Turn it Up and Take it With You!!!
Mar 23 '01
The Bottom Line Decide where you'll be using your CD Player, and what features you'll need once you get there!
I got my first portable CD player soon after they originally came out, well over ten years ago. The darn thing's still going, though it has minimal special features. I bought my second one about three years ago, which served me well until it got stepped on in my car and promptly died. Which brings me to my third portable CD player, which I bought a few months ago... and wish I hadn't. With all the newfangled features that keep getting added, there are some things I should have taken into consideration before I plunked down my $50, but I just didn't know any better at the time! I know now, though-- a little too little, a little too late. Story of my life.
The first thing you need to ask yourself before you buy a portable CD player is what you'll be using it for. Will you be using it primarily in the car? Are you getting it to take jogging or to the gym? Do you just want to have it at your desk at work? Once you have figured that out, it's time to head to the store. There are so many features now it can be confusing, but it's important to take them all into consideration.
Car Kits
Well, duh. If you're getting it to use in your car, you will definitely need to get one that comes with a car kit. This is an adapter that lets you run your CD player through your tape deck. It also comes with a power adapter that you plug into your cigarette lighter but, if you're like me and your car cigarette lighter is broken, you'll just have to buy tons of batteries. I've found that it's usually cheaper to buy a CD player that comes with a car kit, rather than buying the kit separately.
Electronic Skip Protection (ESP)
This is also known as anti-shock. If you're going to be using your CD player in a bumpy setting (such as a car, bus, or during exercise), you will need to buy a player which features ESP. Your CD player will store a certain number of seconds of the song it is currently playing into its memory, so when it is jarred, it will rely on that "backup" instead of producing an annoying skip. Naturally, the more seconds of ESP you buy, the smoother your sound will be. These days, the standard seems to be 30 to 40 seconds. If you find an older model on sale with maybe 20 second ESP, that will do okay, but you will probably hear more skips than you would if you invested in a higher ESP model.
I've got 35 second ESP on mine, and though it sounds great in the car, it still tends to skip a little when I take it out walking. Some CD players specifically advertise that they are "ideal for jogging." If you plan on using it a great deal for exercise, you might want to get one of these.
CD-R Compatibility
Doh! This is where I messed up! I burn a lot of my own CDs (well, I did til Napster up and went weird, but that's another story!) I didn't really consider the fact that these CDs are any different from normal CDs, so I just assumed that they would play on all CD players. WRONG! Apparently, these CDs (or CD-Rs) play differently depending on the model and power of your CD burner. My portable CD player did not advertise that it is CD-R compatible. And, mostly, it's not. I can play my CD-Rs sometimes, but eventually they will start skipping uncontrollably. I've discovered that some brands of CD-Rs tend to be worse than others. Some will play, some won't. An interesting phenomenon is that a lot of times I can play a CD-R all the way through just once on my portable player and it will sound fine... but if I try to play it again, it starts skipping! Can anyone explain this to me, please???
Bottom line: if you burn CDs and you plan on listening to them on your portable player, make sure it's CD-R compatible!
Bass-boost
Turn it up, bab-ee! Haven't you always wanted to be one of those annoying cars that you can hear coming from 3 miles down the road, thanks to incessant and overwhelming bass?? Awww, yeah. Classy. A lot of portable CD players advertise Bass Boost as a special feature. Personally, I could care less about this. While I do like extra bass on my home stereo sometimes, I don't really need it in my car. My car speakers are so weak that they tend to rattle when I turn on my Bass Boost on my portable player. Not a pleasant sound! And, if you're using your portable player with headphones, do you really need extra bass that close to your eardrum?? If you have car speakers that can handle the bass, fine, look for the Bass Boost. But, then again, if you have such nice speakers in your car, why don't you have an in-dash CD player, hmmmm?
Other features
There are tons of other features advertised on portable CD players these days. Things like shuffle, repeat, memory programming, blah blah. If you're using your player primarily in your car, this can be a safety hazard!! You shouldn't be fumbling with all those buttons while you're driving! Pull over!!! Otherwise, these might be features that interest you. I won't go over them all here. Just look at the box and see what sounds important.
Price
A good portable CD player is probably going to cost you at least $50-$60. If you're paying any less than that, you could be sacrificing quality. It seems that it would be safer to invest in a good product that will last, rather than a cheap product that you'll soon have to replace. It's your choice, though!
Brands
Name brands are always safe. I would recommend checking out some Epinions (of course!) on specific brands and models of portable CD players! I would write one myself on my Magnavox model (I'd give it 3 stars) but, naturally, it's not listed here on Epinions....
Happy listening!
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Epinions.com ID:
vania
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Location: Atlanta, GA
Reviews written: 49
Trusted by: 59 members
About Me:
I'm against it.
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