excellent mp3 player
Written: May 22 '03
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Pros: touch screen,mp3 capabilities,
fm reception, logical layout, never skips
Cons: touch screen smudges
The Bottom Line: If you want an mp3 player, that's easy to use while driving, this unit deserves a serious look.
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| geeman9000's Full Review: Panasonic Sirius CQ-HX1083U Car CD/ MP3 Player |
I bought this stereo from my car to replace the in dash unit and an aiwa stereo. In every way this unit is superior to those. First I installed this unit myself and it is constructed of very heavy gage metal along with the installation collar. I think this is one of the reasons why it doesn't skip. When you open the unit up, one thing you notice is the heavy gage metal the holds the face plate on. I've looked at other units, the attachments are much better. The factory unit on my car could pick up stations from 40 miles out, this one can pick up the same stations from about 70 miles out in the same car, the best unit I've had in a different car could pick them up from 80 miles out. Those features are nice, but the reason to buy this stereo is for its mp3 capabilities. This unit will play any mp3 or wma format, but you might want to avoid vbr's. Not a problem for me, I burn 128 kbps mp3, they sound fine with minimal pause time between songs. You can have 999 files and 256 folders on a cd, really much better than most other units. The folders can be 8 deep but the depth increases the loading time and is unnecessary. I load only album folders and this is fine as searching for mp3 are incredibly easy on this mp3 player. The display for mp3 has 2 lines basically. Other functions are elsewhere on the touch display. Press the top line and it can become the clock, the time of song, the id3 artist, id3 title, the folder title, the file title, or the file structure. The bottom line is the action line. Press it for searching by file or folder. Arrows show up on the bottom line for searching. Put the top line on file title. and you can search through an entire cd with 18 albums on it and find a particular song on it in a few seconds even if you are driving without diverting your attention from the wheel unnecessarily. This is the point of this unit. Great mp3 access. The aiwa unit I had forget it, you could basically not find anything with a lot of concentration on the unit looking for buttons. One feature that would be nice is fast forward or reverse in mp3 mode. ( only available in cd mode.) Plus on the aiwa unit everytime you would hit a bump it would skip. I've hit railroad tracks, potholes, the panasonic never skips. And it has no buffer, I don't know how they did it. The only down side to this system that I can see, is the touch screen needs to be cleaned regularly, unless you like to see fingerprints on your unit. The backlighting of the unit is a little faint if you have dark sunglasses. You can change the color, and it has a dimmer, but I leave it at its brightest. Sound quality is excellent, it is very difficult to tell if you are running a cd or mp3.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 350
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Epinions.com ID:
geeman9000
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Reviews written: 6
Trusted by: 0 members
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