brand name electronics are not always the best way to go
Written: Sep 29 '03
|
Product Rating:
|
|
| Sound: |
 |
|
| Ease of Use: |
 |
|
| Durability: |
|
|
| Portability: |
 |
|
| Battery Life: |
|
|
|
Pros: plays mp3-CDs, CD-RW compatible, car kit included
Cons: fifteen words is not enough room to list all the things wrong with this player.
The Bottom Line: Don't buy this CD player. There are far better alternatives for sale, and at the current prices, you can get a lot more than this for $90.
|
|
|
| collegegrrl's Full Review: RCA RP2450 Personal CD Player |
I will freely admit that I'm a sucker for electronic toys. More specifically, I love computer peripherals. After I received a new Dell OptiPlex desktop computer for graduation, moved to campus, and started downloading music like crazy...it was time for an mp3 player. I looked at ratings, costs, pros and cons, and finally decided that I'd rather own an mp3/CD player. It so happened that my Koss cd player, after holding up to over two years of abuse and knockaround, was starting to skip terribly. I needed a replacement, so I headed to Best Buy.
This was the cheapest brand-name mp3/CD player in stock at the time; it was about $20 less than the Sony I had been looking at. In retrospect, I should have purchased the Sony.
THE GOOD
The best thing about this player is the simple fact that it, like its competitors, plays mp3-CDs. A single CD-R or CD-RW can hold roughly 175 mp3s (750 MB). Compare this to most mp3 players, which hold about 128 MB of music (about two audio CDs). Simply use a CD-burning program to make a data cd of all your mp3s. The RP-2450 has a file browsing system, so if you sort your mp3s into folders, you can find what you want a little easier.
Like all other mp3/CD players, this one also displays the ID3 tags for your mp3s. However, unlike many other models, it only displays the artist and title tags. Most mp3/CD players display album, genre, and other information (if the mp3 is tagged with said entries).
Another reason I picked this particular player was that it came with a car kit. My old tape adapter was dead, as was the AC/DC cigarette adapter I had from an old Discman. It comes with no AC wall adapter. The aforementioned Discman, however, came with an adapter of the same voltage (4.5V), and the plug size was the same, so I was in luck on that end.
This CD player is labeled as CD-RW compatible. Older portable CD players have been known to have issues reading certain brands of CD-Rs and CD-RWs, so this can be considered a plus. However, these days, pretty much any brand name personal CD player will read CD-RWs with no problem.
THE BAD
The file management system is such that if your mp3 files are named Artist - Title.mp3, all you will ever see when browsing your mp3s is the first five characters of the artist. This can be a slight disadvantage when, say, you have an entire directory of songs by Queen. It's pretty much a guess-and-go sort of thing, and because of this CD player, I ended up renaming all my mp3s to Title.mp3, and sorting them into artist folders on my mp3-CDs.
There is no "hold" button or switch, which means that the CD player can accidentally power off and on when in a bag. Once it's powered on, you can press and hold the menu button to lock the buttons.
CD spinup and read time is fairly slow when using mp3 cds; it's also far too slow to read and begin playing audio cds.
Many audio CDs these days are recorded in such a way that "negative" time is burned between tracks that might include song intros and such (the segues between tracks on the Beastie Boys' album Hello Nasty is a good example). This CD player is incapable of reading that negative time. Therefore, there are gaps between songs that you would not otherwise hear when playing a normal audio CD.
THE (REALLY) UGLY
The battery life on this CD player is unbelievably bad. I use rechargeable AA Ni-MH batteries, and I have to recharge them at least once a week (using the player five days a week walking to and from classes on campus). The Aiwa CD player i recently purchased ran on the same pair of rechargeable batteries for three and a half weeks before it even came close to dying.
In addition to subpar battery life, this player seems to have a far-too-common habit of simply ceasing to spin (and therefore read/play) a cd if jostled too much. It was advertised to have decent skip protection for both audio and mp3-CDs, and yet when I'm bouncing down the stairs from my dorm room when I'm late to class, it will suddenly stop playing. It doesn't turn off; it inexplicably stops playing the CD and the display shows all the track information, but no seconds advancing for the song. This is very, very frustrating when I have to stop walking, put my backpack down, and pull out this CD player just so I can restart it.
The final conclusion? I wouldn't wish this thing on my worst enemy. Invest the extra money in an mp3-CD player with better ID3 tag compatibility, a backlight on the display, and better battery life.
Recommended:
No
Amount Paid (US$): 89
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
collegegrrl
|
|
Location: Indianapolis, IN
Reviews written: 22
Trusted by: 3 members
About Me:
I'm a tech head. So sue me.
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.