Home > Consumer Reviews > iPAQ PM-1 Mini-CD Player with 8 minutes of MP3 Anti-Shock Protection

This player is very good. I had already bought a mp3/cd player, and so i just leave that at home, and when i go, i take this one with me. The dimensions are 4*4*1.25, but it feels a lot smaller than that. If you are thinking of buying a minidisc, mp3, or jukebox player, i would have to say get this one instead. At 128kbs, you can have 180 minutes of musice, and at 64kbs(for people with no taste) you can have 360 minutes, or 6 hours. You can usualy fit 3 cd's, sometimes four on 1 Cd. I just put all my cd's from 1 band on one cd. It is better than minidisc because it plays in all computers with a cd drive, and it is better than a jukebox because it weighs less and a bit smaller, and better than an mp3 player because it holds more. The remote is great, and the folder/file system works well too. it has 6 preset eq's and it will read the CD then stop spinning. It has a hold on the remote and the player so you can just hold the player, stick it in your pocket, and still control it with the remote. Headphones are good, and opposed to what some say, the remotes stays in the jack. And it has a line out. Also, the 3v dc works with the rechargeble batteries, so when you plug it in, the batteries recharge...

I've had this thing about a month now and I thought I'd update my original review "A versatile player at a very reasonable price."

It works fine with any mp3 file formats I've thrown at it including high bit rate CBR and VBR files. Reads ID3v1 tags flawlessly and deals with long filenames well. Too bad subdirectories/folders are just referred to by number as opposed to their names.

Shock protection is excellent, used it snowboarding without a single skip and batteries lasted just over 4 hours. I was initially worried that the long cord to the remote combined with the long cord from the remote to the headphone would be a royal pain but it acutally came in handy. I was able to put the PM-1 in the inside breast pocket of my Burton jacket, route the remote down my left sleeve and clip it to the inside of my wrist and route the headphone wire back up the sleeve and out the collar to my head. This left the remote well protected and warm (good thing b/c the cold temp will make the LCD display very sluggish and appear faded, wonder what the freezing temp of the LCD is?) yet still workable through my sleeve's fabric w/o taking off my gloves. Need to modify my jacket to have a transparent window and clip on pocket inside it for the remote for full functionality!

The "hiss" you hear when this thing is on is still a bit annoying but isn't noticable at all if you are in anything but a completely silent environment or active at all once the music gets going. Not exactly "Hi-Fi" but what the heck, we are talking about playing MP3's after all, not DVD-Audio or SACD's.

Don't be fooled by this mini-CD player's small build and lack of aesthetics. It actually packs a whole deal of punch. It recognizes MP3 CDRs and CDRWs quickly and plays well with the antishock working to its fullest. In most cases, the player loads the song into memory and stops spinning after a while minimising the possibility of skips. Sound reproduction is good especially when a good pair of earphones or buds are used. It's very light even with the 2 AAA batteries. The preset equalizers dun do much cos the Normal mode is all you ever wanted. Its fully functional remote comes with a 2-line LCD which though small packs a lot of info, from artist name, song title, and yes even album title to track/directory numbers and time elapsed. Also includes the various random, programmable modes etc. There's also a useful file or directory skip that makes searching easier.

Now some of the downsides. There's no screen on the player itself, the remote LCD isn't backlit, which means u can't see anything in the dark.The plastic casing's a little flimsy and a metal body could take care of that as well as reduce the thickness a little. The rechareable batteries are a good concept but they just arent powerful and you dunno when they are ready from charging cos there's no indication. Oh ya, there's no resume function to continue from where you last hit stop. And lastly, mebbe a more attractive exterior using Compaq'a colored-cover concept from Presario would be cool!

But for a low price, the player's a star. And mini CdR/RWs are so [inexpensive], you can pack about 35-40 songs on one. There's nothing to complain for this price.

Just got this unit a week ago, and immediately thought that it looked more bulky than it had to be. This player is bigger in relation to the media it plays than the first "portable" CD players were in relation to regular CDs.

The battery life is definitely not anywhere near the advertised 8 hours. I think I was able to get 4-5 hours out of a fully charged battery. Speaking of batteries, if yours run down, you're stuck - I wasn't able to make this player work off the regular over-the-counter AAAs. It seems to only accept it's bundled batteries.

The whole construction has a rather flimsy feel to it, especially the CD door and the battery door.

Interface is nothing to write home about either - there is no display on the main unit, and the remote isn't backlit. The battery indicator on the remote is so tiny, it will be difficult to figure out how much charge is left. Even though all the player buttons are duplicated on the remote, you can only "turn on" the player by pressing "play" on the main unit. Which ... if you have it in a bag, with "hold" turned on, and accidentally press "stop" on the remote. You have to extract the player, turn off hold and press play before you can use it.

The unit seems to rely entirely on buffering for skip protection, reading the whole song into memory at times. This is problematic because the CD will have to spin up before the next song can start playing, and if you are walking and have it in your pant pocket, you may have to stop so it can find and read the next track without being shaken.

The sound quality is acceptible for the applications, and if you are OK listening to MP3s as CD substitutes, this device won't disappoint. The little CDs are incredibly compact, and take less than 2 minutes to burn, making this by far the most convenient and inexpensive removable media on the market today. I think mini-CD mp3 players are a terrific idea with a great future ahead of them, but I'll be waiting for a better player to take advantage of it, and so should you.

The best way to rate this product is mediocre.

First, the construction quality is marginally acceptable. Made entirely of plastic it probably won't survive many or any drops. The remote separated around the jack when I used my professional quality Headphones -- Sony MDR-7506's.

The sound quality is satisfactory. As mentioned in earlier reviews there is a slight buzz, which is only noticeable in quiet situations -- I've gotten used to it. Despite the buzz, the quality of the mp3's is fully reproduced at whatever bitrate they were encoded.

The product specs say 6 hours of music are possible on an 8 cm compact disc. This is only possible if your mp3's are encoded at a very low bitrate.

Another quirk that perturbed me was the fact the player would occasionally stop when my headphones were connected directly to the player, and not inline with the remote.

If you can deal with some of the quirks and the mediocre construction then this is an ideal player.