Buy something else if you run/jog

I thought I was lucky when I got this CD player for free from a convention. I had previously used a several-year old Sony discman when I went to the gym and had rarely had any problems with it. I ended up with a doorstop, it's that useless if you are a runner.

The unit's design is sleek and small, and it's probably about as small as a portable CD player will get, which is good. Unfortunately beyond that, I found the buttons and controls on the unit difficult to find, not intuitively placed, and really require a hard "push" to make them work. All of this together makes the unit extremely difficult to operate, particularly when you're running.

I typically run on a treadmill in the gym, and found that if I leave th PSA-CD12 in the CD player holder on the treadmill, it skips constantly after a few minutes of running. I have to hold it in my hand (which is a serious drag) in order for it not to skip. Even when I'm switching hands sometimes it'll start skipping.

The unit does have all of the standard features you would expect from a portable CD player, but nothing really stands out. Bass/treble boost, battery saver (which appears to make no difference), the anti-skip component (which really makes no difference), shuffle, etc., are all included. The unit does play MP3 CDs as well as regular CDs, and can play CD-Rs and CD-RWs (although I haven't tried the latter).

It does actually sound pretty decent, but nothing better than any other portable CD player that I've used. The bass/treble optimization does make everything sound a little bit better, but again, this isn't a unique feature and you can find it on practically any other decent portable CD player out there.

The PSA-CD12 devours batteries. Whereas my old Discman would literally go for almost 20 hours on a pair of AA batteries, this unit kills a pair of batteries in around 3 hours. If the much-vaunted anti-skip mechanism actually worked, I might be more willing to forgive the extra battery usage, but since it doesn't, then I'm not sure what is eating up the batteries.

The headphones that come with the unit are also very poorly designed. They come in two parts, the first is the headphones themselves, which you wear around the back of your head (and are fairly uncomfortable). The cord is also extremely short, making this piece useless without the second piece. Which is a wired remote control that let's you control the volume, skip forwards/backwards and see the song that is playing (if playing an MP3 CD). However, this component also comes with a whole slew of little magnets that are meant to be used to attach the whole contraption to your shirt. Unfortunately, the one time I tried, it took about 5 minutes to try to get everything situated and then when I started running, I realized it was pretty uncomfortable anyway (the whole headphone set probably weighs almost as much as the CD player, not very convenient).

It appears that Phillips was more concerned with the marketing plan for this unit (it's got a Nike logo on it, so it's "geared" for athletes), than actually making it useful. As someone who is a pretty casual runner, I can't imagine how poorly it would perform for someone who is a really hardcore runner.

I just ordered an ipod, so that will be the end of this terrible unit.