RCA RP2410 Personal CD Player
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- Anti Skip Buffer: 45 sec.
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I can't believe RCA put out this garbage.
Pros
ID3 tag support, good sound, nice looking display with lots of information.
Cons
Short battery life, and basically, it rarely works
Recommended it?
No
The Bottom Line:
RCA rushed this product and produced a piece of junk. While it has great features, the product simply fails in too many ways. I strongly suggest a different player.
I went to the store expecting to buy the Philips Expanium 201, but they were out of them. I saw the RCA player there, and noticed that it had ID3 tag support, which was an added plus. For $120, I thought I'd give it a try. I thought, "It's an RCA, it can't be too bad." I then came here and read these reviews, and thought "Hmmm....I hope these people just had bad luck."
Well, chalk me up to the "bad luck" group, or perhaps the "RCA put out a product that doesn't work" group. Judging from all the negative reviews, I think the second group makes more sense.
First of all, the positives: The RCA 2410 sounds great when it actually works. The sound is crisp, with good range. It handles multiple levels of folders on the MP3 disc, which makes it very useful for organizing MP3s. The Display is clear in broad daylight, and packs in a lot of information. Unfortunately, it doesn't have a backlight. The unit reads ID3 tags, and displays the song title, the artist, the file name, track time, mode, DSP setting, and battery indicator...all at once!
The bad: Rarely do you actually get to use all these features. This is a story of percentages:
50% of the time, when inserting a new disc, the unit will not turn on. The only way to solve the problem is to remove a battery, then reinsert it. Do this until the unit finally decides to start reading the MP3 disc (this is for CDs too...it doesn't even START to read the disc).
Once you get it to actually read the disc, 50% of the time, it reads it incorrectly. I burned a 9 folder, 154 MP3 disc, which I burned to the ISO9660 standard, Disc At Once, and I finalized the disc. There was no where for the player to have trouble with the CD format. Also, half the time, it read the disc just fine, and played the MP3s, and displayed the folders. The other half, it would recognize between 11 and 24 folders (?) and then hang while trying to load the tracks. You'd have to stop the player, then re-start, hoping for a good read the next time.
The battery indicator seems like a good idea, except it doesn't work. I had a full battery meter after about 3-4 hours of use. I turned off the unit and put the hold switch on, so it wouldn't accidentally start. Imagine my surprise when the unit wouldn't turn on AT ALL 20 minutes later. I thought it was just screwing up again, so I tried in vain to try solving the issue like I had previously (remove the batteries, reinsert). Unfortunately, the batteries were dead. Four of them, after only 4 hours of use, and no warning from the battery indicator.
Now...these would be enough to not recommend the player...but wait...THERE'S MORE! Once you got the unit playing, things were usually fine. However, one out of every 6 or 7 songs would simply cut off after a minute of playing. Also, it would not read the ID3 tags on about 25% of the songs. Odd, since every single MP3 on the discs I used were ripped at the same time, with the same program, and all had proper ID3 tags. Luckily, it would still display the filename, so I could at least get the song title.
Overall, the unit rarely worked as advertised. When the unit actually functioned, it was quite good. Unlike some people here, I was unable to make the player skip. It has very good sound quality, a good display (although it really should have a backlight), and a very easy way to navigate the folders on a disc. Unfortunately, it doesn't work. I took mine back yesterday, and I will be getting a TDK Mojo. It's more expensive, but I think it'll be worth it for something that actually works.
Well, chalk me up to the "bad luck" group, or perhaps the "RCA put out a product that doesn't work" group. Judging from all the negative reviews, I think the second group makes more sense.
First of all, the positives: The RCA 2410 sounds great when it actually works. The sound is crisp, with good range. It handles multiple levels of folders on the MP3 disc, which makes it very useful for organizing MP3s. The Display is clear in broad daylight, and packs in a lot of information. Unfortunately, it doesn't have a backlight. The unit reads ID3 tags, and displays the song title, the artist, the file name, track time, mode, DSP setting, and battery indicator...all at once!
The bad: Rarely do you actually get to use all these features. This is a story of percentages:
50% of the time, when inserting a new disc, the unit will not turn on. The only way to solve the problem is to remove a battery, then reinsert it. Do this until the unit finally decides to start reading the MP3 disc (this is for CDs too...it doesn't even START to read the disc).
Once you get it to actually read the disc, 50% of the time, it reads it incorrectly. I burned a 9 folder, 154 MP3 disc, which I burned to the ISO9660 standard, Disc At Once, and I finalized the disc. There was no where for the player to have trouble with the CD format. Also, half the time, it read the disc just fine, and played the MP3s, and displayed the folders. The other half, it would recognize between 11 and 24 folders (?) and then hang while trying to load the tracks. You'd have to stop the player, then re-start, hoping for a good read the next time.
The battery indicator seems like a good idea, except it doesn't work. I had a full battery meter after about 3-4 hours of use. I turned off the unit and put the hold switch on, so it wouldn't accidentally start. Imagine my surprise when the unit wouldn't turn on AT ALL 20 minutes later. I thought it was just screwing up again, so I tried in vain to try solving the issue like I had previously (remove the batteries, reinsert). Unfortunately, the batteries were dead. Four of them, after only 4 hours of use, and no warning from the battery indicator.
Now...these would be enough to not recommend the player...but wait...THERE'S MORE! Once you got the unit playing, things were usually fine. However, one out of every 6 or 7 songs would simply cut off after a minute of playing. Also, it would not read the ID3 tags on about 25% of the songs. Odd, since every single MP3 on the discs I used were ripped at the same time, with the same program, and all had proper ID3 tags. Luckily, it would still display the filename, so I could at least get the song title.
Overall, the unit rarely worked as advertised. When the unit actually functioned, it was quite good. Unlike some people here, I was unable to make the player skip. It has very good sound quality, a good display (although it really should have a backlight), and a very easy way to navigate the folders on a disc. Unfortunately, it doesn't work. I took mine back yesterday, and I will be getting a TDK Mojo. It's more expensive, but I think it'll be worth it for something that actually works.
