Polaroid PDV-0821T 8 in. Portable DVD Player
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- Number of Discs: 1
- Weight: 2.09 lb.
- Playable Disk Types: DVD-R DVD-RW CD (Audio) CD-R CD-RW
- Screen Size: 8 inch
- Playable File Formats: JPEG
- DVD Type: Portable DVD Player with Screen
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Some great ideas in a flimsy package
Pros
Swivel Screen, Car package, price.
Cons
Cheaply made, unreliable, Didn't work for very long.
Recommended it?
No
The Bottom Line:
Swivel screen is a great idea. It is cheaply made and unreliable. There are so many other options in this price range. I recommend you keep looking.
We're getting ready for an airplane trip with three young children and were hoping that being able to let them watch some of their favorite shows on the plane would make it more manageable. So I started looking online. We will mostly use it for trips, and possibly watching a movie while walking on the treadmill.
There were many things the drew me toward this DVD player.
Price: $165 at WalMart.com
8" screen
Swivel screen
Car adapter
Car travel bag that attaches to the back of the seat
The Polaroid name
I ordered it online, not having a chance to see it in real life before it arrived at my door. It's been here a week, has already stopped working and it's going back for more than a few reasons.
Size
As soon as I opened it, I was surprised at how thick, clunky, and heavy it is. Add the battery pack to it and it is a hefty 1 3/4 inch thick and weighs almost 2 1/4 pounds! For today's technology that's HUGE. The 4 year old JVC Portable DVD player that this is supposed to replace is smaller than that. You'd think Polaroid would have used some of that advanced technology in this design. Alas, they did not.
Style
Basically there is none to speak of. The top is brushed silver metal that has a velvety, sticky kind of feel to it. Open it up and the rest of the case is cheap brushed silver plastic. The buttons, while easy to find and use, are a slightly less brushed, more shiny plastic than the case and do not look like they would be very durable.
Features
I loved the idea of the swivel screen. The versatility that this feature affords sounded fantastic. The screen actually swivels 180? and then can fold back on itself so it looks like a tablet rather than a clamshell. It comes with a bag that attaches to the back of a car seat so in the tablet position, it is perfect for back seat viewing. In addition, the picture can be flipped at the touch of a button so you can watch the device from the other direction. I saw myself figuring out a way to mount it on the roof of the van because the base could be up, the screen down, and the picture could actually be oriented the correct way and even the people in the back row could see. The fact that it comes with a car adapter is a great bonus!
The remote is pretty small (4.8" x 2.2" x .25") and has all of the standard buttons. Nothing special... it worked fine, when the player was working. Battery for the remote is included.
The picture orientation can be flipped at the touch of a button at the bottom of the screen. As can the picture ratio, color, and brightness.
The buttons on the unit include
Info, Title, Menu, Audio, Stop, Play, Pause, the up-down-left-right navigation buttons, and skip previous and next.
on the right side, is the volume wheel, a single headphone jack, Audio and Video out, and AV in/out switch and the DC jack.
The battery charges while attached to the player. It does not have a separate power jack of it's own.
There is a speaker on either side at the bottom of the screen.
Durability
We did not make a special effort to treat this player with kid gloves during it's short stay here. It's going to be traveling with my husband and I and our three young kids. It needs to be able to handle some actual use. However, we were not hard on it. It stayed in the same room the entire time we had it and really only got moved from one surface to another.
First and foremost, it played a total of 4 DVDs of the course of 5 days then quit. For that alone, it gets a bad rating from me.
In addition, I think that the swivel of the screen makes it more prone to damage. It's easy to close when it's just a little bit off of center and the latch mechanism gets messed up. The latch mechanism isn't built very well in the first place, so I could see it totally failing pretty quickly.
Don't try to pick this thing up with one hand...especially your left hand. The placement, and sturdiness of the door protecting the DVD while it's playing does not allow for that. Between the weight of the unit and the cheap plastic door, the DVD inside gets compressed and gets caught inside and can get very badly scratched up.
Our unit actually stopped regularly recognizing whether the door was open or closed after only 2 days & 2 DVDs. Part of me just wanted to rip the darned thing off.
Performance
The picture isn't bad, but it certainly isn't crystal clear. It's perfect for letting the kids watch their cartoons, but I definitely wouldn't recommend anyone count on watching their favorite high special effect movie on this unit. The reds and pinks are WAY oversaturated and the edges are a tad "muddy."
The screen has a pretty good viewing angle. It is pretty clear from the sides and the top until you're almost looking at it directly from the sides.
Like I said above, it stopped working after only a few DVDs. Sometimes it couldn't tell if the door was closed, other times it would start playing a DVD only to stop a few minutes into it. The DVD actually stopped spinning and it was unable to recognize that there was a DVD inside. The only way to get it to start spinning again was to open and close the door a few times until it finally recognized that the door was closed and there was actually a DVD there. Then, once again, it stopped spinning. While I've been writing this, I have started and it has stopped 3 different DVDs 3 times each.
Even before it stopped working though, I noticed it was LOUD. Whenever it accesses the DVD, there is a mechanical click that comes over the speakers.
I did note that others who reviewed this unit said that the volume isn't loud enough. I have a hard time imagining too many situations where it would be drowned out. It's pretty darned loud. I can't imagine it needing to be any louder. If I had to listen to "Elmo's Song" at any higher volume it would burst my eardrums. But regardless, it's PLENTY loud in my opinion.
The documentation says that the battery will last for 3 hours of continuous play. We got almost 3.5. But there are at least 6 different warnings all over on the unit and in the box that say not to charge the battery for more than 8 hours at at time or it will lose capacity. It is a Polaroid Model BT45, DC7.4V, LI-ION Polymer rechargable battery.
Bottom Line
Don't buy it. The swivel screen is a great idea, but the rest of the unit is cheaply done and unreliable. There are so many other options in this price range. I recommend you keep looking.
There were many things the drew me toward this DVD player.
Price: $165 at WalMart.com
8" screen
Swivel screen
Car adapter
Car travel bag that attaches to the back of the seat
The Polaroid name
I ordered it online, not having a chance to see it in real life before it arrived at my door. It's been here a week, has already stopped working and it's going back for more than a few reasons.
Size
As soon as I opened it, I was surprised at how thick, clunky, and heavy it is. Add the battery pack to it and it is a hefty 1 3/4 inch thick and weighs almost 2 1/4 pounds! For today's technology that's HUGE. The 4 year old JVC Portable DVD player that this is supposed to replace is smaller than that. You'd think Polaroid would have used some of that advanced technology in this design. Alas, they did not.
Style
Basically there is none to speak of. The top is brushed silver metal that has a velvety, sticky kind of feel to it. Open it up and the rest of the case is cheap brushed silver plastic. The buttons, while easy to find and use, are a slightly less brushed, more shiny plastic than the case and do not look like they would be very durable.
Features
I loved the idea of the swivel screen. The versatility that this feature affords sounded fantastic. The screen actually swivels 180? and then can fold back on itself so it looks like a tablet rather than a clamshell. It comes with a bag that attaches to the back of a car seat so in the tablet position, it is perfect for back seat viewing. In addition, the picture can be flipped at the touch of a button so you can watch the device from the other direction. I saw myself figuring out a way to mount it on the roof of the van because the base could be up, the screen down, and the picture could actually be oriented the correct way and even the people in the back row could see. The fact that it comes with a car adapter is a great bonus!
The remote is pretty small (4.8" x 2.2" x .25") and has all of the standard buttons. Nothing special... it worked fine, when the player was working. Battery for the remote is included.
The picture orientation can be flipped at the touch of a button at the bottom of the screen. As can the picture ratio, color, and brightness.
The buttons on the unit include
Info, Title, Menu, Audio, Stop, Play, Pause, the up-down-left-right navigation buttons, and skip previous and next.
on the right side, is the volume wheel, a single headphone jack, Audio and Video out, and AV in/out switch and the DC jack.
The battery charges while attached to the player. It does not have a separate power jack of it's own.
There is a speaker on either side at the bottom of the screen.
Durability
We did not make a special effort to treat this player with kid gloves during it's short stay here. It's going to be traveling with my husband and I and our three young kids. It needs to be able to handle some actual use. However, we were not hard on it. It stayed in the same room the entire time we had it and really only got moved from one surface to another.
First and foremost, it played a total of 4 DVDs of the course of 5 days then quit. For that alone, it gets a bad rating from me.
In addition, I think that the swivel of the screen makes it more prone to damage. It's easy to close when it's just a little bit off of center and the latch mechanism gets messed up. The latch mechanism isn't built very well in the first place, so I could see it totally failing pretty quickly.
Don't try to pick this thing up with one hand...especially your left hand. The placement, and sturdiness of the door protecting the DVD while it's playing does not allow for that. Between the weight of the unit and the cheap plastic door, the DVD inside gets compressed and gets caught inside and can get very badly scratched up.
Our unit actually stopped regularly recognizing whether the door was open or closed after only 2 days & 2 DVDs. Part of me just wanted to rip the darned thing off.
Performance
The picture isn't bad, but it certainly isn't crystal clear. It's perfect for letting the kids watch their cartoons, but I definitely wouldn't recommend anyone count on watching their favorite high special effect movie on this unit. The reds and pinks are WAY oversaturated and the edges are a tad "muddy."
The screen has a pretty good viewing angle. It is pretty clear from the sides and the top until you're almost looking at it directly from the sides.
Like I said above, it stopped working after only a few DVDs. Sometimes it couldn't tell if the door was closed, other times it would start playing a DVD only to stop a few minutes into it. The DVD actually stopped spinning and it was unable to recognize that there was a DVD inside. The only way to get it to start spinning again was to open and close the door a few times until it finally recognized that the door was closed and there was actually a DVD there. Then, once again, it stopped spinning. While I've been writing this, I have started and it has stopped 3 different DVDs 3 times each.
Even before it stopped working though, I noticed it was LOUD. Whenever it accesses the DVD, there is a mechanical click that comes over the speakers.
I did note that others who reviewed this unit said that the volume isn't loud enough. I have a hard time imagining too many situations where it would be drowned out. It's pretty darned loud. I can't imagine it needing to be any louder. If I had to listen to "Elmo's Song" at any higher volume it would burst my eardrums. But regardless, it's PLENTY loud in my opinion.
The documentation says that the battery will last for 3 hours of continuous play. We got almost 3.5. But there are at least 6 different warnings all over on the unit and in the box that say not to charge the battery for more than 8 hours at at time or it will lose capacity. It is a Polaroid Model BT45, DC7.4V, LI-ION Polymer rechargable battery.
Bottom Line
Don't buy it. The swivel screen is a great idea, but the rest of the unit is cheaply done and unreliable. There are so many other options in this price range. I recommend you keep looking.
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