Home > Consumer Reviews > Panasonic DVD-L50 Portable DVD Player

I admit I am a bit of a gadget lover, but that aside, I thoroughly enjoy my DVD-50 Player, and use it all of the time.

ONE: The screen. Although the screen is small, it is bright enough to view comfortably in just about any indoor setting, and the swivel is such that it is easy to adjust to just about any viewing angle. The pixel quality is equal that of many high-end laptop computers, and it offers an acceptable viewing size for an average 2 hour film.

TWO: The controls. The mini-remote control is functionally complete, but a bit difficult to use in poor light. Perhaps back-lighting or glow-in-the-dark buttons would have been a good addition. However, the size of the remote is perfect as I can slip it in my travel bag with the player, and it takes up minimum room. It is not much larger then a credit card. While in hotels, I use it quite a bit and feel that the size and functionality is exceptional.

THREE: Is a laptop better? Often, a comparison is made between this unit and a laptop computer with DVD. However, if you already have a laptop which has sub-standard DVD support and you do not wish to go out and get a new one, this unit is your best choice. If you have $3000 to burn, then perhaps a high end laptop with DVD support is the way to go, but then you have a large laptop to deal with instead of the nicely compact DVD-50.

FOUR: A secondary DVD player. One of the greatest uses I have found for this marvel is to simply grab it, run over to a friend's or relative's house, and plug it in! It is always a hit to hook it up to another's TV and offer DVD to the "un-enlightened". Also, I can move the unit around the house and connect it easily and quickly to TVs that don't have DVD drives hooked up to them.

FIVE: Sound. This is probably the weakest area of the unit, but you really can't blame the unit too much because the sound problem is really due to the small size of the unit. Essentially there is no BASS. The speakers tend to sound like just the tweeters from a home audio system so the sound is very high and "tin-ey" sounding. With headphones though, the sound is quite acceptable.

SUMMARY: I enjoy this unit and use it almost daily. It is the smallest unit I found and offers the greatest bang-for-the-buck, especially since the recent price drop.

I bought this unit a little over two weeks ago, and have used it extensively. Here's what I've found. Everything good that's been said about this gadget is true, and out of everything bad, only one statement is true. The bottom does get hot. Not overly so, but it is just something to watch out for when watching very long movies. But think about it, are you really going to hold it in your hand for 3 hours? No. Overall, I recommend this to anyone who can afford it. One last thing though, to those of you who don't know, there are actually five different palm sized units on the market, the DVD L-10, DVD L-50 (both by Panasonic), the PDV-LC10 (by Pioneer), the PBD-V30 (by Sony), and the DV-L70U (by Sharp). I have had the opportunity to see ALL of these DVD players in action, and the L-50 blows them all away, it's cheaper, sleeker, smaller, and easier to use then the other players. This one is a great buy!

I see all the negative reviews here in which people say you should get a laptop with a DVD drive instead, but I completely disagree. The laptop is heavier, more expensive, sucks up battery life faster, and isn't as readily connected to various pieces of audio-visual equipment in your home. I bought this unit so I could have the best of both worlds: I keep it hooked up to my home theater system on a day to day basis, then unplug it and take it on the road with me for long car trips and flights. Its value cannot be exaggerated when you're looking for a means of keeping a four-year-old happy and quiet while buckled into a seat for two or more hours. Also, it's perfect for family cabin and timeshare trips since you can bring a whole library of movies and plug the unit into virtually any TV once you get there. And if there's no TV just use the flip-up screen. About that screen---I've found that my movie watching experience is different when using it, and in fact I feel MORE "pulled in" than when watching on my bigscreen TV. Finally, regarding the speakers on the unit: if you use headphones instead of the speakers, the dolby surround effect will amaze you. I don't know how they did it, but it's just like being in the theater.

I ordinarily wouldn't consider myself to be a gadget freak, but knowing I had an 8 hour flight to Hawaii coming up, I decided to buy this as a birthday present for myself. All I can say is "wow". This is hands down the greatest electronic gadget I've ever owned.

Now that I've had the unit a few months, I thought I would share my thoughts. First, although a number of people have complained about overheating (and it does get hot), I have watched nearly 100 DVDs and not had a single problem. The battery life is adequate (3 hours as advertised) which is fine for just about everything. However, I would definitely recommend getting a second battery ($150). For one, this is nice on long trips. More importantly however, it takes nearly 6 hours to recharge the battery--making it impossible to simply jack into an outlet during a layover and get a fresh charge (sigh). Finally, in comparing this to a laptop computer, I find that the display on the L50 is much brighter and crisper than that on my laptop (so crisp in fact, that if you look closely, you can sometimes see slight artifacts left by movie special effects such as wire removal in action shots). Also, there's no way I would be able to use my laptop and eat an in-flight meal at the same time (something that is easy with the L50).

My only complaints with the unit are the long battery recharge time (see above) and the fact that it is sometimes difficult to get enough headphone volume on noisy flights. I'm not sure if this is really a problem with the L50--movies seem to have a lot more dynamic variation than a music CD (and I suspect that listening to classical music on my discman would be equally difficult in this environment).

The only other minor gripe (which is not related to the L50 specifically ) is that non-anamorphic DVD's look absolutely terrible on the 16x9 widescreen. This is because a non-anamorphic widescreen disc shows up as a small letterbox inside a 4x3 square in the middle of the display (utilizing only a little more than 50% of the available display space). Although it is possible to blow this up to fill up the entire screen, the resulting image looks fairly pixelated due to the lower source resolution. The bottom line: make sure that you look for discs that are labeled as "anamorphic" or "enhanced for wide screen TV." Most new releases fall into this category although a few studios (such as Disney) still haven't gotten the point.

Overall, great unit. I love it.

This little DVD player is the best possible thing one could have. It fits perfectly anywhere you want it and fits into most overhead storage compartments. There are several things that make this an excellent buy though.

First of all, the quality of the picture is outstounding. This is almost as good as HDTV (High Definition Television) because you have a crystal clear picture projected onto an LCD (Liquid Crystal Display) screen. Secondly, when it is output to a TV, the picture is just as good as any other DVD player, but the bonus there is that this device is extremely small, comapred to those large and bulky DVD players (sure they cost less, but you can't take them on a seven hour flight from here to England.).

There is also the controls and output. The controls on this DVD Player are quite easy to use. Without looking at the instruction manual, I was able to determain what a majority of the buttons did. The menus are quite accessible and manueverable due to a tiny "joystick" that allows you to swivel and pick your option. However, there are also output controls as well. The device uses fiber-optic cables which therefore means that it can be connected directly to a TV using the three wires (two sound, red and white, and video, yellow). When this is hooked up to a TV, the picture and sound quality is unbelievable.

Then the ironic question must be asked "why not just use my DVD player on the computer"? Well, of course if you have a laptop the quality is fine, and of course, you can manage your budget while watching a movie, put there are some good things to having a DVD player as well. If your want to play a DVD movie for your family, wouldn't you rather have it on a TV screen than on a small LCD screen? Of course, if you're on an airplane and want to watch it there, you can't exactly display it on the TVs there. Thus, I can only say that one is not better than the other.

In conclusion, I can only say that this DVD player is quite ideal because it is compact, picture-perfect, and can add whole lots of fun to your life.