The Bottom Line: This is a great mp3 player unless you're other option is an ipod type. Competitive price, practical features, great battery life.

I was very leary of purchasing an mp3/cd player. The reasons were due to the lack of features I had come accustomed to with regular cd's and cassettes. When DVD players came out with mp3 support I thought I was in heaven. However I found out that the support was rather poor. My biggest gripe, and what eventually stopped me from even using my DVD player(s) to listen to mp3's, was the fact that every time you wanted to listen to your CD, you power on the device and you start at track #1. Dumb! Of course, no component CD player that I knew of had a 'resume' feature either. That's why I used an old RCA portable CD player with my home system - so I could resume. DVD players also lacked in the random features. I would hear the same songs over and over and never hear others. On a cd with 200 songs, you don't want to hear songs over and over anticipating the day you might hear others you like the most. Well, I gave up on the DVD player as an mp3 player and continued to use my laptop for any mp3 needs I might have. Basically only listening to mp3's at work.

I heard a lot of portable had similar problems with mp3's so I just waited. This Sony DNE300 has resolved my concerns. It has everything I wanted. Sure, there's always more features to be had, but this one has enough to keep me happy.

Some mp3s are unreadable. I do not know why. They are all of equal quality and from the same source. It might be the CD media (scratches, dirty, flaw in burning software - K3B).

The reason I bought this thing is because the Sony car player in my wife's car that I bought 10 years ago finally won't play cd's anymore unless you're standing still and the temperature is 90 degrees or warmer. Forget about CD-R's (used to play em). During our Thanksgiving travels in remote (no good radio stations, or at least none that will last you more than 10 miles) locations I got rather bored and nearly fell asleep many times. Then I began to dread the similar travels we would face during Christmas. I couldn't handle that. So I put the Kenwood from my truck in that car and put the factory cassette player back in my truck. I own no cassette's anymore. I spent a lot of time manually recording them onto my PC then converting them to mp3. A LOT OF TIME. Then I destroyed the cassettes. I'm sure the recording industry would argue as to whether this is legal but I'm not going to buy the same songs just because a new technology came out. Plus, a lot of these tapes I bought overseas and you can't buy them anymore, let alone in the United States, as they are in a foreign tongue. But I digress...So I'm using the cassette adapter which is fine since I don't use the truck as much as the car. The Kenwood has an aux input so I can take this baby on our trips in the car if need be.

Important to me:

*Skipping - no problems.
*Resume - right where you left off when you stopped it.
*Equalizer - excellent - not just bass.
*Battery life - Unbelievable (my 1994 RCA would barely get through 1 cd on 2 AA). If bass was on, you might get through 1/2 the CD.
*Shuffle - low morph rate. I haven't heard same song twice yet without hearing all songs.

I would have just bought an ipod type and put ALL my music on one device, but I'd rather use that $200+ on my next laptop. Besides, if I absent-mindedly left it in the car in open view one hectic day, I'd also have to pay the deductable for a smashed window in addition to replacing the ipod. Give the ipods a few more years, I say.