Philips eXpanium

The CD stops on its own, even when lying flat on a table with no movement. Steer clear of the Philips eXpanium if you want reliable CD playback, and go with a dedicated MP3 player.

All in all, the Philips Expanium is a pretty decent portable MP3 player but it has it's shortcomings. I would say unless you find it cheap, like I did, give this one a miss for now; wait for the next revision.

The Philips Expanium 201 portable MP3 player does more than the previous version. However programming it can be as difficult as bath diarreah. You can rewind and fast forward mp3's.

However i get error messages at times with perfectly good cd's, "er 003" or "er 004" and the cd won't play. Sometimes i get a nf Disc error and it does not play on flat surfaces.

Being a fan of trance and other long MP3 mixes, I really find not being able to fast forward or rewind through songs very annoying with this Philips Expanium MP3 player.

It would be nice if the hold button on the side not only stopped buttons from being pressed, but also the opening of the door for the CD and the volume control.

They should lose the earphones and just provide you with a car kit and remote control instead.

I really like my expanium. I have had it for about a year now and I use it about every other day.

It would be nice to know with the Phillips Expanium MP3 player if there is a maximum size MP3 file that can't be played, or if some MP3 coding will not play on this player.

This has been one of the best things I've aquired lately, I just leave it playing for the whole day with only one CD, which has all my favorite songs. The sound quality is great, although the volume level is not high enough when there is too much noise around, or when you just want to listen to your favorite song loud. I hate that I can't fast-forward songs in MP3 mode.

It also allows for switching on-the-fly between battery power and A/C power, without interrupting playing time.

I also think it should have more features though, since there are some cheaper (but with low reliability) MP3 Cd players that can even read the ID3 tags.

All in all, it is a great player and I can assure you will be happy with it for as long as you own it.

I paid a lot of money for this MP3 player, (compared to buying a portable CD player or a personal stereo) and feel like I should have received more player for my money. Sure, it plays a hell of a lot of MP3 music on one CD, but what else does it do?

If I had bought this 3 years ago, I would have been really impressed, but now my expectations are higher, and this unit didn't quite meet my expectations.

To be impressed, at the money I paid, I would have wanted a metal case, not cheap plastic. a good display with Album/Track information, and some nice useless features like a graphic equaliser, & little flashy lights that jump up & down in time with the music.. some kind of "future proofing" in the form of codec/firmware upgradeability would be good also.

But compared to the other CD/MP3 players on the market, It feels lake a safe and basically good quality choice.

At least the The CD-Based players are inherently future proofed, in that if the MP3 standard changes, Flash memory standards change, etc etc. At least you still have a portable CD player!

This mp3-cd player is excellent. I expected that I would have to read through the manual to get the player working when I opened it; but the player proved otherwise. I simply put in a cd (with app. 125 songs on it) and pressed play-after the player read the disc, which took about 10-20 seconds, it began playing the first MP3. There was absolutely no hassle with this player-it played anything and everything I popped into it-650 mb discs, 800 mb, re-writables, cd audio, the like.

When a cd is put in, there is the aforementioned delay. This is done to organize the files on the disc, so searching becomes a breeze-and does it ever. The delay is not that significant once it begins to play, and you hardly notice it. Anyway, navigating directories is kept at its simplest. Each folder is labeled as "Album 1" or "Album 2" and so on. Going through each folder is as simple as holding down the "forward" button.

The sound quality is just what is expected-excellent. With the exception of the earphones, there is nothing to complain about. Replacing them with another pair should relieve all troubles; the ones supplied just won't stay in place. As for skip protection, which on the player is named "Magic Electronic Skip Protection", it's well-named. Constant shaking for several minutes is required to make this thing shake, even for regular cd-audio discs.

The player even comes with a car adapter, which is easy to set up and use. In fact, the player even looks rather sleek and advanced.

In short, this is a great player that comes with no hassles, is very easy to use (just pop in a cd and hit play!), and sounds great. I have yet to have a problem with the player. It is well worth the money. The one problem can be overlooked, since it is so easily remedied: The earphones.

This has got to be one of the best players out there. It's an mp3 cd player that plays cd-s with mp3s on them, that's 10 full hours of cd-qulity music on one disc, equal to about 10 full cds, about 650 mb/disc. Only true low point was the no ID3 tag support, but I can live without it.