Home > Consumer Reviews > Philips EXP201P eXpanium Portable CD Player with MP3-CD Playback and 45-Second Antiskip

I bought this 2nd generation CD/MP3 player from Philips in the hopes they had fixed the problems which reviewers of their EXP103 described, mainly skipping. Don't waste your time -- they didn't.

Each and every MP3 will skip at 7:44 from the start, and every 2-3 minutes after that, even with the unit sitting solidly on a table (none skip when played from this CD-ROM on my computer). If every one of your MP3s is shorter than that then this might well be a fine CD/MP3 player for you.

Its display is strictly numeric, numbering directories on the CDROM as "albums" and files in them as "tracks". It read my Linux-written CDROM just fine, which has 1-level-deep directories and no files in the top-level; I don't know if it can handle more complex file and directory structures, but long filenames with embedded spaces are no problem.

This unit does skip quite alot. The navigation is unacceptable, with it being strictly numeric, albums show as a number and track show as a number.Not good with close to 200 songs on a cd. ALso, how about a 10+ skip forward funtion? Would that have been to difficult?
Also, Philips' site says it comes with a belt clip: It doesn't.
Also, no remote.
I will say, the overall sound is as good as I've heard on a portable player. Just not good enough to overecome the deficiencies.

I paid 15 dollars for just the cd player without the kit. i use it in my car all the time. First of all, it does skip, sometimes. I had the same problem where it kept speeding up. But i cleaned the disk and the sensor and it ended up working fine. For the money I paid, it does its job. I was thinking about splurging and spending 150 dollars on one, but then realized that I really don't need to spend that money. Anyway the pro's and con's are listed below

Pros:

*CHEAP
*Excellent sound quality
*Looks pretty cool
*Great surfing (for a non ID3 tag cd player)
*Good volume
*I like the button placement

Cons:

*Sometimes speeds up (skipping)
*NO ID3 (but you get what you paid for)

The pro's do outweigh the cons, and I would recommend this to anyone.

To its credit, the EXP201 is an inexpensive CD player that also supports CD-R's chock full of MP3 files. It basically means that you can carry 10+ hours of tunes on a single disc and enjoy those tunes on a single set of two AA batteries. I picked up one of these units yesterday and I returned it today for the following reasons:

1. Horrible sound quality. All my MP3s exhibited a random pop, click, or some other audio artefact during playback. And no, I wasn't listening to Oval, Microstoria, or any other Mego glitchery, and all these MP3s are 160 kbps CBR (constant bitrate) files that play with no problems in my PocketPC.

2. Stability issues. I used my unit exclusively in a car (a Ford Taurus, in fact, sitting in the front seat armrest) that did nothing but city driving. Admittedly, Houston streets have their share of potholes and bumps, but my wife's VW cd changer (which doesn't have the read-ahead shock protection) is far, far, far more stable than this player, which produced random skips with alarming regularity.

3. Navigation problems. The display on this unit is limited to numbers. Which means that when you create CD-R's of MP3 files, you have to organize them in folders by either artist and/or album in order to be able to skip ahead albums' worth of tracks at a time. Even at that, you'd have to have a pretty darn good memory of what order (let alone which artists) the tracks were burned onto disc. Having to play 'Name That Tune' with your own music collection is only entertaining at parties.

4. Compatibility issues. Despite the reported CD-RW compatibility, none of my DirectCD CD-RW's would register with this unit. Also, any regular CD-R's created using the Joliet standard (which allows long file names) seem to have the file orders scrambled, as the file names seem to get truncated by the player's operating system. In order to maintain track order, I had to manually rename 140+ files in EasyCD Creator (a bit of an oxymoron in this case) to 8.3 standards (trying to compose the disc in ISO9660 truncated the file names without maintaining track order).

So, there you have it. A nice try, but poor, poor execution. From what I've read, the EXP301 series are significantly better in sound quality, skip protection, and compatibility, so you may want to spring a few extra dollars and save yourself a potential headache.

I own a original EXP103, and it is great. Of course, I bought it while the CDRW and MP3 tech was still over [dollar amount], but it is money well spent. Competing technology did not have the features i wanted on the EXP. For instance, the Resume/Hold, Two output jacks, and full car/home kit. A competitor at the time, the Rio VOLT had features i wanted, like BackLight and Title display, and a navigate button, but the EXP had the main features i needed. If philips would release a model with all those features, i would upgrade in a heartbeat. For those who dont like the EXP, you don't know what you are talking about. If your MP3's are skipping, it is because your recorder [stinks], not the player. Buy new discs and recorder then try again. For audio discs, make sure the ESP is on, and because the player is very sensitive, excessive jarring associated with running is not recommended for CDDA (Audio CD) discs. MP3 cd's will play without skipping 99.9% of the time with even Bumpy-road jitter.