Well after trying about ten of those CDRs, I got fed up. This player uses some ISO2 standard to identify the track names, and I've already created many CDs using the "artist name/album name/track number-track name" taxonomy. Well this product wouldn 't recognize 75% of files on a disc comprised only of MP3 files. I find that fact completely unacceptable. If I insert a CDR that contains MP3 files, this player should access and play them. Period. It simply DOES NOT and is being returned as soon as the store opens tomorrow. In addition to the filename frustrations, I second what others have opined in terms of this unit's feel. It's lightweight and generally has a very cheap, plastic feel to it. I never really even got to use it practically because of the above issue, so I'll leave it at that. I hope Sony comes out with something like this soon, because Philips continues to disappoint.
Rating:
Summary: Best of breed but could be improved
Review: This player does what it's advertized to do. It plays CD's, and it plays MP3's on both CD-R and CD-RW media. Sound quality is excellent even with MP3's. Much better than the dismal sound quality of the similar, but less expensive, MpTrip player that I wish I hadn't purchased and now sits on a shelf gathering dust. That said, here's what could be improved: 1) Include a carrying case, or at least offer one. I searched the entire Amazon site and couldn't find a case for the player. Only generic cases that were too bulky to be useful since they accommodated a number of CD jewel cases in addition to the player. If you use MP3 cd's the one in the player and one on the side would do. One MP3 CD-R encoded at 128Kbs holds 150+ average length song titles. 2) Enlarge the display and show me the MP3 track title, not just an arbitrary number. The data is on the MP3 cd, let me see it! 3) Ship the player with rechargeable NiMH batteries and allow them to charge while the player is plugged into AC power with the included AC adapter. I know you can buy NiMH batteries and chargers as a separate item from multiple sources, and I did. But it would be nice not to have to physically remove and replace the batteries everytime they are discharged. Battery compartment lids on these products aren't the most durable part of the device...
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