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Philips EXP401 Pocket eXpanium CD-MP3 Player with 100 Second Anti-Skip

Philips EXP401 Pocket eXpanium CD-MP3 Player with 100 Second Anti-Skip

List Price: $149.99
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Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Great little player
Review: ...I tested this out one weekend on the Metro, and also by walking around DC. I listened to it for over five hours, most of them without the ESP turned on, it never skipped while I was walking and the sound/headphones were much better than other unit I have used in the past. Navigation is generally easy, as you can skip by tracks, or skip by alblums, if you burn your songs into folders on the disk. Very easy.

The media is 100X better than memory cards - it is an unbelievable difference if you've ever used MMC or SD cards before. It's cheap ...which unless you are hardcore, is a LOT of storage. I ripped/encoded 25 of my own CDs and they fit on eight mini-CDs, totaling just over 24 hours of music. There is a problem of transportation; I used a Case Logic wallet designed for a full size CD player, and the CDs shifted around a lot. Hopefully someone will address this in the future.

My only complaint is that the unit is generally less sturdy than I would like. If you are careful then it probably won't be a problem, but even when the lid was locked down, it still moved from side to side a little. I was not impressed with that. But I got a two year warranty from BB, so I don't really care.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Had the player for about 3 months now... my 2 cents.
Review: 1) The 3 hour battery life is not too bad. I usually carry around an extra pack of batteries with me.
2) I do appreciate that the player can read Joliet long filenames, unlike others which read only ISO9660.
3) The resume features have been touchy. Sometimes (at random) the player would resume at the beginning of the track or sometimes at the exact position i turned it off.
4) My main problem with the player is, for some reason, the battery would drain when left in the player, as if the player was on all along. I emailed philips about this problem, but I still have not gotten a response. I don't know if this is a common problem with others, but it's a major drawback with mine.
5) If have any other questions, feel free to email me.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Long Awaited
Review: Actually Works! Tried Lots Of Other Types Of Players That Did Not.
The Only Thing It Is Missing Is An FM Tuner Which Would Then Make It A 10+ In My Book!!

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Great Idea - Needs work.
Review: Bought this for my wife to use at work; was impressed by the resume ability and 2-minute ESD. The resume ability was for her to listen to long audiobooks; as the resume ability does not work (see review by "An electronics fan"), that idea is down the drain. Secondly, also mentioned in "An electronics fan"'s review, the machine turns off if you take a particularly hard step while walking with it in your hand. Pitiful. Will be giving this away and buying a better one.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Good Performer
Review: Good sounding little player. Can stand up to most kinds of workout motions without skipping a beat. For those who complain about battery life... isn't it about time that more people switched to rechargables?

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Pretty Nice!
Review: I bought one for my sister to go snowboarding with. Didn't know what to expect - but it turned out awesome! Doesn't skip even when going over the bumps and 3 hours of mp3s in such a small package. It feels a little light (and cheap) but given that it is pretty cheap and does the job more than adequately - I say this is a great little mp3 player. Way better than those 64meg wimpy "oops you ran out of music" mp3 players. And the 8cm cd's are small enought that you can easily carry more than one.

I'm now here to order another one for myself! Can't wait to take it bump skiing at finally ski to music!!

Cheers,
Tim

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: finally, one that fits
Review: i have been looking for a device to listen to my music on the go, while i am jogging, driving or in the gym. i have tried the card based ones, fullsize cd players and also the hard drive based ones. finally this mini-cd player is the one that fits my life. it doesn't skip at all, even when i was jogging on the road, good idea to get an optional clip. I have a few mini CDRWs and i use them constantly, i fit upto 40 songs on a single disc. this baby works great for me, Battery life is also very good. i have had it for couple of months, as good as new.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Get a Compaq PM-1
Review: I honestly can't recommend this product - not while the Compaq PM-1 is out. Yes, the eXpanium is pretty good, but it lacks major functions - like it can't display ID3 tags, and you can't fast foward (search) through the middle of songs! The PM-1 has an inline remote that displays the ID3 tags, and it has the ability to search. The PM-1 also has 8 MINUTES of shock protection, compared to the 100 seconds offered by the eXpanium. The Compaq also comes with 3 mini CD-Rs to get you started, whereas the Philips comes with only one. Bottom line, the Philips is a solid product, but the Compaq PM-1 has more features for the same price.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: best i've seen....
Review: I just bought this a week ago and so far its awesome. The sound quality is great, the DBB (dynamic bass boost) works a lot better than the one on my panasonic discman. The 8cm CD's hold about an hour and a half of music, if you use bitrates above 128, which i do. The batteries and the LCD screen are the only bad parts. The batteries run out fast with the ESP (not that you need it), and the LCD screen doesn't display track names, which isn't that big of a deal on this model because the CD's probably wouldn't hold any more than about 30 songs. The ESP, is not even needed, unless you are doing some serious movment. I usually can run with it and have the ESP off, and it won't skip once. I definently would recommend this product to anyone that is concerned about size, and that doesn't mind not having 400 songs on a CD. If you do decide to get it, be prepared to get a nice pair of headphones, the ones that come with it arent exactly great, and don't fit comfortably at all. An all around great product, though.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: some problems, but usable
Review: I like this product for its convenience, small size, and good sound quality. The mini-CDs hold about 4 hours of music in MP3 format (128 or 160 k-bit) each, and are very easy to carry around with you. As for the battery problem alluded to by previous reviewers, I solve the problem by using rechareable batteries and carry a couple spares with me.

I do have a couple problems: 1) the resume button doesn't work on my machine every since I got it. 2) after a month of use, my player starts shutting off whenever there's a jolt to it or if I drop it into my bag. Perhaps I've not been very careful with it, but the player should be better built than that. I will probably try a different mini-CD player next time, if the problems start to annoy me too much.


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