Philips EXP103 eXpanium Portable MP3-CD Player with 45-Second Anti-Skip and Car Kit
See it at Amazon.com for $149.99Average Customer Rating
(4.0 out of 5)
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(5 out of 5)So far, in early 2001, best of breed. The one to get.
This eXpanium is the best, I think, of the MP3/CD players. It does not display text, but does a CD player? And I am not personally interested in short, one line text displays like the Rio Volt anyway. When they come out with a text SCREEN like display that displays multiple lines of data, so you can search through folders, then I will upgrade.
The eXpanium worked flawlessly out the box. Other's I have tried did NOT, and were returned. I kept the eXpanium! I think it is very reliable. It has never failed to read any brand of CDR. It does read CDRW, but I have never tried one. And it won't skip! Even in MP3 mode! The ESP skip protection is switchable for CD, but always on in MP3.
Strong Points: No skipping. Good battery life. Handles folders well (some brands don't). Has good bass boost. HAS A RESUME FEATURE!!! With RESUME turned on, it will remember the last track played, even if you remove CD or the batteries go dead! Love that feature! Good feature, if you have 150 songs on a CDR, and the battery dies at #75, and you were not watching what track you were playing! The RESUME switch has three positions: OFF/RESUME/HOLD. HOLD turns off buttons, you don't inadvertantly press one. You can program it easily. You can scan through tracks or folders easily. Has LINE OUT connection. Analog/dial type volume control. Has many modes, like repeat and shuffle. Comes with AC adapter, DC CAR adapter, cassette deck adapter. Sound quality is very good. Better than my other CD players (portables). Good quality construction. Good manual (some players come with manuals that look like photocopies). AND THE WARRANTY IS A ONE YEAR EXCHANGE, NOT FIX WARRANTY. The warranty says they will REPLACE the unit if it has a problem the first year, and take it to dealer or Philips. How many portable electronics items do you know that do that?????
Ok, now the downsides......
Display is dim, and basically, slightly yech. Hard to see in dimmer light, or if you have eye problems. The output power to the headphones (volume) is not impressive. It is barely adequate..I use max volume or near to it sometimes. So if you want to destroy your hearing with loud volumes, this may be a limitation. The battery compartment cover is a very tight fit over the batteries, and sometimes you have to work it a bit to snap completely shut. It will "fast forward" within a track in CD mode, but NOT in MP3 mode. If you press the ">>"/fast-forward button while playing an MP3 CD, and hold it down, it will just jump folders.
Out of curiosity, I connected the eXpanium to my $6000 stereo via the LINE OUT of the unit. I did not expect glorious sound better than my home components! I wanted to see if the sound was "nasty", like some devices that use audio compression are, especially at low bit rates. The lower the bit rate, the smaller the mp3 file, and more you can fit on a CD or MP3 device. But the lower the bitrate, the worse the sound, and it can be nasty in some cases. I use freeware CDex encoder/ripper program, with the "LAME" (yeah, that's the name) encoder option, set to 256 kbps. Sounds fine on my stereo. No nasties at all. 192kbps was also great for my classical music. Very good for what the eXpanium is. For rock and roll and many other types of music you can do fine at 128kbps, or in some cases as low as 80kbps. You can really store a LOT of songs on a CD with the low bit rates. At 256kbps I can get about 6 albums on a MP3/CD disc.
In summary. I love the eXpanium. The only other contender for me was the RIO VOLT. I had my reasons why I chose the eXpanium, even though they are about the same price. I am 51 and have been an audio enthusiast for many years, and do have a background in electronics. My choice, the Philips.
(4 out of 5)Tricks for MP3 file names
I enjoy the Expanium, but was a bit disappointed because some of my MP3 CDs contain more than 100 titles and the Expanium only reads 20 or so. It took me some time to discover why, so I share these tricks which I never found anywhere:
- only the first 30 characters are read and must contain ".mp3". This means that longer names are ignored. Directories with only long names do not appear in the album count.
- as far as I have seen, you can use any character in the names, but only one dot, the one preceding mp3. Songs with more than one dot in the name are ignored.
- songs are played in alphabetical order, without making a difference between uppercase and lowercase. Put the track number first if you wish to follow the original disc order.
- directories are read first, then level 1 sub-directories, then level 2, ... So, if you have 5 directories and 2 sub-directories in the first directory, these will appear as albums 6 and 7: not very practical! Songs outside directories are counted as an album: a CD without directory has AL00 only; a CD with songs outside any directory, plus 5 directories will have AL01 to AL06.
Follow these rules when burning your CDs, and you will not lose any song!
(1 out of 5)Not worth it yet. Wait awhile.
Although this device would be nice to have, it is only the beginning. There are many improvements to be made. First of all, this unit it too big and heavy. I am waiting for a circular unit that can fit in your pockey like some of the new Sony and Philips CD players. The next problem is the display. What good is having access to 10 hours worth of songs if you can't even see the title of the song you want. The unit could also use a hold button to prevent buttons from being accidently hit and a resume button. With a lack of options and poor design, this hastily designed product needs some work. The next generation of CD MP3 players will include the round pocket size designs, Indiglo backlit displays which read and display ID3 tags, the ability to search within songs, and many more options dealing with playback. These things will come at a higher price, however. I can definately gaurentee that no new players that have all these features will be $200, but they will be worth it. Save your money and be patient. You can email me and thank me later.
(4 out of 5)EXACTLY What I Was Looking For !
As an AVID music lover who travels a LOT, this unit is EXACTLY what I wanted. I have SEVERAL GIGABYTES of MP3 music and want to travel with it all I had ORIGINALLY seen the Kangaru MP3 CD player in a computer magazine, bought it and was TOTALLY disappointed - skipped like CRAZY even if you just breathed on it (seriously). BUT I later saw THIS unit in an ad and went out and bought it without hesitation and high hopes, and have NOT BEEN DISAPPOINTED. This unit is AWESOME! PRO'S (1) Put close to 170 songs on a CD-R / CD-RW for HOURS of play on CHEAP media. I could take my whole music collection with me on just three disks! (2) I have NEVER EVER HAD THE UNIT SKIP! I have shaken the heck out of it while playing and NEVER had it skip. Although when the battery was dying (after about 8 hours of play mind you) the music started to "skip and scratch" ... understandable when the battery is dying (3) GREAT FOR CAR TRIPS! The car adapter kit works flawlessly CONS (1) EARBUD EARPHONES - OUCH ! They just do NOT fit my ear. Got some good Sony earphones (2) DISPLAY IS HARD TO READ - ID3 tag is not a big issue with me, nor is a backlight (that eats up batteries big time). But the LCD display is small and a little hard to read in daylight and impossible at night (3) SEARCH FF/REW - would be nice if you could FF / REW through a track without having to start over again, but I can live with it. SUGGESTION: A "different" car kit. I often rent cars and some of them have CD players in them but NO CASSETTE PLAYER ... thus rendering the cassette adapter car kit useless. I would recommend that if you are like me you obtain one of the adapters that transmit the signal to a "blank band" of your FM band on the radio. I was SOO bummed on a long trip with a NEW car with NO CASSETTE DECK to plug my adapter. OVERALL: THE BEST DARNED UNIT OF ITS TYPE ON THE MARKET - PERIOD! Ok, here is the good stuff-- The Philips EXpanium has a tough, rugged case. It plays regular audio CDs as well as homemade CD-Rs and CD-RWs, which is a real PLUS! The biggest plus is that it also plays CDs that have been recorded with MP3 files. It can play up to 999 MP3 files, if you can squeeze that many small ones onto a CD. More likely, you will have about 200 songs. Compare that to the 10 or 12 songs you get on a standard audio CD! The sound quality is, as you would expect, great. It has anti-knock protection. It can play the songs in sequence, or shuffle them. It has all the standard features found on most portable CD players. And, it has a separate audio out jack in addition to the headphone jack. Now, for the bad stuff-- The silver control buttons look pretty sharp, but they're hard to identify. The LCD display is tiny and not very bright. If you record more than one "album" (that's the name Philips uses to designate a separate file folder), the CD will play all the songs in all the folders (shuffled or not). You can "program" it to play only certain songs, but that's kind of tedious. It would also be nice if the display showed the file name or song title instead of just the sequence number of the file. And, although it does come with a car adapter, I found the volume is not high enough. You have to turn your car stereo volume up to the point where it begins to hum. Overall, it's a good buy, and in my opinion, it represents the future of music players. (4 out of 5)Great portable CD player with MP3 capabilies