Home > Consumer Reviews > Sharp MDMS702 Personal Minidisc Player/Recorder

I got this unit for my birthday, and was blown awaybyit. Almost everything is great about it, but there are flaws: 1: Ifyour trying to listen to it near a tv, it doesn't work because of magnetic fields 2: If you want to plug it into your cigarette lighter in your car, you need to buy an adapter from the company for $45! 3: The battery doesn't have a very long life. It is 6.5 hrs and takes 3 to charge

These bad things don't make me hate the product. I love it because: 1: You can record all music formats onto it- mp3, cd, cassette, record, 8-track, etc. If you want, you can record sounds from your tv or radio! 2: It is very small and easy to use. The remote makes changing tracks easy while your driving, especially at night, the remote has indiglo, like watches 3: You can type in track names. Although people seem to like the jog dial on the 722, I don't think holding down a button until you get the letter you want is such a hassle. 4: If you need to remember something, you can plug your headphones (any, not just the ones that came with it) into the mic jack and record your thoughts. If you follow what the manual says, you should have no problems

After extensive research between a portable MP3 and MD players. I decided to go with the MD format for its non-linear recording (random access like CD's, unlike DAT & cassettes-"linear recording"), titling the disc and track w/ names, very compact size, which also helps in preventing skips, and it's relatively long battery life. After careful consideration, I found that MP3's were too expensive per minute of music. While the price of RAM flash cards are dropping they're no where close to the price of blank MDs. 1 MD-74min($4) + MD player($200)=$220 for 300min or near CD quality, however MP3 player ($140) + 32MB RAM ($80)=$220 for 100min of better than FM stereo quality. Also there's no limit on the number of MDs you can use and archive for your collection.

I've had my 702 for 9 months and counting now and it still works like a charm everytime I use it. The "dreaded" utoc error still hasn't shown up yet and I doubt it will after all this time(hopefully). The main reason I got it was because it was a lot cheaper than any other comparable sony unit. The features on the unit are all you'd expect to find on top of the line portable cd players and more. I especially like the fact you can delete, edit, and move tracks around if you change your mind without rerecording an hours worth of music. Trust me, after doing that with tapes for the past several years, I've wondered how I ever managed without my 702. It also sounds just as good as my car's cd player which is why I don't even bother using the optional cd player I got. Instead of bringing out a binder full of cd's, I just grab my 702 and with 5 md's in my hand, I'm ready to go. It's not as sleek or small as I'd like but it's gotten me through more boring daily morning commutes than I'd care to remember. I only wish there was a radio option on it but I don't think there are too many portable md players that currently have that option. You really can't go wrong with this unit.

I think others have addressed the quality of minidiscs well...the quality is great, and it's a lot cheaper than having memory cards for a MP3 player. Some caveats though...the minidisc players are definitely larger and heavier than MP3 players. But smaller and lighter than CD players. May not be an issue for many people, but I personally love being able to just stick an MP3 player in my pocket, and not even know it's there.

Minidiscs have several really big advantages...they virtually never skip. I've even dropped mine on the ground and it didn't miss a beat. Well-built too...it didn't break even though I've dropped it several times. The ability to add track numbers is great. I often choreograph routines to music and the minidisk player is great for this, I just take the song and split it into a bunch of tracks so I can easily work on one section at a time.

The remote is a real nice feature, this allows you to have the player itself in a backpack or bag, and use the remote on the headphone cord to handle the volume and skip forward or back.

My biggest complaint about this particular player though, is how tedious it is to enter track names in. Of course, this is something you don't even GET with CD players, but if a feature's there, I expect it to work well. The worst thing is that you can't listen to music and enter the track name at the same time. I could live with how long it takes to do, if I didn't have to do it in silence. For that reason alone, I would probably recommend looking at other minidisk players.

I have had the Sharp 702 for 9 months now and have loved it since the day I got it. My main purpose in purchasing it was for live recording. Once I found a good quality, stereo, clip-on micrphone, I was in business. Being a musician it is a perfect way to record yourself and/or band. Just run it through a mixer, or even record it live with the one stereo microphone for a rough edit. Another item of interest for me is taking records and 7 inches onto a higher quality format. Maybe you're wondering why I still buy records, but if you're not MiniDisc is the answer. By puting my records on MiniDisc I can easily listen to them that way, or take them into my computer to burn a CD copy. And the quality is top notch! I've used my MD for recording lectures at school and transfering a variety of audio mediums to digital quality. And it is great for MP3's too. Leave it up to your imagination to find greater possiblities for the Sharp 702. The only reason I give this model a four star rating is because there are better models out there (such as the Sharp 722) for relatively the same cost. They have longer battery life, a jog-dial for easy text intput, and 40-sec. non-skip protection. Given that mine has never skipped, even after being droppped during recording, I imagine it would be pretty difficult to interupt the music with 40 sec. memory. So, go MD. If you don't have the extra $30 to spend for the 722, this model will do you just fine. I hope to enjoy using it for many more years to come.