CD MP3 Players VS The Rest
Written: Dec 19 '00
|
Product Rating:
|
|
|
Pros: Large Capacity, no skipping, great portability, extra features and accessories.
Cons: no file names or ID3 tags makes cumbersome programming.
|
|
|
| devanjedi's Full Review: Philips eXpanium EXP103 Personal CD Player |
Your choice about whether you should buy the Philips Expanium is a very simple one, once you can decide if you should buy an MP3-CD player or not. If you are buying an MP3-CD Player, then the Expanium is the only one worth your money.
The Philips Expanium is an MP3 CD player. What this means is that it will play CDs with MP3s on them (obviously) AND will also play your regular audio CDs. It is the size of, shape of and resembles the regular portable CD players.
The player plays MP3s from your CD regardless of where they are stored; in directories, etc. In fact, it is advisable to store songs of similar categories (albums, genres) in one directory. This is because this player cannot recognize file names or ID3 tags; it will only recognize songs by track # and directory #.
The player can be programmed the same way other CD players can be, though this can be cumbersome with hundreds of tracks on the same MP3 CD. The player also does not skip unless violently shaken; please let this happen by accident! The only experiences I have had of it skipping were when I used it in my car and went over a severe bump in the road. Roads which are regularly bumpy do not affect it; only sudden bumps do. This is even less frequent if the feature called ESP (Electronic Skip Protection) is activated. Do this only when necessary; it uses a lot of battery power.
There are two extra features which are worth mention. One is the DBB: Dynamic Bass Boost (self explanatory). The other is the useful Resume feature. This helps in resuming from wherever you last stopped playing, for both Audio CD and MP3 CD. It works well, but is irritating if left on unintentionally! Initially, I couldn't figure out why the damn thing would always play from the middle of the track- until I figured out this feature.
The Expanium ships with an AC adapter, a car adapter (extremely useful!) and neat pair of ear phones. The phones are ordinary, nothing special. I have used the expanium in many other ways, though. I have used it through my stereo, which allows me to play MP3s without having my computer on.
The battery life is MORE than advertised! That is an amazing feat, and I have not seen this happen with any product in the past. They last for a good 12+ hours; but only if the ESP and DBB features are off. I have not tried its battery capacity with these features switched off. The Expanium uses 2 AA size batteries.
Note: The Expanium is advertised to read all kind of written CDs, such as CD-R, CD-RW, etc. I have not tried this, but would trust it since other reviews have backed this up and none of the other claims by Philips have been false.
The Expanium is available (at the moment) only through Circuit City (online and offline) and Amazon.com. I bought mine from Amazon.com for $189.99; the maximum prices I saw were $199.99.
Expanium Vs The Rest
I would say that Expanium is easily the best bet amongst all the currently available MP3 players. First of all, the 650 MB of capacity (CD) beats the rest hands down. For players the same price that have internal storage, all you get is 32MB to 64MB. Also, since you can carry as many CDs as you need with you and change them as you please, it makes your capacity almost unlimited.
The only real decision is whether you have access to a CD Writer or not. If you do not, and do not even plan on having one in the future, I would suggest the Creative Nomad series. But if you have access to a CD Writer, then this is the only way to go. Convert your CD collection to MP3s and move on.
Recommended:
Yes
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
devanjedi
|
|
Member: Devanshu Mehta
Location: Baroda, Gujarat
Reviews written: 21
Trusted by: 3 members
About Me:
I have an opinion on everything; even on my opinions.
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.