RCA RP2410 Personal CD Player

I got this CD-MP3 player for Christmas 2001, and have been using it on and off since. I was initially very excited, almost gave away my Sony CD player thinking that RCA RP2410 was all I'd need.

Boy was I wrong! Ever had to reboot a CD player? But let's take it step by step.

Construction/Feel

The unit seems to be overall of decent construction quality, but not what I would call a solid feel. The open button is located at the front of the player and slides to open, instead of pressing. If you throw the player in a bag or carry it in your pocket, you risk accidentally opening it. However, it's not a risk you should be concerned about because you won't be carrying this player anywhere.

Control buttons on the unit are too rigid. They require too much effort to press, and you feel the "click" before the button actually registers. So often what you think was a press wasn't. Annoying.

Sound

This unit has good frequency response. I haven't noticed any gross exaggeration of some frequencies, and while I'm sure that there are imperfections, the unit overall has good quality sound.

However, it's noisy. As soon as it turns on and starts searching for CDs, you can hear the unit's noise. It persists until you turn off the unit. I get used to it, but I notice it all the time when I start using the unit.

Selecting files, tracks

The multiline display is nice in that it shows quite a good deal of information. The player lets you navigate your directory structure and choose a directory or a file to play. However, it only shows first couple of words of all titles (well, it's a character limit), and does not let you scroll to the right and doesn't hint in any way as to what the rest of the file or the directory name is. This can be annoying for those cases where you have many folders of that begin with a similar name--choosing directories becomes guesswork.

Overall, I'm rather fine with the player's abilities in selecting tunes for play.

The fast forward and rewind functions are way too slow. There's no intelligent "speed up" as you keep holding the button, so the it will take you 3 minutes to get through 30 minutes worth of material on an MP3. This makes resuming long live recording MP3s hell.

The volume control on the player has too small of a range. It doesn't get loud enough and only becomes sufficiently quiet at the very lower settings. So pretty much you have to hope that it's "default volume" is what you want. If you need to turn it up higher because you're listening to a quiet song in a loud subway, you're out of luck.

Reliability

LCD display quit working me about 6 months after use. I haven't had the chance to contact the manufacturer for warranty service yet.

The player has great trouble reading a lot of CD-Rs that work fine pretty much everywhere else. When it fails to read an MP3, it may skip over the whole song or skip really long parts of it. It may even skip over the entire song folder. It may just freeze trying to read the CD. Worst case it will freeze reading and won't respond to any controls, but instead will pretty much "hang."

When the player hangs/freezes "dead", it keeps spinning the CD. It doesn't respond to key presses, nor does it respond to it being opened. You can open the player and see the CD turning. The only way to get the player back into service is to deprive it of its power supply and then reinstate it. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, the only way to knock the player back on earth is to reboot it! I managed to learn this trick where I didn't even have to take out the batteries fully--I just opened the battery compartment and pulled one of the batteries to the side to interrupt the power supply.

The player has trouble reading CDs all over the place. One of the worst places is when the player is searching the CD for MP3s (after you put in a CD and start the player). It tends to freeze (usually "hard freeze", requiring a reboot) while reading the directory structure, and, short of replacing the CD, the best you can do is to keep rebooting and starting the player. Eventually it will get through reading the directory structure. But you may be too peeved off to enjoy your music at the time.

Another "fun" thing that this player does when it has trouble reading CDs (this happens with audio CDs) is it keeps stuttering on section of a CD. (Unless you're listening to Fatboy Slim, you'll notice it.)

Also, the player does not like audio CDs with no-gap tracks (such as live performance CDs)--it skips the ends of tracks and, to add insult to injury, leaves an audible half-second gap between tracks.

It also semi-randomly seems to skip ends (like last 3 seconds) of some audio CD songs, even if they have the normal 2 second gap.

Portability

A few weeks after I got the player I took it for a portability test drive. I often travelled into Manhattan via the bus, subway and walking. My Sony CD ESP^2 player has successfully survived all the vibrations, jostling and shaking that takes place on these trips, but the RP2410 began skipping a minute after I set my foot outside the house.

This player is very sensitive to shaking and vibrations, and if it doesn't hang while playing or just stop the play back, it will do its best to skip over minutes of songs.

I managed to get incredibly P.O.-ed at this player on certain trips, just because the damn thing wouldn't play anything reliably for more than half a minute or a minute.

What now?

Well, now right now I'm enjoying an audio CD playing out of this RP2410 sitting on my office desk, and showing nothing on the LCD screen.

It's sitting on the desk because that's the only place where it can remotely reliably play CDs (I'm afraid to take it in a car!), and it's playing audio CDs, because it keeps skipping over so many parts of my MP3 CDs.

As much as I don't like using the word, "sucks" sums up the conclusion about this player.

Update

The player just "died": not responding to any key presses (can't turn on the unit) and LCD screen does not show anything.

So much for a unit that has undergone 6 months of light use!