The Bottom Line: If you're looking for a nicely-priced CD-R/RW player that's reliable and good looking with lastability, this is it. With AUX input it will keep up with technology.

Let's get right down to it. This CD-R/RW player is probably the absolute best you can find that's under $100 (depending on when you're reading this, currently I've found stores such as Circuit City selling it for $89). This CD player was a great change from my previous CD player, a Jensen, which drove me to having to buy a brand new one. I figured if I was going to buy a whole new unit, it would have to be better on a completely different level. For those not familiar with Jensen car stereos, they have trouble playing store CD's, and skip a bit much. I haven't had any problems with those same store CD's in this unit, nor has it skipped on me yet. The pros and features greatly outweigh the few cons of this CD player, and demand your attention.

PROS
- Probably the biggest thing: includes a front mounted AUX input, which means if you have a male-male plug you can hook up your portable MP3 player or anything else of the nature to the unit. So in reality, you're pretty much getting a CD-R/RW player with mp3 capability. The only thing is it won't display the ID3 tags. But for the money, that's not a problem. I have an mp3/wma player, and in place of mp3's, wma's are much smaller in size but the exact same in quality. I recently made a CD of nothing but wma's and can fit about 3 or 4 more albums worth of material than a regular mp3 CD.

- The design is very eye-catching and cool looking, especially driving down the road and glancing down to check the time or elapsed time of a song. Some may prefer something "cleaner" and more basic, but in my opinion, the design is just enough to where it's not TOO busy. The blue light surrounding the rotary knob flashes when you turn the volume up, which is a pretty cool feature, though useless to any performance. I'm not sure but I think you can change this if it annoys you. Same goes for the brightness of the display; the manual explains how to change this.

- There are so many features to this CD player, yet not too much to overwhelm you. And yes, it is quite easy to navigate. Just a quick read of the manual, or using common sense, will guide you through the process of figuring out what does what. Everything is pretty straightforward, you just have to mess around with the buttons and learn things through trial and error. I figured everything out on the first try, so it shouldn't be that hard. Some great features:

Pressing the "PWR" (power) button once quickly mutes the CD player. Although it doesn't actually mute it all the way, this is more of an attenuate feature, which turns the volume down to where it's just barely audible. Pressing and holding down the same button turns it off (obviously).

To change the display between the clock and the track number/elapsed time couldn't be easier. The "DISP" button is located directly to the right of the volume knob and all it takes is one push of it to go back and forth.

Pressing "SRC" takes you through the different sources for the unit: radio (FM1, FM2, FM3, FM4, AM1, AM2), CD, and AUX. If you hook up your portable mp3 player to the auxiliary input, you'll want to use this button and switch to AUX.

The "LEV" button is used for changing the different levels of the CD player such as bass, treble, channel and fade. This is also used to turn H-Bass on or off. I don't recommend H-Bass to anyone using factory speakers like myself, unless you turn the bass down to 1 or 0 and the volume at moderate level. Even this rattles the speakers a good bit. This is more for those with powerful subwoofers and larger speakers. Nevertheless, extremely nice if you have the equipment.

Also interesting to note: one of my favorite features of this CD player is the auto-resume. Whether you switch to radio, AUX, or simply turn the unit or your engine off, it picks up right where you left off.

CONS
- Perhaps one of the biggest cons about this CD player is the fact that it doesn't have a pause feature, but this doesn't reduce the unit in quality whatsoever. If anything, it's made up for by the auto-resume feature, which serves the same purpose. If you really need to pause the CD, just turn the unit off, because it's basically the same thing.

- A lot of people might not like the fact that the faceplate isn't detachable. To me, this doesn't influence my decision in buying a CD player, but it might to a lot of people who have expensive cars and setups. You can buy an upgraded version of this model (the X227) which features a detachable faceplate, although other than that it is exactly the same. It's about $60 more than this model, and I personally don't think making a faceplate detachable is worth that much extra.

- Some people might not like the fact that the CD player has a rotary volume knob, and I was a bit iffy about it at first. Not just from this model, but from several other brands of car stereos. But now that I've installed it and used it, I really prefer it over the button version. The reason is that the knob is so sturdy and solid that you won't accidentally turn the volume up too much, and you can turn the volume up/down much faster than if you pressed a button over and over. Again, this doesn't do anything to degrade the quality of this CD player; I personally think it compliments the design better.

Overall, I think if you're looking for a cheap CD player that is reliable, good looking and has lastability, you should seriously consider looking into this Aiwa model. For not too much extra, you can buy the detachable faceplate version, if it really concerns you. With CD-R/RW capability and the addition of an AUX input, this CD player will keep up with modern technology and should stay in your vehicle for a long time.