Not quite truth in advertising
Written: Aug 23 '03 (Updated Sep 02 '03)
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Pros: Respectable MP3 playback, pocket-friendly form factor, 1-year warranty, great battery life
Cons: Flimsy, cold-sounding headphone amp, VERY limited display capabilities, ugly styling
The Bottom Line: There are cheaper units, including Panasonics, that do the trick just as well. If you need text display for your MP3s, this probably won't do it.
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| lossf's Full Review: Panasonic SL-MP70 Personal CD Player |
I'll tell ya, I've been having a heck of a time finding a portable CD player that handles MP3 CDROMs to my liking. Maybe I'm picky (probably), but I don't think I'm really that picky.
I've tried a Memorex unit, which displayed track titles and had decent, solid playback, but made a heck of a lot of noise in the headphone-amp circuit and had really obnoxious folder navigation. Further, it died within two days of purchase-- not a good sign!
Then I moved on to a Panasonic SL-SX420, thinking that perhaps I could live without track title display. Turns out that I couldn't, at least not too easily. So when the MP70 came out a few weeks after I'd purchased the then-brand-new SX420, I thought it might be a winner. (I waited a few months to wait for any possible bugs to be ironed out, having been burned on buggy firmware with a past Panasonic product that I bought almost immediately on release.)
The MP70 plays MP3s exactly as its sibling the SX420 does-- which is to say, it's pretty solid, even if some things are left to be desired. The unit has no problem handling CBR or VBR files encoded at any bitrate (I tested 96k-320k CBR and ~160-256k VBR files). There's still a ~700ms gap in playback between any two "adjacent" MP3s in a directory, so album nuts (that would describe me!) will have to learn to live with a little obnoxious hesitation between continuous/segued songs. Incidentally, the only MP3-compatible standalone hardware device I've found to date that actually reads/buffers intelligently enough to avoid this gap altogether is the Wal-Mart/Durabrand CD-96 portable-- a $30 unit which, alas, has its own set of problems.
Decoding quality on the MP70 is quite clean, even with a bunch of my older Fraunhofer-encoded 128k files which sound a bit less than pristine. Navigation is not perfect, but it's reasonable-- just hold down the track-forward button for a couple seconds, and you hit the next directory (alphabetically speaking).
Like the SX420, the headphone amp in the MP70 is a little anemic-sounding-- it can get plenty loud, but lacks the kind of warmth I'd really expect from a name-brand product. Neither player gives the impression of being too solidly built; I can confirm other reports of the unit being easily dented and scratched. Although the perfectly round casing makes it ideal for carrying around in your khaki pockets, that shape also makes it a bit easier than most to drop while carrying it around.
And, call me shallow, but the MP70 shares another trait with its lower-end sibling the 420: awful styling. The cheaply silkscreened "gradient" background on the front panel of the MP70 is a hair less tacky than the bright-blue metallic trim on the 420, but they're both ugly as all get-out to me. It's almost enough to drive one to drop $70 on Sony's bottom-of-the-line MP3 unit.
Battery life seems quite good on the MP70. Because of my gripes below, I did not get to spend a long time with the unit (just long enough to scratch it-- and I'm careful with my electronics!), but I was able to get six continuous hours of playback out of a set of rather used batteries-- and the battery meter didn't budge from its "2/3rds full" position. The claimed battery life is better than the "37-hour" rating on the 420, which honestly hasn't proven too far from the truth in the latter case. This is very favorable compared to other portables I've tried out, although I'd probably still invest in rechargeables anyway.
Now, here's my big gripe with the MP70. I spent an extra $10 for the MP70 over the SX420. I lost the wired remote of the 420, too (which is a fantastic feature). In exchange, I expected to be able to see the track names on my 60-piece collection of MP3 CDRs that I've been burning since 1997... or at least on most of them. I mean, the thing displays ID3s, or so it says on the package.
Here's an interesting little fine-print item, though: The MP70, which hit the market in spring 2003, can only read ID3 1.0 and 1.1 tags. It can't read ID3 2.x. Furthermore, if the files don't have the ID3 1.x tags applied, it doesn't even attempt to read and display the filename. The Memorex and Durabrand units I've tested-- $40 and $30, respectively-- both handle ID3 2.x natively, and will display directory names and filenames right out of the box without quarrel.
Guess what? My earlier discs don't have ID3s at all, and everything else has ID3 2.x, which has already been the standard for years.
Uh, excuse me... Panasonic gave the MP70 all the necessary hardware in to read data CDRs (including the filenames, which it has to decipher in order to play files in proper order), decode MP3s and display alphanumeric information, but couldn't write a couple extra lines of code to display the filename? Was it really that much more trouble to teach the MP70 to "decipher" an ID3 2.x tag? Who has used ID3 v1 since 2000 or so, anyway?
Three adjectives come to mind: "ridiculous," "short-sighted," "lazy." And these are not names I'm used to applying to Panasonic/Technics products, of which I've long been a fan.
Although, come to think of it, as I mentioned briefly above, I had quite a few problems with my Panasonic RV32 DVD player last year (which was eventually exchanged for an S36)... but I digress. If Panasonic expects everyone to batch-convert, edit and re-burn their MP3 files to compensate for the inadequate design of this unit, I think they probably have another thing coming. And I imagine that their MP70 return rates will reflect this.
Since my only other choices were to a) keep the unit and go mad looking at a nice dot-matrix display that could never show me anything useful, or b) spend a lot more money on a unit of equivalent/better quality that actually displays track and album information properly, I took my MP70 back and bought another SX420. As it stands, there's no difference between that unit and the MP70-- except that the MP70 has no swank little remote. With either unit, I still have to keep my disc labels on hand to know what I'm listening to. Shame on Panasonic-- this is not truth in advertising!
Recommended:
No
Amount Paid (US$): 60
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Epinions.com ID:
lossf
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Reviews written: 5
Trusted by: 0 members
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