Home > Consumer Reviews > Sony DES51 Sport Discman Portable CD Player (Yellow)

I am ashamed to admit it, but I actually bought two of these. My first one suffered a small drop onto carpet, after which the LCD display, then the entire player quit working. Although I thought that this was supposed to be a very rugged player, I felt that perhaps that was too much of a jolt, even for this player. Assuming that the mistake was mine, I bought another one. The new one was never dropped, never jostled, I even kept it unnecessarily dry. However, after only a few months... same story: LCD display goes first, then the entire player.

This is what happens: One day, you put in a CD, it will not read it for about 15 seconds. Once it finally recognizes the CD, you push play. It begins to play, then pauses. You cannot unpause, so you try to skip a track. This does not work either. You look at the LCD display to see what track you are on, and you see this: |]_/
...... what is THAT? All of a sudden, you see the track number, then, with out you touching anything, the volume turns itsself ALL THE WAY UP AS LOUD AS IT WILL GO!!! You frantically try to turn it down, but the buttons have quit working. Eventually, you are able to turn down the volume (without knowing where it is set to because the LCD is now dead again), but the volume keeps going lower and lower even after your fingers are no longer on the player. Now you can hear nothing. If this all began when you had the button-lock feature on, you are locked out from adjusting anything at all until it is unlocked. If the buttons are not registering any input, that may never happen.

Both of my players followed this same exact pattern: LCD display stops working, buttons become quirky, buttons act of their own free will, CDs are no longer recognized by player, player becomes a bee-colored paperweight.

Sony has made some wonderful products, but this is not one of them. The amount of energy that went into making this a durable player that could withstand anything from the outside was not enough to prevent any glitches would arise from the inside.

I wish that some of the other high-end CD walkmans that Sony makes would feature some of the weather-proofing and locking case features that this model has, but I can do without them if it means owning a CD walkman that does what it should do, that is: play CDs.

PROS: Very weather-resistant, button-lock (so that you can't accidentally skip a track by touching a button), sturdy casing.

CONS: Poor workmanship on inner electronics, poor quality headphones do more to detract from bass features than otherwise. Some gliches are acceptable with any product, as perfection is so hard to attain, but the failures that this player went through could have damaged my hearing, and temporarliy destroyed my sanity.

SYNOPSIS: If this were a car, it would have been recalled. If it were a shipment of Aspirin, there would be a news alert about it.

I have been very satisfied with this product since I bought it a year ago. It is definitely more rugged than most portable CD players, and it does survive encounters with dirt and splashes. The anti-skip mechanism works as advertised, for the most part. It works pretty well for low impact activity, like bike riding and jogging. The CD will still skip during very jarring activity, though. That's probably unavoidable.

The sound quality is very good, the headphones are comfortable and the controls are simple to use. One minor complaint: the LCD display can be difficult to read, and it has started to give out. Also, this is a pretty pricey CD player. I haven't tried the "Sports" versions of Panasonic or Aiwa, so I don't know whether it's worth it to spend the extra money on this model.

I did a lot of research on portable CD players before purchasing my sony sport discman. I was convinced that the sony sport was the most durable and reliable CD player on the market. It did not take me long to realize that this was not the case. The anti-skip protection was worthless after about two months. After three months, the LCD display died and after nine months, the CD player quit playing altogether. This is my third Sony discman to live a very short and unreliable life. I have also found that their customer service is lacking. I have learned my lesson. I will not purchase another Sony discman.

I've never owned such an awful portable CD player. In the first five months I took it jogging every day and it would skip every other day (jogging over fairly even ground). Also it is not water resistent as advertised. I took a jog in a very light shower with it. Not more than 20 drops got on the CD player and now the audio jack is dead and Sony wants $70 minimum for the repair.

I bought this player for my daughter in Feb. of 2000. it broke down twice in six months. The second time I had to send it back I tried to get the company to replace the lemon but all they did was send me a bill. The parts that were repaired had to be made because of lousey workmanship. I would not recomend this player to anyone, especialy at the price they charge for it.