jvatt24's Full Review: Sony Walkman MZ-R70 Personal MiniDisc Player
I have always been a big fan of Sony. I think their products are almost always better than other brands, not that I don't buy other brands occasionaly. Sony has a way of making their products more appealing to me, and for this player it had to be the features of the mini disc player and the size that interested me in buying one.
Since Sony invented and made the mini disc format somewhat popular (though no where near cds), I figured that they probably had the best equiptment out there. I found this mini disc player, the lesser one compared to another more expensive one I was considering. I choose this one over the more expensive one (the MZ-R900 I think) because I got the things I would use the most for a lot less money. I opted for the blue model over the green one as it looked better to me.
On the outside, it looks almost like an mp3 player. It is about 2 1/2 in. on both sides, and about 3/4 in. thick. There is a bump that runs along the underside on the upper portion that holds the battery (only 1 battery needed!). While at first it might look a little bad, there really was no other place to put the battery without making the player a little bigger in the process. It actually might be a good thing so you can hold onto it a little better, but it isnt too big of a deal. The back and sides of the player are made of hard plastic, and the front is made of metal. While some might say, "Its plastic, Im not buying that", really come on all cd players are made a lot if not entirely from plastic, so this is a plus.
The button locations on this mini disc player are in some-what convenient locations. There is a large circular button on the right hand side of the front that can be pushed in 4 directions for play, stop(charge battery), foward and back. A hold switch that locks all the buttons is on the side of the circular one, and is rotated upward to engage. There is also a pause button located just below and to the left of that, with 2 volume control buttons to the right of the pause button and below the circular button. Next to the screen there is a menu button that lets you edit the names of the songs, the playmode, bass, and other functions such as if the beep is on when a button is pushed on the remote. Also, to the left of the screen is a button to insert track marks on the fly, which is easier than it seems. You can also delete tracks you want and rearrange them with very little effort. Another button is one that goes to the end of the disc that has been written on it so recording is easier. When you want to record, you must push a small red thing on a button then slide it.To open and remove mini discs, simply press a button on the side and out it pops. To put one in, push it in all the way down and then push together the parts that split apart when it was open.
To record onto this mini disc player, people can record from their computer with the supplied link cables. Just plug it in (USB), the computer recoginizes that it should send the music there, and hook up the MD player. Make sure that it is set to record and play the music. Simple as that. There is a program on my computer called "Mini Disc Center" that is specially designed to play the music to the MD player. Now, there are a few bad things about this. If you dont have this program, all the different tracks you record will be written as one long track, which means you will have to seperate the songs by yourself. This isnt hard to do, it just takes a little while (the way to avois this is to have complete silence for about 5 seconds). Instead of being able to do it at high speeds like newer versions, you have to do it in real time, which means if you have a 5 min track, it takes 5 min to transfer it. You can walk away, do something else and let it record, then come back and it will be done. If you are in a hurry to get it on a MD, you are out of luck. Another bad thing about this is that if you have the audio settings for your computer out of wack (such as bass and trable levels), it will reflect it on the MD. I found the best way to do it is to test different settings then record a song and see how I like it, and change it accordingly. Also, it picks up all sounds that are played when it is recording from the computer, so dont go playing games or have other sounds going on when recording. I have yet to try recording directly from a cd player, but it is possible if you buy a seperate cable that connects them. Im betting it is a lot easier than though a computer.
You have 3 choices for the quality of recording: none, LP2, and LP4. What these mean is if you have a 80 min. MD, it will be able to record for 80 min on normal, 160 min on LP2, and 320 min on LP4. I have found that LP2 and none sound very similar, and you get so much more on LP2 that it is worth the loss in quality. LP4 is good if you want a ton of music on 1 MD, but there is a sigifigant loss in quality. One added note, there is a mono mode, but who uses mono now a days? Another note to add here is that unlike mp3 players, you can record the music at any quality and it will take up the same amount of space. For example, instead of recording at 128kb/s, you can record it at cd quality (or maybe even DVD audio?), which is at lease 1400kb/s. There is a major difference between those two numbers, which reflects on the quality.
Ok, heres the thing about labeling the tracks on the mini disc: it takes forever! You have to go through each letter of the alphabet for every letter every time. I think the fastest I have done it is about a minute for a short title. I dont even bother to label them any more as it takes way too much time and it doesnt matter too much to me anyways as I can just listen to the music. It would have been nice if you could have transferred the names over the link and save all that time. One more thing is that it can only hold a certain number of characters, and once you reach that, you are out of luck.
The battery life on this thing is amazing. It comes with a rechargable battery and a charger built into the MD player itself and has an included AC adapter, very convenient. I usually use a regular AA battery, which lasts (I tried it once) for more than a day of nonstop music. The secret to this is that it reads the information ahead, which also prevents skips, then it stops spinning the MD altogether. Every minute or so it spins up for a few seconds, then goes back to nothing. Even with 1 bar of battery left it is good for at least another 3-4 hours before it is dead. And it only uses 1 battery! This will save you money in the long run compared to others that eat up batteries.
The quality of music that this plays is actually not the greatest I have heard, but what can you expect from something so small and stores so much music? It is just a couple notches below what actual cds sound like. The bass that is in a menu can be turned from nothing to 1 to 2. 2 is overdoing it for me, but I am happy with level 1 or nothing.
This MD player did come with a remote. The remote can do all the functions as on the front of the unit except record and open the player. The headphones plug into the remote. There is a spring clip on the back of the circular remote which you can clip to clothing or whatever. A good added feature.
The mini discs are not very expensive to buy. They are less than a dollar each, so they arent as cheap as blank cds. But they will last a long time and can be re-recorded as many times as wanted.
There is not much to hate about this MD player. The awkward bump on the back, real time recording, labeling tracks, and thats all that I would change. Other than that, this is a good alternative to an mp3 player, as long as it doesnt die out. While mp3 players have a limit to storage, this has endless amounts, and yet it remains the same size as one. I did own an mp3 player (Rio 800 128MB), but I returned it for this one. Why? The Rio had problems with the battery and size constraints that this one doesnt have at all. There are so many good things about this that it overweighs the negative aspects by a lot, and make it a solid music player.
40-second shock resistant memory and high quality recording with digital automatic gain control Dual headphone jack allows use of remote control while...More at Amazon Marketplace
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