Great CD player!
Written: Oct 02 '08 (Updated Jun 06 '09)
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Pros: Battery life, durability, battery meter, skip protection, reads scratched disks well
Cons: The battery cover is flimsy- will break within a year
The Bottom Line: If you're looking for a good CD player GET A SONY ONE! they may not be good at other things, but their CD players are great!
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| dickcheney6's Full Review: Sony Walkman D-E220 Personal CD Player |
I got this CD player 7 years ago. I found it recently and thought "this thing's probably broken" but it still works! well the buttons don't always respond properly anymore, but it's amazing that it works at all after all these years!
Since this item does not have a picture, I'll give you the best description I can.
Mine is a matte light grey/silver color. It was probably available in different colors as well, but mine is silver. On the bottom, however, it's a dark grey. The batteries go in the bottom-which I prefer over CD players where the batteries go in where the CD goes- it's a royal pain in the rear to replace the batteries on those things, because the battery cover is usually hard to open! (I had a TAPE player that was like that!) My only real complaint with this machine is that the battery cover on mine broke within about a year, at which point I had to tape it shut to keep the batteries from flying out!
The lid does not "spring open" on mine when you press the eject button, unlike most CD players that I've seen- I don't know if it's designed like that, or if it used to spring open but it broke. Either way, I have to lift the lid WHILE holding the open button- all the button does is release the lock that holds the lid closed. Not really a big deal, and it makes it harder to accidentally open, so in a way it's probably a good thing. The switch for the skip protection device is actually UNDER the lid, which is odd, but again no big deal- I didn't even write it as a con. I just leave it on all the time anyway. It doesnt affect battery life that much.
The CD player, like most others, uses 2 AA batteries. They last quite a long time- If I use it "every other day" I can go almost a MONTH without replacing the batteries. There is also a battery meter on the screen, that shows 4 bars when full, and you can probably guess what it does as time goes on. A lot of CD players I've seen don't have a true battery meter, but rather a message that pops up when the batteries are low. When the batteries are too low for the CD player to run(how it decides that I don't know), it'll display "Lo Batt" but I think by that point it's a little late to be giving a low battery warning- it's already dead! :)
The CD player has no real extras to speak of other than the AMAZING skip protection! The only way this thing will skip is if you throw it against the wall (well not litteraly, but you get the point :) The skip protection can be turned on and off- it's somewhat reliable even when the ESP is off (that's sony's official name for it) but when it's on, it's going to rock on and on unless it falls onto the ground or something! The skip protection, when it's "idle" does not affect battery life much, but using the CD player in situations where the skip protection actually kicks in- playing a lot of scratched disks or using it in shaky situations :)- WILL drain your batteries faster. In fact, I've seen the battery meter go down 1 bar momentarily, or if it's on 1 bar, start blinking, or even say "Lo Batt" and stop, but then start again, just from the CD player being bumped when the skip protection is on.
It's also relatively good at playing scratched-up disks- only if it's horribly scratched does it skip a lot. Compare this to the Ipod nano when playing music "ripped" from a damaged CD- something that would have caused a meltdown on an Ipod, would play near-perfect on this CD player! (By "meltdown" I mean the Ipod crashes and stops responding to anything, requiring a reboot)
This CD player has been through a lot of crap but it still works like a charm! It's not without it's problems anymore, though. It hesitates to turn on at times, requiring you to press play 50 times to make it start playing the music. But other than that it still works great. Sony CD players rock! If I were looking for a DVD player to buy, I'd get a sony one.
UPDATE: sadly, this CD player has pretty much run it's course. it barely responds properly anymore. when I press a button, for the most part it either doesn't respond or it does something completely irrelevant-like I'll try to adjust the volume and it will instead turn the bass on and off, fast forward or rewind, or when I try to fast-forward, it will instead rewind. I decided to just suck it up and buy another one-3 guesses which brand! I'm not even going to change my rating or the pros and cons because it has lasted so long! I hope sony continues to support the niche market of portable CD players for a long time to come! (CDs are now somewhat of a niche market with the proliferation of MP3 walkmen, but I love CDs and don't intend on going the MP3 route anytime soon. I have owned an Ipod nano, among other things, but when it was starting to wear out, I contemplated getting a different MP3 player rather than replace it with another ipod, because I just didn't have that kind of money at the time, but then I realized that I would have had to convert my whole library into the right format for that player!!! so I said "screw that! I'll just burn a bunch of CD-Rs, and to get new music I'll BUY REAL CDs!" I'm not computer illiterate or "computer impatient" but I just think that having to select between so many different formats to download/rip is a pain compared to just having a standardized disk media format of some kind.)
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): Gift
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Epinions.com ID:
dickcheney6
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Reviews written: 18
Trusted by: 1 member
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