Aiwa AM-F70 Personal MiniDisc Player

The Aiwa AM-F70 Mini-disc player is the greatest electronic music player/recorder that I have seen out on the market up to date. It is small and very pleasing to the eyes. It has a smooth silver cover that makes it look indestructible and also very unique. The buttons on the mini-disc player are very well placed and well designed. There are just enough buttons on it to make it look like it could do anything, but not enough to make it look like it is complicated or hard to use.

The placement of the buttons is pure genius. I did not realize this until I had actually owned the mini-disc player, but they are placed in such a way that you can keep the player in your pocket and change track and volume settings just by placing your hand in your pocket. It is almost like the player was built just for your hand.

The player is also very light weight. No matter what you are doing you can always carry it with you. It fits almost every where because of its lightweight and small size. When you have the player out, however, the text is not hard to read and the buttons are easy to find. What makes it easier is that the player actually lights up with the touch of a button making it easy to see even in the dark. And one of the greatest features of the player is that it doesn't skip. You can go jogging, biking, skating or whatever. This makes the player useful in virtually any situation (except underwater).

The features of the player have been unsurpassed by my standards. You can play any disc and record from practically anything. With the proper accessories the mini-disc player allows you to record from your computer, your radio, portable CD players, other mini-disc players, your TV and basically anything else that makes noise. It even has a microphone input for those karaoke nights with the parents(right!). After recording from the product of your choice the player gives you the option to name your tracks, name the disk that the tracks are recorded on, combine two tracks, divide a track, renumber tracks and erase tracks. This makes it very convenient to come up with almost any variety mix you can think of.


And the functions are not hard to find or use. It is all at the touch of a button. There are no combinations are hidden passwords to worry about. It is all at your fingertips. The player even has a function that lets you decide to separate the tracks yourself or to let it do it automatically. These are only the recording features.

Along with these there are also track features that let you program the player to play what songs you want and in what order, to let it random select songs for you or to repeat one or all songs. It also has a DSL (or bass control) with three levels. 1 being the lowest and 3 being the highest. All of these features are easily accessible and easy to display with the display functions of either: passed track time, remaining track time, the name of the track that is playing, the disc name or the date the track was made.

When you buy the mini-disk player all necessary accessories are provided (Excluding some recording devices) such as batteries and the remote (whish is discussed later) and headphones. The headphones that arrive with thew player are called ?Swoops?. The have a design that is now being often used, but for a while was unique. The ear pieces actually go inside your ear and then fold over the top of your ears where they follow the natural curve of your head making them extremely comfortable. There are some downfalls however. The design makes the headphones impossible to wear while lying down. Which, of course, eliminates use while sleeping. This is very frustrating. Also, the sound of them is not up to par (in my book). When the volume is turned all the way up it still could be louder. And when the Bass is up, for those nice, hard base lines, the earphones fail to deliver and you get a gross shaky sound hated by all music lovers. So my suggestion is to buy a better pair and loose the hassle.

The player also comes with a detachable remote control. The remote is very small and very useful. It is much smaller than the actual player is so it can be left hanging by your side or be clipped on your shirt. After a few minutes it is almost like it isn?t there. It performs most of the features that the actual player does, except for a few like the track features or recording features, but volume and some track features are available along with mode, play/pause/stop and DSL (Bass) And it is very handy. Or if you choose, you can go without it. The size makes it easily storable.

There are three different kinds of energy sources that come with the player. One is called a ?dry-cell? which is basically a unit that plugs into the player and stores 3 AA batteries which it uses for power. It is also portable, but is sort of a pain and out of the way. Another source is called a ?lithium-Ion Battery?. This is basically a battery that fits into the player and is rechargeable by simply plugging the player into a wall with an adapter (transformer). This is the third source of power that is provided with the player. When all else fails you can always use the adapter and plug it into the wall for a power source.

So, if you are looking for a player/recorder that is in a medium price range and is of high quality the Aiwa AM-F70 mini-disk player is for you.