Sony Walkman D-EJ815 Personal CD Player

After my friend took my old Sony CD player with him to college, I was in the market for a new one. I saw that Sony has since came out with their CD Walkman series, and I decided to try one of them out. I got the D-EJ815 because it was much less expensive than the 915, and it looked almost basically the same. So, after having used it for a few days, there are a couple things I've noticed.

As far as style, it's great. It is very thin, the silver color on it is nice, and the LCD screen is cool - when looked at normally, and in the light, the back is a faint blue/purple and the text is a dark blue... but with the backlight on, in the dark, the back of the screen is a darker blue color and the text is a bright blue. Kinda hard to explain, but it looks very nice. One thing I'm not exactly happy with, in a way, is that the volume control is digital - you use an up and down button instead of a dial. This can be nice, but you take out the batteries, and next time you play something you have to push it all the way back up. I guess it's just a personal preference though.

The sound quality is typical of a Sony CD player - not too bad, but definitely not top of the line. It's good for a portable player but it does sound a little canned, especially the bass. And, the bass boost feature (it has a level 1 and level 2 bass boost), in my opinion, seem to lessen the quality of the music at higher volumes, where I listen to it most. It's funny, but with heavy bass stuff like Eminem, it sounds MUCH worse with bass boost on. The base doesn't get more distorted, it seems like everything quiets a little bit to keep it from sounds really scratchy. Listening to it with the bass boost doesn't sound half bad, however.

I liked all the accessories the player came with - the extra battery case, the mini handheld clip-on player controller, the quasi-leather hand carrier thing, and rechargable batteries (although i went to RadioShack and got some nickel metal hydride batteries, instead of the nickel cadiums that they supplied). Sure, you can get the 76 hours of playing time - if you use 4 alkalines (two in the player, two in the battery pack). Just two NiMH's yields 23 hours, which still isn't bad at all for a portable player. The batteries can conveniently be charged while they're in the player, so you can keep everything in one place. The only accessory I didn't like were the headphones - they pretty much suck, but luckily I had some more decent Aiwa headphones from before that improved the sound quality a lot. I'd recommend this player to anybody who isn't your typical super audiophile, since everything is great except for the sound quality (which still isn't BAD).

Oh, and as a final note, Sony has at last learned how to make a CD player not skip. Try as I might, I can't get the thing to skip, even if I rotate it left and right real fast, which just kills other CD players. This isn't an "extra" feature that eats up battery life like in other players - it's always on, and is taken into account when factoring in the 23 or 76 hour battery life (for example).

ADDENDUM: Okay, I *have* been able to get it to skip. However, it took an unnatural amount of shaking and banging to get it to do so; I had to quickly rotate it, um, around the y-axis (which is murder on non-skip protected players), for about two minutes before I'd hear it skip. This player would NEVER skip under normal stressful situations, like jogging, or a really bumpy car ride though.