Solid player marred by poorly designed interface
Written: Sep 17 '02
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Pros: Battery life, sound quality, boot-up time
Cons: Buggy firmware and poor user interface
The Bottom Line: This is a player that could be one of the best out there, but due to sloppy design of the firmware falls well into the middle of the pack.
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| dnquark8's Full Review: Panasonic SL-MP35 Personal CD Player |
I have owned an MP3 CD player since they first came out over two years ago. During that time I also had a chance to experiment with a few models, and I know a well-designed player when I see it. Unfortunately, Panasonic SL-MP35 is not one.
To be sure, it has a lot going for it. The hardware is designed well: the player looks and feels solid, the buttons are well placed, the sound quality is good. Included headphones are quite cheap and as a result the player may seem too quiet, but this can be fixed by a minor headphone upgrade. The only obvious hardware design flaw is the LCD: it is not backlit, but most importantly, it is small, admitting only a very short line of text. At the same time, half the LCD is taken up by meaningless blinking musical note symbols -- an egregious waste of space.
Simple and solid design appeals to the budget-conscious buyer, who does not need many extras (remote, equalizer) or lots of customizable options. He wants to simply pop in a disk with a hundred or so tunes, easily and effortlessly navigating from song to song. This is where the design flaws of the player become immediately apparent.
First, it alphabetizes the files in a ludicrous way: it initially orders alphabetically the files that start with a capital letter, and then orders the rest of the files. In other words, the file "The Beatles - Back in USSR.mp3" will play in a completely different location than "the beatles - can't buy me love.mp3". This quickly becomes a major headache when listening to mix CDs, unless you have taken care to rename all the files beforehand -- a major undertaking if your mp3 collection is sizeable. Another apparent bug is that sometimes you have to press the back button three times to go back a song.
The greatest disappointment, however, is in the user interface itself. Navigation is hampered by the fact that when the player is stopped, it does not read file names as you browse the CD. When you browse the mp3s while playing them, the file name appears on the LCD just as the tune starts playing -- at which point chances are you already know the tune. This makes navigation as much of a chore as if the unit did not have an LCD in the first place.
Additionally, the player does not have the ability to fast forward or rewind within a song. Most of the time this is not a problem, but it can be a handy feature to have.
I could list many other improvements that could make the user interface more intuitive and mp3 CDs easier to navigate, but this would make the review long and technical.
The bottom line is -- this is a player that could be one of the best out there, but due to sloppy design of the firmware (software that runs the player) falls into the middle of the pack.
Recommended:
No
Amount Paid (US$): 85
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Epinions.com ID:
dnquark8
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Reviews written: 1
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