Sony Walkman D-CJ506CK Personal CD Player
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Similar in Portable CD Players
- CD-R/CD-RW Playback: CD-R/CD-RW
- Bass Boost: With Bass Boost
- Supported Formats: MP3
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It Serves Its Purpose - But Nothing More
Pros
Battery life, sleek design, shock protection, complete car kit
Cons
No radio support, slow spin-up times, lack of extra features
Recommended it?
No
The Bottom Line:
While the product is high-quality, it has too few extra bells and whistles to make up for its $120 price-tag (unless you drive a car 24/7).
Disclaimer: This is my first MP3/CD-related product that I have purchased.
As of August 2002, Sony has released four portable MP3/CD players as part of their ever-expanding Walkman series.
Sports: D-CS901 ($149.95)
Standard: D-CJ01 ($129.95)
Car Use: D-CJ506CK ($119.95)
Basic: D-CJ500 ($99.95)
So, this model is the second-cheapest, but it is still rather high compared to others currently in the market. Most other brands sell their MP3/CD products at or below $100.
With that in mind, I chose the D-CJ506CK for two reasons - First, it's by Sony. They usually do sell their products at a premium while providing quality - as can be seen by their Playstation 2, Vaio, and their audio equipment. Second, they advertise 24 hours of battery life. I figured that would cover the costs compared to other models' 10 hours, in the long run.
So, did Sony deliver a top-notch MP3/CD player? To put it bluntly: barely.
-- Aesthetics
Upon first glance, this model is reminiscent of the first-generation Discman, with its sleek black design. It is very simplistic, with no awkward shapes or designs. The LED backlight as well as the logo is red, which is a change from other players.
The tray cover opens and closes rather nicely; however it tends to jiggle due to the way it is designed.
-- Playback
The Walkman starts up right after closing the tray cover and scans for tracks/songs. It's done in order to speed up loading time during actual use, but this is where I encountered my first problem.
With discs that were rather scratched up, particularly the MP3-CDs, it took a great deal of scanning before it was ready to play; and when the disc is damaged, it is spun at a rather high rate, which is rather concerning. Note that these damaged discs did fine in a CD-ROM.
The D-CJ506CK has five main playback buttons: stop, rewind, forward/play, and two buttons for switching through MP3 folders. Here, the obvious question is: where's the pause button?
What Sony did was to combine it with the stop button. Whenever play is pressed after stopping, it resumes playback at the point where it left off. This is probably to conserve battery life, but it is extremely annoying, as it means longer spin-up/wait times.
Battery life is apparently Sony's selling point with their players. And they've placed several techniques in order to maintain the 24-hour battery life. First is the pause/stop mentioned above; second is the amount of spin-downs it does. Once finished loading the song into memory (especially MP3s), it usually stops spinning until the next song. This means longer loading times. This can be a true nuisance when looking through songs on an MP3-CD. Finally, they turn off the LCD backlight periodically.
NOTE: All the features mentioned above are disabled when using an AC power adapter.
-- Sound Quality
The Walkman comes with standard MDR-027 headphones which they call "Micro-Digital Receivers". Very simple headphones, and very simple sound. I also connected them to Creative Inspire 5300 surround speakers, and quality did improve.
As with most other Sony audio products, the D-CJ506CK features a bass boost. They use a two-level system, where level 2 boosts greater than level 1. I noticed some heavy distortion with level 2 on some songs, but it should be fine with most other tracks.
-- Shock Protection
The D-CJ506CK has G-Protection technology, which supposedly prevents skipping better than their ESP technology. In order to increase battery life (yet again), they have a two-level system - level 2 for heavy exercise. This is actually a good idea.
-- Display/Information
The 2-line, 10-character LCD screen with a red backlight displays battery life, track info, among others. Unfortunately the size is too small for any quick data.
The D-CJ506CK supports CD-Text for regular CDs and ID3v1.1 for MP3-CDs. This may be a minor nitpick, but I wished it supported ID3v2. CD-Text is also clunky - it only displays the title.
-- Other Features
This product is severely lacking in terms of features. There is no WMA support, which isn't too much of an issue; however, one major issue is the lack of any AM/FM support. Very annoying at times.
This player is advertised as "One for the Road", and their car kit is fully equipped. It comes with a 4.5V power adapter, a car battery plug, and a CD-to-cassette converter.
-- Summary
The D-CJ506CK CD/MP3 player is very bare-bone in terms of features; they only back it up with the car kit. Sure, the quality seems good enough; but for those planning to use it more often outside of the car than in, I recommend either the cheaper, basic model (D-CJ500), or the higher-end sports model (D-CS901), and purchase the car kit as an accessory.
As of August 2002, Sony has released four portable MP3/CD players as part of their ever-expanding Walkman series.
Sports: D-CS901 ($149.95)
Standard: D-CJ01 ($129.95)
Car Use: D-CJ506CK ($119.95)
Basic: D-CJ500 ($99.95)
So, this model is the second-cheapest, but it is still rather high compared to others currently in the market. Most other brands sell their MP3/CD products at or below $100.
With that in mind, I chose the D-CJ506CK for two reasons - First, it's by Sony. They usually do sell their products at a premium while providing quality - as can be seen by their Playstation 2, Vaio, and their audio equipment. Second, they advertise 24 hours of battery life. I figured that would cover the costs compared to other models' 10 hours, in the long run.
So, did Sony deliver a top-notch MP3/CD player? To put it bluntly: barely.
-- Aesthetics
Upon first glance, this model is reminiscent of the first-generation Discman, with its sleek black design. It is very simplistic, with no awkward shapes or designs. The LED backlight as well as the logo is red, which is a change from other players.
The tray cover opens and closes rather nicely; however it tends to jiggle due to the way it is designed.
-- Playback
The Walkman starts up right after closing the tray cover and scans for tracks/songs. It's done in order to speed up loading time during actual use, but this is where I encountered my first problem.
With discs that were rather scratched up, particularly the MP3-CDs, it took a great deal of scanning before it was ready to play; and when the disc is damaged, it is spun at a rather high rate, which is rather concerning. Note that these damaged discs did fine in a CD-ROM.
The D-CJ506CK has five main playback buttons: stop, rewind, forward/play, and two buttons for switching through MP3 folders. Here, the obvious question is: where's the pause button?
What Sony did was to combine it with the stop button. Whenever play is pressed after stopping, it resumes playback at the point where it left off. This is probably to conserve battery life, but it is extremely annoying, as it means longer spin-up/wait times.
Battery life is apparently Sony's selling point with their players. And they've placed several techniques in order to maintain the 24-hour battery life. First is the pause/stop mentioned above; second is the amount of spin-downs it does. Once finished loading the song into memory (especially MP3s), it usually stops spinning until the next song. This means longer loading times. This can be a true nuisance when looking through songs on an MP3-CD. Finally, they turn off the LCD backlight periodically.
NOTE: All the features mentioned above are disabled when using an AC power adapter.
-- Sound Quality
The Walkman comes with standard MDR-027 headphones which they call "Micro-Digital Receivers". Very simple headphones, and very simple sound. I also connected them to Creative Inspire 5300 surround speakers, and quality did improve.
As with most other Sony audio products, the D-CJ506CK features a bass boost. They use a two-level system, where level 2 boosts greater than level 1. I noticed some heavy distortion with level 2 on some songs, but it should be fine with most other tracks.
-- Shock Protection
The D-CJ506CK has G-Protection technology, which supposedly prevents skipping better than their ESP technology. In order to increase battery life (yet again), they have a two-level system - level 2 for heavy exercise. This is actually a good idea.
-- Display/Information
The 2-line, 10-character LCD screen with a red backlight displays battery life, track info, among others. Unfortunately the size is too small for any quick data.
The D-CJ506CK supports CD-Text for regular CDs and ID3v1.1 for MP3-CDs. This may be a minor nitpick, but I wished it supported ID3v2. CD-Text is also clunky - it only displays the title.
-- Other Features
This product is severely lacking in terms of features. There is no WMA support, which isn't too much of an issue; however, one major issue is the lack of any AM/FM support. Very annoying at times.
This player is advertised as "One for the Road", and their car kit is fully equipped. It comes with a 4.5V power adapter, a car battery plug, and a CD-to-cassette converter.
-- Summary
The D-CJ506CK CD/MP3 player is very bare-bone in terms of features; they only back it up with the car kit. Sure, the quality seems good enough; but for those planning to use it more often outside of the car than in, I recommend either the cheaper, basic model (D-CJ500), or the higher-end sports model (D-CS901), and purchase the car kit as an accessory.
