Home > Consumer Reviews > Aiwa XP-MP3 Portable CD/MP3 Player with Anti-Skip Protection

This product does everything that it clames. The only problem is that when it says it has electronic skip protection, they dont tell you that the ANTI-SKIP DOESN'T WORK FOR MP3s. Anti skip only works for CDs. I was VERY DISAPPOINTED. Everything else works fine. it even looks cool. A great feature is that it will charge rechargeable batties.
I work with sound and music a lot. The way that MP3s sound though this player, I suspect that the output is compressed. (this means that maximum sound quality is not being achived. If you do buy this, also order a good set of headphones.
Over all, if this product were cheaper, I would recommend it to my friends.

I used this unit for one week, several hours at a time. Performance is flawless, plays my whole collection of MP3's without a problem. The only complaints I have about the XPMP3C is the fact that there is _no_ EASS function with MP3 CD's! Why not? Also, the unit has a cheap feel to it; it feels too light! Not at all like Aiwa's MD line... For 180 I'd expect a remote.. Aiwa: replace the "car kit" with a simple corded in-line remote!!

Buy Aiwa though, it is superior to the no name brands out there..

I bought it two weeks ago. I use it as an audio CD player most of the time because it has no anti-shock for MP3 CDs. What is good is that it has a support for CD-R and CD-RW discs. Batteries are enough to play like 4-6 audio CDs with anti-shock feature turned on. I like this CD player but nobody told me about absence of anti-shock for MP3 CDs when I was to buy it. This thing disappoints me. But what is really good is that even without anti-shock turned on it works rather pretty when you walk.

I have been listening to mp3 songs for almost three years now, mostly using PC (Kudos' to Winamp team) in the initial years and wanted to buy a portable mp3-CD player for really long time. As with any technology I expected that the price would come down, so I can buy. Finally I bought this player two months back when it was on sale for little less than [money] after returning my Creative JukeBox (20GB,[more money]). My ratings are based on the extremely low price I paid. I use it in both at Home (hooked with my Sony music system) as well in my Car. I am extremely happy with the purchase (less $$$), and happy with the product.

Tips/General:
1.If my mp3 CD is organized into folders/files reads quickly as opposed all the files in the root directory.
2.Like all AIWA products the BASS is more in the output, that is a negative rating to me (which is the main reason I went for Sony in the past).

Plus:
1. Extremely low price
2. Plays all my mp3 files. Both fixed (128/44) and VBR encoded.
3. I liked the display and the absence of backlight never bothered me. The Album and Track information is more than sufficient for me to decide whether to play or skip a song.
4. Navigation is really simple with Folder/Track skip buttons.
5. I noticed very little skips on very bumpy roads in the mp3 mode.(It doesn't bother me, since most of my driving is in good roads) I don't jog so I can't rate the performance of Jog proof.

Negative:
1.Quality of the mp3 decoding is poor when compared with creative jukebox and Winamp outputs. I have offset this by encoding my CD rips into VBRs. I use EAC and Lame for encoding my CDs.
2.The Cassette adopter is poor. It does not align with my CAR deck. I have to manually move the adapter up/down to get better sound. If I listen using headphones it is fine.
3.Output volume is low (It doesn't bother me much, since I jack up the volume in the CAR/music system)

This unit does all that I wanted from my MP3-CD player; search capabilty within a mp3 file, resume play, restart exactly where I left, album & track names display etc, which my other mp3 player (Philips exp 101) was not doing all that well. No shock resistance for mp3, but it hasn't really skipped alot and I am happy with it. But my only complaint is this unit is so sensitive to the way the burner has burnt. I had to make several tries before it could understand the files in it. But with my Philips it is a breeze. For the price and performance this one is a good buy.