Budget bargain.
Written: Sep 02 '02 (Updated Sep 18 '02)
|
Product Rating:
|
|
| Sound Quality: |
 |
|
| Ease of Use: |
 |
|
| Durability: |
|
|
|
Pros: Cost. Value For Money. Features. Easy to use and install. Build Quality.
Cons: Track title scrolls once then stops. Display difficult to see in bright light.
The Bottom Line: I bought it and I love it. It's easy to use, looks cool, sounds great and has all the connections I need to expand my system.
|
|
|
| shigg's Full Review: Sony CDX-MP30 Car CD Player |
I bought the Sony to replace my existing Kenwood KDC5080 CD tuner, I'd had enough of swapping discs and so thought a MP3 capable head unit would be ideal - I could add a multichanger at a later date. I picked the Sony on brand reputation and price - a local dealer had £60 off this model! After fitting the unit (outside the dealers!) I was smitten straight away. The sound quality was better - clearer without being sharp and the bass more wholesome. But I think the thing that really makes the Sony so good are the rotary controls for both volume (doubles up to control bass, trebel, balance and fader) and track selection (doubles up for frequency tuning). Although these are digital rather than analog controls, it's more natural and far easier to find without taking your eyes off the road. The Sony's quite fast to read the contents of an MP3 cd but this does vary according to how many tracks are on it and how many subfolders there are to read. It supports ID3 tags but only version 1.1. I've found no problems yet with bitrates, most of my songs are encoded using varible bit rates and these seem fine. Another bonus of the MP3 system is that the head unit skips less over rough roads than it does with ordinary CDs, although this isn't a problem, the Sony seems far more tolerant than the Kenwood did. Finally it sounds great, not audiophile but at the price what do you expect. I find in the sort of enviroment a car provides I can't hear any real difference in MP3 or ordinary tracks. Despite that fact that MP3 are compressed there's still plenty of bass and the treble's reasonable smooth if a good encoder is used. The internal amplifier seems well up to the task of powering factory fit speakers, but if you're serious about your ICE the Sony has 2 sets of RCA sockets for adding external amplifiers. The unit can also be controlled by either the Sony 'joystick' or a remote control, just take your pick and hand over the cash.
Now the bad points - some of the display items are in a dark blue colour, this is OK at night but during bright sunlight it's totally hopeless. The next gripe is the track details display, as you select a track the Sony will initially display the first so many characters of the track name then display the track and album number then go on to display the ID3 tag, this then scolls across to give you the full details (just like a pager would) but then stops scrolling to display just the first few characters again. Although a button press will force the Sony to scroll full details of the track title, it stops after scrolling just once. I find that a continous scrolling display is far more user friendly. Would I recommend one? You bet!
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): #179
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
shigg
|
|
Location: Great Britain
Reviews written: 10
Trusted by: 0 members
About Me:
I have a matter of fact attitude to life and like honesty, beauty and humor.
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2010 Shopping.com, Inc.