Fantastic CD player, and with a heat resistant lid no less!

Ah... good ole' Sony! I have one of this breed my self, and it has been nothing less than great. I know that there are a great many newer CD players out there, but this old faithful just keeps on plugging away.

When I have bought portable audio equipment, I have used a very harsh set of rules when choosing.

Must have the ability to travel well. I flew all over the place for years on end, so I needed to have something that would take the knocks of travel and not fall to little worthless pieces. This CD player has endured more than most, and it still functions perfectly.

It must be able to play using a 4.5 volt power adapter. I do not want to have several of these things floating around my suitcase, so I needed to have a CD player that would take what I had. Sony has a thing about being standardized, and it extends to this CD player using the 4.5 volt power plug that fits every other Sony product that I have.

Must be able to play and not skip when shaken. This is a hard thing for CD players in many cases, but this little machine will ride with me in my SUV and not panic when I have some bumps that get in my way. Also... and this is more worthwhile to me... it played no matter how rough the ocean was that my ship got into. Ship? Yes ship... I was a Merchant Sailor for eight years, and no other CD player took the water being rough like this one. In the past I have built contraptions from cardboard and rubberbands that would help to keep other CD players steady (often just wasting time, they still skipped!), but I could leave this one on my desk (well, velcroed down so that it would not skate to freedom if we took a good roll) and it would do just fine, no matter what was happening.

Must like to ride in SUV's... I am too cheap to buy a whole new sytem for my Rodeo, so I just patch in my CD player, or Mini Disk, and hit the road. Now this CD player comes ready for that lifestyle, it has a car power adapter, and tape deck patch. Not to mention a really neat little plastic spiral thingy that allows you to bind your cables into one neat, and not in your way package. One other feature that really helps is this... a heat resistant lid! So during the summer, if you leave this in your vehicle, it most likely will not turn into a puddle of molten plastic while you are in the mall. A nice feature if you ask me!

Battery life... this is a great debate for me, I want it to have a good battery life, but I hardly ever use battery power for very long. At least this has a good life if you have standard AA's in it. But look!!!! That is not the best way to go.... Ni-Cad's... this is what you really want to have. Not only do you not have to go buying new AA"s all the time, this CD player has a built in charger as well. Just plug it into the wall adapter that you have, and it will charge the Ni-Cad's to full power after you have hit the "Stop" button twice. Never fear, it will not allow you to charge the battery if it is not a Ni-Cad or Ni-MH version, but for this to work, you must have the Sony battery pack. The battery pack is nothing more than a clamp that holds the Ni-cad AA's together, but the most important feature of this clamp is that it presses a small switch in the battery space that will allow the built in charging unit to function. This is well worth the extra few buck's.

Here is a small list of the other features found in this sturdy little unit... All the shuffle and repeat modes, pause, continue (if you stop it, it will hold the posistion you stopped on, and continue playing from there when you start it again. If you like, this function can be disabled by use of a switch inside the lid area), Mega Bass... this is great with headphones as it allows you to increase the amount if needed, however it will only work from the headphone jack, if you use the out jack on the rear of the unit this feature will not work. Battery level indicator. The door to the battery space is hinged, and will not come off unless broken, so you will not lose the thing. The fact that it has a 10 second anti-shock buffer is great (you might get more, but you will pay a whole lot more for it), but battery users beware, this is a power hungry feature!

This CD player is about average for size and weight, the only thing I dislike is that it has a plastic case. I would have rather had it in magnesium, but hey, it has done just fine in spite of that!

All in all, I feel that whatever you might pay to get this little unit now, would be money well spent. I have taken this CD player all over the world, dropped it a time or two, dragged it all over the U.S.A. in my Rodeo, and still it plays! I am nothing but happy with it, and it is a strong addition to my stable of Sony portable audio equipment.