My first Portable MP3 player
Written: Nov 16 '01
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Pros: More compact than most, good sound quality, album mode
Cons: Heavy skipping with High Bitrate MP3, no seek for MP3, no ID3tag or playlist support.
The Bottom Line: If you use MP3 files at lower bitrates, this is a good unit. Small size and good sound. If you want alot of features, look elsewhere.
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| chippe01's Full Review: Panasonic SL-MP50 Personal CD Player |
I'd give this an average overall rating. Sound quality is pretty good with the right earbuds. the unit plays fine with MP3 files at 192Kbps and lower, but seems to suffer from heavy skipping, and poor battery life at higher bit rates. I encode exclusively in 320Kbps format, and am experiencing less than stellar performance with the discs I've made. Switching to Duracell Ultra batteries has helped immensely with regard to skipping. I can now walk about with the player and it won't skip every 10 seconds.
I have a bunch of CD's made about 2 years ago, that were encoded at VBR and 192kbps, and I've had absolutely no problems with these discs.
The unit came supplied with a car cigarette lighter adapter and casette connector adapter, neither of which I'd use. I'd have preferred an AC adaptor, which is not supplied. The supplied headphones are standard. I never use the supplied headphones, anyway.
What would really make this a great unit would be ID3 tag and playlist support and better handling of files. Files will be played in alphabetical order, regardless of how they are laid out on the disc. For this reason, when I make a new disc, I have to copy my files to another directory on my hard drive, and rename them to 001.mp3, 002.mp3, 003.mp3, etc. in the order I want them to play on disc. This is very frustrating and time-consuming, and is suggested in the booklet.
Album mode is ok, it lets you group sets of files together in albums, under different directories. For instance, I have a disc with The Beatles and the Supremes on it. All the Beatles songs are under one folder, and the Supremes songs under another folder, this way I can listen to only one or the other if I so choose, but you still have to rename the files. I don't know how the unit handles regular audio CD's, I haven't played any yet.
Once I discovered that you MUST use good batteries with high bit rate files, the unit's been working pretty well. Though battery life is still an issue, I get much more use out of the Diracell Ultra's then the Ray O Vac Maximum alkalines.
I bought this product to see what all the fuss is about, and to try and reduce the load I have to carry with me. Instead of about 40 CD's I've always carried with me, I now only carry about 5 or 6. But now I'm ready to move up - my Rio Volt SP250 is on it's way!
Recommended:
No
Amount Paid (US$): 129.99
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Epinions.com ID:
chippe01
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Reviews written: 1
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