Panasonic SL-MP70 Personal CD Player

After looking at a few MP3 players which were quite a bit more expensive I decided to go the route of the discman that can play MP3's and I'm very glad I did. The SL MP70 is simple and fairly intuitive to use, it has a central circular button that has the on/play/pause, forward, backward, and stop/off button - on the top of the player it also has volume buttons which increase/decrease the volume from 1 to 25 (which is loud, but not enough to really get you going on a good rock song). It also has a programmable memory (which I haven't used) this button also is used to display the various parts of ID tags in MP3's which is cool. The next button has a preset graphic equalizer which has 3 settings, one with additional bass, the second setting is "live", and the third is normal. The manual says that if you use the first two settings battery life may be reduced - but I haven't noticed anything.

The Player itself plays CD-R and CD-RW (lowers battery life) and I haven't had any problems with any of the discs I have used. Normal CD's obviously play very well with good sound quality (I'm not an audiophile, but it sounded pretty good to me).

The two AA batteries I put in two weeks ago are still going strong - the manual says 42hrs mp3 play on a flat surface ... very impressive, but I can't vouch for that.

On the negative side the products outer shell is made of plastic and I wouldn't want to know what would happen if I dropped it - the manual says that this makes the product head-resistant, but I'm not going to be listening to the thing in the oven so hey! Also the headphones are terrible, they don't fit comfortably and they let in outside sounds - I basically tossed them after 1 song!

All in all I would recommend this product - it does what it advertises, just budget for another set of headphones.