Philips Expanium EXP103 Personal CD Player
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THIS will change the way you listen to music
Pros
Plays MP3s on a CD; Light; Cool
Cons
No FF/Rewind within songs; No ID3 support
Recommended it?
Yes
I've been thinking about MP3 players for quite some time. However, the ridiculous price for what you get ($200 for an hour of music?) always kept me off. I don't jog, so the "skip free" nature of RAM based MP3 players was never a big factor.
It occurred to me a long time ago that what the world needed was an MP3 player that could use a CD-ROM as the musical source, and about a year ago, players (or rumors of players) began to sprout up on the Internet. Unfortunately, none of the offerings appeared to be a solid, reliable solution.
Enter the Phillips Expanium. Major manufacturer. Warranty. Key concepts in my purchasing world.
In essence, what this gives you is the ability to play cds, whether normal audio cds, or CD-ROMs stuffed to the gills with MP3s. Depending on the bitrate that the MP3s were recorded at, we're talking over ten hours of music on one cd.
Napster issues aside, you can take 10-15 of your cds and rip them onto a single cd, put them in the player, set it on random, and you have a "personal radio station" that plays songs you like.
The Expanium is a fairly solid cd player -- it doesn't seem particularly flimsy to me. It has a small LCD screen that tells you the player mode (shuffle; shuffle repeat; repeat one; repeat all) but not the name of the song being played -- there is no ID3 Tag Support built into the player.
It takes two AA batteries. I put in Duracells and they last about ten hours. It also comes with an AC adapter, and a "car kit" that includes a cassette adapter and DC power adapter. There's no "line out" cable for connecting to an external stereo, though (the port is there, just no included cable).
The "ear buds" that it comes with are terrible. The sound isn't bad, but I'm constantly fiddling with them trying to keep them from falling out. Buy a decent set of headphones and you'll be fine. Even with the lame ear buds, sound was sufficient on a plane.
The biggest deficiency, though, is the player's inability to fast forward and rewind within a track. I can't imagine why that was left out, but if you listen to long songs, it's a real issue. Related to this is the fact that if the player is on "Resume" mode, when you turn it off and back on, it goes back to the beginning of the song you were listening to. Again, not a huge issue if you listen to short songs, but I don't, so it bugs me a lot.
Oh, and the "shock proof" claims of the RAM based MP3 players? Instructions with the Expanium suggest leaving the player horizontally on a vibration free surface. Not being one to follow directions, I tossed it vertically in the glove box of my Jeep Cherokee and drove down one of the bumpiest roads I could find. Number of skips? Zero.
On the plane last Friday, I tossed the player back and forth between my hands, turned it over, rapped on it once or twice. Number of skips? Zero. The 100 second buffer clearly is doing its job.
If you're in the market for an MP3 player, take a good hard look at the Expanium. It's surely a better buy than a RAM based MP3 player. The only real question is whether to wait for another device that has ID3 Tag Support so that you can see what you're listening to, if that's really important to you.
It occurred to me a long time ago that what the world needed was an MP3 player that could use a CD-ROM as the musical source, and about a year ago, players (or rumors of players) began to sprout up on the Internet. Unfortunately, none of the offerings appeared to be a solid, reliable solution.
Enter the Phillips Expanium. Major manufacturer. Warranty. Key concepts in my purchasing world.
In essence, what this gives you is the ability to play cds, whether normal audio cds, or CD-ROMs stuffed to the gills with MP3s. Depending on the bitrate that the MP3s were recorded at, we're talking over ten hours of music on one cd.
Napster issues aside, you can take 10-15 of your cds and rip them onto a single cd, put them in the player, set it on random, and you have a "personal radio station" that plays songs you like.
The Expanium is a fairly solid cd player -- it doesn't seem particularly flimsy to me. It has a small LCD screen that tells you the player mode (shuffle; shuffle repeat; repeat one; repeat all) but not the name of the song being played -- there is no ID3 Tag Support built into the player.
It takes two AA batteries. I put in Duracells and they last about ten hours. It also comes with an AC adapter, and a "car kit" that includes a cassette adapter and DC power adapter. There's no "line out" cable for connecting to an external stereo, though (the port is there, just no included cable).
The "ear buds" that it comes with are terrible. The sound isn't bad, but I'm constantly fiddling with them trying to keep them from falling out. Buy a decent set of headphones and you'll be fine. Even with the lame ear buds, sound was sufficient on a plane.
The biggest deficiency, though, is the player's inability to fast forward and rewind within a track. I can't imagine why that was left out, but if you listen to long songs, it's a real issue. Related to this is the fact that if the player is on "Resume" mode, when you turn it off and back on, it goes back to the beginning of the song you were listening to. Again, not a huge issue if you listen to short songs, but I don't, so it bugs me a lot.
Oh, and the "shock proof" claims of the RAM based MP3 players? Instructions with the Expanium suggest leaving the player horizontally on a vibration free surface. Not being one to follow directions, I tossed it vertically in the glove box of my Jeep Cherokee and drove down one of the bumpiest roads I could find. Number of skips? Zero.
On the plane last Friday, I tossed the player back and forth between my hands, turned it over, rapped on it once or twice. Number of skips? Zero. The 100 second buffer clearly is doing its job.
If you're in the market for an MP3 player, take a good hard look at the Expanium. It's surely a better buy than a RAM based MP3 player. The only real question is whether to wait for another device that has ID3 Tag Support so that you can see what you're listening to, if that's really important to you.
