Sharp MD-MS702 Personal MiniDisc Player

The Sharp MiniDisc gives you great audio quality and makes it easy to record MP3s by using digital or analogue recording. Please note that MP3s are not stored as MP3s on your MiniDisc, but as ordinary audio tracks. A MiniDisc records in real-time, so it's slower than MP3-based devices. If you want to make digital copies of your MP3s, a soundcard with digital out and a cable to connect the two are required. Arranging tracks and naming them is a bit of a bother when recording MiniDiscs, but you can change the track names/order after recording. Skip-protection is not perfect, but it's good enough for most uses. Jogging or biking with a MiniDisc is not a problem.

The MiniDisc's price is significantly lower than the cost of the newer MP3 players which include 64 MB of RAM.

The best feature about the Sharp is the media cost-- while 64 minutes of high quality music will cost you about $100 on a portable MP3 player, the 74 minute recordable MiniDiscs are easily available for just $2.50 apiece. I was able to easily set up a playlist in WinAmp and stream approx. 19 tracks from my PC to my Sharp, which automatically detects the start and finish of each track.