Aiwa XP-V730C Personal CD Player

I've had this Cd player for about a year now, and it still is a pleasure. I bought this one because of past experiences with Aiwa portables. Obviously I had good experiences. I also wanted a compact and good looking unit. The red and dark gray colors complement each other nicely. This player being an Aiwa, I expected it to perform flawlessly and have more decent battery life than lesser brands. In my experiences Aiwa portables are on par with any other mass brand names such as Sony, and Panasonic, in all areas of performance. Upon first listen with the included headphones, and a familiar CD, the sound did not impress. Boy, the included phones are sorry! I never buy portables and expect the headphones to satisfy me, and the ones that come with this player are no exception. I quickly tossed those and put on my trusty Pro 35's. Now that was a huge difference. The sound popped to life. Even without the bass boost the sound was clear and full, no audible distortion, deep bass, clear treble, and good midrange, even at max volume. You could say that any portable products sound is only as good as the headphones used with it. I don't usually use bass boost because it adds distortion, breakup, and excess boom, but with certain CD's it can be useful, especially in public transportation. There are only two options to change the sound. Flat, or with the DSL which emphasizes low frequencies a little to much for my tastes, though it is useful. As a musician; somewhat of a music and sound junkie, I did not expect any miracles from this 50 dollar CD player. In short, it performed as expected. It does not skip, has great battery life, sounds good, and is durable. I dropped it a couple times from about 3 feet so mine has a couple nicks. Still works fine though. This player also has a hold function so you don't accidentally press buttons, and resume, so you can stop playback and resume where you left off.