Panasonic SL-CT580 Personal CD Player

I bought the Panasonic SL-CT580 at Target after I became dissatisfied with my previous high-end portable CD player (the Sony D-EJ815) and after I read better reviews on Panasonic portable CD players in general. (Update 6-11-01) I have had the player for almost four months, and while I was extremely satisfied with it, its lid finally broke at the hinges today. I can't repair the unit under the warranty - Panasonic's one-year parts-and-labor warranty covers only manufacturer's defects, not slight abuse. Thus, if I want to have it repaired, I would have had to pay more than $70 just to repair it. I didn't bother with having it repaired, so I threw it in the garbage. (My new Sony D-EJ721 now replaces the Panasonic SL-CT580 in my portable CD player collection.) Here is my analysis:

Performance
The 40-second "skip-free" anti-skip circuitry performs very well, for the most part. But I could get this player to skip while I jogged on a treadmill at my local health club (blame the skipping on the player jostling inside my ill-fitted CD player bag). The anti-skip circuitry cannot be turned off at all on the SL-CT580, but the sound quality is very good nonetheless - but chuck those woolly-sounding stock headphones, and instead buy something better such as the well-liked Grado SR-60 or SR-80 headphones. The EQ has four settings - S-XBS, Train, Live and "off" - but to me only the "off" setting sounds good; the S-XBS setting produces boomy, muddy audio; the Train setting is even boomier and muddier; the Live setting introduces artificial-sounding audio reverbrations. So stick with the "off" setting, especially with good headphones.

If you want to use a headphone amplifier or an external audio component with the SL-CT580, you'll have to use the headphone jack - the SL-CT580 has neither a line-out nor an optical-out. This means that the sound quality (when piped to an external audio source) may not be as good as a true line-out would have produced.

Battery Life
The SL-CT580 uses rechargeable batteries inside the unit, and also comes with an external screw-on battery case that accepts two AA batteries to extend battery life (Panasonic claims up to 56 hours with both the internal rechargeable batteries and the external AA alkaline batteries used simultaneously). I didn't test this ultra-long battery-life claim, but I tested battery life with just the internal rechargeables, and the SL-CT580 delivers 13 hours of playback with just the rechargeables - one hour longer than Panasonic's 12-hour claim. Too bad Panasonic has decided to use proprietary rectangular-shaped NiCd rechargeable batteries inside the unit (Epinions' desription that the SL-CT580 uses AAA batteries inside the unit is incorrect).

As for the external AA battery case, it can be used with or without the internal rechargeable batteries inside the unit. This means that if you can't find replacement rechargeable batteries or can't plug the unit into an AC wall outlet, you can just buy a pair of AA alkaline batteries and use the player with just the external battery case.

Miscellaneous
The SL-CT580's styling reminds the owner of a flying saucer that he or she may have seen in science-fiction films. The player always resumes playback from the beginning of the track last played (or the beginning of the next track, if the user has stopped playback near the end of the previous track). And the digital volume control's buttons are somewhat difficult to press, and has 26 settings (including "0" for minimum) - but my Sony MDR-E888LP earbuds are already too loud with most of my CDs at a setting of 10 out of 25.

**UPDATE 6-11-01** Because of the new problems that cropped up in the revised first paragraph of this review, I am now no longer recommending the Panasonic SL-CT580. Accordingly, I am lowering my rating of this product to three stars.