Panasonic SL-CT700 Personal CD Player

First off are the specifications (from panasonic.ca):

SL-CT700
Portable CD and MP3 Player

- MP3 playback1 (supports ID3 tag).
- CD round form design; ultra thin and lightweight.
- Up to 80-hour2 playback with two Ni-Cd rechargeable batteries (included) and two AA alkaline batteries using the supplied external battery case.
- Remote control ready for ID3 tag display on dot matrix LCD.
- No-skip anti-skip system3 [backup memory: 45-sec for CD-DA and 100-sec (at 128kbps) for MP3 playback].
- 4-preset equalizer [normal, S-XBS? (extra bass system), train (high cut), live].
- CD-R/RW playback.
- AC adapter included.

The SL-CT700 model sits behind the SL-CT800 model which is the same except with support for Windows Media Audio and above the old SL-MP** (Panasonic's entry level line) and SL-SV** lines.

The player itself looks great, or as great as any Panasonic portable CD player looks. If size is an issue (because it's CD-based instead of using a harddrive like with Apple's iPod and Creative's Zen) its diameter is about 134mm across with a thickness of about 18mm - it's very thin and sleek. The top cover is transparent in a blue tinge, but I've read that there's also a red and black version, and the usual play, skip and etc. buttons are on the side of the unit which glow. This glow however, on both the unit and remote, can be turned off. Most pictures of the unit (like at Panasonic.ca) are pretty much accurate.

The MP3 audio output quality comes out quite clear, but all of this is subjective and I've only got other old portable CD players and an old Yenc 32MB MP3 player to compare it to. There's certainly no distortion and so far I have nothing to complain about. Your disc is read once the unit is powered on and a full 700mb CD of MP3s takes from 12-14 seconds to load. Skipping between tracks takes about 2-4 seconds. The unit preloads (in RAM I suppose) the playing track so the CD will stop spinning after a while even though the music is still playing. I would assume this saves on battery usage and it has no adverse effect on you using the player. MP3s in CBR and VBR from 128kbit/s to 320kbit/s all work and there are too many different brands of CD-R/RWs out there to know which work and which don't. Panasonic does make a disclaimer about this so if you're using some no-name brand you bought at $5 for a spindle of 50 CD-Rs, you've been warned.

The 4 preset equalizers are terrible. The S-XBS (extra bass) setting just drowns the audio with bass to the point of distortion. The Train setting is rather quiet and the Live setting is the opposite of S-XBS with too much treble. Leaving it on the normal setting is best. The manual also says that there's repeat and random (shuffle), but when in MP3 playing mode, the random mode is only in random repeat - it selects tracks randomly but may also repeat the same track randomly. It may just be coincidence, but so far on average, whenever I have it on random there will be a repeat within 10 tracks. One time, out of the first 10 tracks I played, one repeated once (for 2 plays total) and another played 4 times.

The specs say that the unit supports ID3 tags and this is true as the titles show up on the remote (the unit has no LCD display), but it only shows 27 characters (excluding the .mp3 extension) and you have to hit the display button on the remote to do this. If no ID3 tags for the track exist, then a little music note symbol appears instead. When I first bought my player, I spent hours cleaning up all the ID3 tags but when I actually began using the player, I found that I never looked at the remote to see the track names because I knew all of them since I was the one who burned the CD. In fact, the only time I ever took out the remote was to skip a track or change the volume and I did this by touch. A person might look at the track names if it's a new CD, but if you already know all the tracks then you'll never look at the LCD screen at all.

The remote, as previously mentioned, is where the LCD display is and is very easy to use. There's one main central control where you push once to play, push again to stop and hold down to turn the unit off. Forward/back to skip and up/down for volume control.

Empty Ni-Cd batteries (like when you first open the box) take almost 3 hours to fully charge and these are the ones that don't have that memory effect so you can recharge them fully at any time by just plugging the AC adapter into the unit. Using the Ni-Cd batteries alone will yield about 15 hours of playtime according to the manual but I get closer to 12-13 hours. The AA alkaline addon is much too bulky for my tastes and I've chosen not to use it so I can't comment on how much that would extend the playtime.

Overall I think the player is great. MP3s come out sounding clear and crisp (as much as I can tell), the design is small, sleek and pleasing to the eye. I can fit the player in my jeans front pockets and it costs 1/3 as much as an iPod and 1/2 as much as the Zen. Blank CD-Rs are incredibly inexpensive so I don't mind burning a lot of MP3s and the dollar-to-storage ratio compared to the previously mentioned competing players is much better.

The warranty is for 1 year limited to product defects only and not normal usage wear and tear. You must bring the unit to the service centre.

MSRP is $180 CAN.
I've seen it regularly advertised for $170 CAN and purchased it on sale for $150 CAN.
I've seen it priced around $130 CAN at a few American-based online stores.

Made in Japan.