Panasonic SHOCKWAVE SL-SW870 Personal CD Player
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Panasonic SL-SW870 Portable CD Player: Have One For The Road
Pros
Tough Performer.
Cons
May be a little high for entry level wage earners and others.
Recommended it?
Yes
The Bottom Line:
This is one of the toughest and tested CD Players on the market.
Portable sound has gone through quite an evolution in the past 50 years or so. I can remember the first transistor radios back in the 50's and how amazing it was to be able to carry a radio around outside and not have a long cord plugged into a wall plug. Simply amazing.
Then came the SONY Walkman and its imitators along about the late '60s and into the '70s. Now you could carry a cassette player around with you. Now, if you got a good one, you could even jogging with it.
That was fine with me. In the 70s I took up jogging and I loved to run with my Walkman going. Eventually I bought a neoprene TUNE BELT and that was nice because the Walkman wasn't bouncing out of your shirt pocket.
I even created my own "running tapes" with a two-tape-deck cassette recorder-player. That way I could tape the good songs off the "Chariots of Fire" Soundtrack Album by Vangelis along with "The Soul of Spain" Music by 101 Strings and listen to them as I ran the sunset hills of New Mexico where I lived then. And what a great thing it was, on a trip, to run through the wooded Wisconsin hillsides on a wood-chip trail in the misty morning while listening to Handel's "Messiah" as the orange sun crested the foggy green hills beyond ands its rays colored the sky.
Ahh, but then the Compact Disc revolution came along. All the good music was on CDs. Clear. Bright. Digital. And so I decided to get a portable CD Player.
Today with a decent computer and two CD bays you can put your own mixes on a fresh CD. You can take your sound off another CD, or get it from an MP3 file off the web ("Alas, poor Napster, I knew him well.") from some site giving these away or for sale.
I wanted a CD player of good quality and one that would take the shocks of the road that a machine can get in jogging. So after doing my usual thorough job of market research (I walked into BEST BUY, told the salesman I wanted a CD player, he pointed this one out to me, and I bought it) I decided to get this Panasonic unit, the SL-SW870. After my discriminating market testing and research, I must confide in you that as a somewhat sophisticated connoisseur of sound (yeah right) , I haven't been disappointed.
It has several things I like. I DO like the anti-shock system. Panasonic has got a good one in its machines. This is a 40-second memory and buffer system that keeps the music going even if the unit gets hit from anywhere on the compass. That's nice.
I like the fact that you can recharge the rechargeable batteries right in the machine. That saves some of the hassles.
I like the little CD folder they put inside for carrying a couple of extra CDs and I like the spare battery container that you can take with you. It's not much fun to have your batteries play out when you are in the middle of a run.
Oh, it has a few other bells and whistles on it but all technobabble aside, it does the job it is intended to do quite well: It delivers crisp, clear music to my head when I am out there running in all kinds of weather and in all kinds of terrain. I see no reason why it wouldn't do the same thing if I were laying in a backyard hammock, my eyes closed, while I listened to Mozart or Elton or Brittney (Brittney? Hmmmm?)
Well, it was a little expensive but you usually get what you pay for in name-brand consumer electronics. You buy cheap and it breaks. You pay more and it's less likely to break all that soon. This player looks like it will still be playing just fine in 2050.
I would recommend this Panasonic unit to anyone. Whether you're a runner like me, a walker, or a couch potato, you'll like it.
*****
Then came the SONY Walkman and its imitators along about the late '60s and into the '70s. Now you could carry a cassette player around with you. Now, if you got a good one, you could even jogging with it.
That was fine with me. In the 70s I took up jogging and I loved to run with my Walkman going. Eventually I bought a neoprene TUNE BELT and that was nice because the Walkman wasn't bouncing out of your shirt pocket.
I even created my own "running tapes" with a two-tape-deck cassette recorder-player. That way I could tape the good songs off the "Chariots of Fire" Soundtrack Album by Vangelis along with "The Soul of Spain" Music by 101 Strings and listen to them as I ran the sunset hills of New Mexico where I lived then. And what a great thing it was, on a trip, to run through the wooded Wisconsin hillsides on a wood-chip trail in the misty morning while listening to Handel's "Messiah" as the orange sun crested the foggy green hills beyond ands its rays colored the sky.
Ahh, but then the Compact Disc revolution came along. All the good music was on CDs. Clear. Bright. Digital. And so I decided to get a portable CD Player.
Today with a decent computer and two CD bays you can put your own mixes on a fresh CD. You can take your sound off another CD, or get it from an MP3 file off the web ("Alas, poor Napster, I knew him well.") from some site giving these away or for sale.
I wanted a CD player of good quality and one that would take the shocks of the road that a machine can get in jogging. So after doing my usual thorough job of market research (I walked into BEST BUY, told the salesman I wanted a CD player, he pointed this one out to me, and I bought it) I decided to get this Panasonic unit, the SL-SW870. After my discriminating market testing and research, I must confide in you that as a somewhat sophisticated connoisseur of sound (yeah right) , I haven't been disappointed.
It has several things I like. I DO like the anti-shock system. Panasonic has got a good one in its machines. This is a 40-second memory and buffer system that keeps the music going even if the unit gets hit from anywhere on the compass. That's nice.
I like the fact that you can recharge the rechargeable batteries right in the machine. That saves some of the hassles.
I like the little CD folder they put inside for carrying a couple of extra CDs and I like the spare battery container that you can take with you. It's not much fun to have your batteries play out when you are in the middle of a run.
Oh, it has a few other bells and whistles on it but all technobabble aside, it does the job it is intended to do quite well: It delivers crisp, clear music to my head when I am out there running in all kinds of weather and in all kinds of terrain. I see no reason why it wouldn't do the same thing if I were laying in a backyard hammock, my eyes closed, while I listened to Mozart or Elton or Brittney (Brittney? Hmmmm?)
Well, it was a little expensive but you usually get what you pay for in name-brand consumer electronics. You buy cheap and it breaks. You pay more and it's less likely to break all that soon. This player looks like it will still be playing just fine in 2050.
I would recommend this Panasonic unit to anyone. Whether you're a runner like me, a walker, or a couch potato, you'll like it.
*****
