Aiwa XP-SP90 Personal CD Player

For those of you who are curious about the title, and I hope that?s none of you, the title phrase is from the movie ?Forrest Gump? with Tom Hanks. He?s running away from bullies and a girl is screaming ?Run Forrest, run!?and he starts to run real fast. So that?s the idea of the title, since this is a skip-free cd player for jogging which really works, that is it doesn?t skip. Now that we are all cleared up with the title, I?d like to say a few words about the actual player, that I actually didn?t buy, but got as a gift. I don?t even jog, but it?s still nice to have a presumably skip free player.

As I said-I don?t jog, but for the sake of testing my new player I put on my shorts and went out for a brisk walk/jogging. After a while I noticed a pattern, if I ran fast for about two minutes it stopped playing for about two or three seconds. If I didn?t run at all, and was just walking it didn?t skip at all. I think that?s pretty good compared to my other cd player Sony D-F415, which is one of the high end cd players, but it skips like hell if I start jogging, or even walking briskly.

Sound is another issue. This AIWA player sounds pretty good, but again compared to my Sony it?s nothing. It doesn?t have that many sound enhancements. Simply speaking it will suffice for jogging and listening to the music at the same time, but if you want to hear some quality music then you better off with something else. It?s not a kind of cd player that you would stick your best box headphones in, and hope to hear some amazing sound.

So, now that I?ve established what this player is and isn?t good for, let me tell you what functions and features it has.

- 40 second skip memory is a great advantage, but isn?t it supposed not to skip at all? That?s what?s been hanging in my head, if it?s so good and it doesn?t skip then why the hell did they put in anti skip memory? Well, as i said before, it does skip time to time, so this memory comes in very useful, although I don?t think you?ll ever need the whole 40 seconds, and if the payer will really skip forty seconds of music, then there?s definitely something wrong with it.

- It?s supposed to be water resistant, but I wouldn?t recommend testing it, because you just never know. I?d say that it would be ok to get a few occasional drops of water on it, but I don?t think it?s smart to go swimming with it, after all, it?s not a cd player from space or anything.

- You can recharge batteries in your player, that is if you get the right kind of rechargeable batteries, it won?t recharge your old Duracell or Energizer. Plus it?s manual says that the player works 14 hours on one set of batteries(2 AA batteries). That?s actually very good, because my Sony works only about 3 hours on two batteries. Again, all that versatility makes up for somewhat downgraded sound.

- Of course you can do some simple programming on your player. You can make it repeat songs, make a playlist etc,. I never even tried to do that on any of my cd players, because after one try I understood that it takes a whole lot of time to set everything up, through using a limited number of buttons on the cd player, and then once your batteries give out, you have to reset everything again. But just in case you are into that kind of stuff, then you can do it on this AIWA as well.

- Bass Boost is a great thing on any cd player, and this one has one. It simply makes the sound softer, smoother, and overall makes music more pleasurable. Bass Boost is the only sound enhancement on this cd player compared to three enhancements on the above mentioned SONY D-F415. Still, it?s all good for jogging.

- Perhaps the coolest part of this cd player is it?s durability and look. Mine is black/metallic colored, with black sides made of some kind of hard rubber, which is really cool, because you can smack it and it won?t break. Unless you hit it with a hammer real hard, than I?m sure it will give way. It?s quite washable, due to that rubber surface, and you can do whatever you want with it, so that?s nice to know.

- DC adapter is included, so you can recharge your batteries, and listen to it at home without using up batteries. Car adapter is not included, which really sucks, because it?s an ideal player for a car, because it gets pretty shaky in a car, and a player such as this will do very well in such environment. I?m sure you can find an car adapter though. Probably any store such Best Buy or Circuit City will have a car adapter for this AIWA for a few bucks.

- Headphones are water resistant as well, or so it says, I didn?t test them. These are actually very nice headphones, they are not small ear pieces, but rather they are closer to box headphones and they produce good sound. These headphones wrap around your neck, sort of like that street Sony brand. I was never a big fan of headphones that wrap around your neck because they always made my ears hurt because some piece of my ear would always get jammed up between the headphone and my head, and it would hurt after a while. But if you don?t have that problem than you?ll love these headphones. You?ll love especially if you have big(puffy) hair that you don?t want to spoil by putting headphones on over your head.

There you go, that?s you jogging cd player. In conclusion I want to say that it?s a good cd player for jogging, nothing more, it practically doesn?t skip and sounds very good. However it is not the best one out there, and if you want to buy a good player NOT for jogging, but simply for listening to music, than you shouldn?t spend your money on this one. You can get any Sony Discman for 60 bucks and it will have the same sound quality or better than this AIWA. If you want a real good cd player than you should look at higher end Sony, Panasonic and AIWA players. A review of a really good Sony cd player that sounds much better than this one is available here:

http://www.epinions.com/elec-review-5227-3EB7587-39A56EF2-prod2/tk_~CB003.1.46

Enjoy your CD player, whichever one you choose!