Home > Consumer Reviews > RCA RP2485 Portable CD/MP3 Player with Car Kit (Red and Black)

This is my *THIRD* CD/MP3 combo player, and I finally found one which actually works!

First, the Cons (minor complaints). It feels a little "cheap", the cd cover does not snap securely. And the LCD display is not backlight.

Now, the Pros (many!). Most importantly, this unit had no difficulty whatsoever reading any of my CDRs, CDRWs, or audio CDs. Also, it reads my mp3 CDRs much faster than other units I've used. It has a sweet 4-way rocker for E-Z file naviagation. hold the rocker down and it scrolls through the file listing one "page" at a time. Good sound with bass boost. The supplied e.clipz phones might take some adjustment but they supply a full sound.

The LCD on the unit displays full mp3 tag info (title, artist, album, genre, year), and song time! You can select different shuffle modes: folder, entire disk, and you can select whether to repeat or not. You can select whether you want it to autoplay an mp3, if not, it displays the folders/file names for selection.

This little player even has a programmable play list. I only played around a little with this feature, because I "program" my play lists when I burn a CDR. However, I found it was easy to create a play list.

I am very happy with this inexpensive little player. I burn my mp3's onto CDR and/or CDRW and carry thousands of songs around with me, for a fraction of the price of an iPod.

This portable cd has the best mp3 wma sound I have heard yet, with excellent detail and high frequency sound. The preset equalization settings offer modest adjustments that are usable. There is no custom equalization. Two other minor quibbles: You cannot access the file menu while it is playing, as far as I can tell. And the resume function only starts at the beginning of the file, and only on mp3 or wma. I have some long mp3 spoken files, and wish I could resume within them. The big problem is that when I use the cigarette lighter adapter, with the sound fed into the car stereo via a patch cord, I get heavy distortion, apparently from electrical noise from the CDs electonics and motor. This makes the adapter unusable. I tried the cassette adapter on a portable cassette player, and barely got any sound. It seems equivalent to the RP2478, but without the fm. Update: This player skips like crazy on some copied music CDs. Ironically, the skipping occurs when the ESP is on. The skipping is much less when the ESP is off and the player is sitting horizontally on a table. And when it skips, it cuts out significant time slices of the recording. I have a music disk that skips every 2 to 4 seconds. But the disk plays fine on my other CD players. The WMA and MP3 seems to be unaffected.

Sure it doesn't have a lighted display, but it is a very BIG and easy to read LCD. It doesn't have 16 minute Steady Play to ensure 100% skip protection but so what. It comes with a car kit and Software CD, my Rio Volt SP150 didn't, and I payed $49.00 for it ($57 after S&H) I bet this RCA model probably has better volume than my SP150 as well. Betcha don't hafta crank it to 40 just to be able to hear your music, do ya?

This thing plays WMA's and MP3's just like the SP150.
Always look at your options before you buy, after buying my product from Amazon I looked on E-Bay and saw the same exact items as low as $15 if you use "Buy Now."

The inner workings of this machine work well. The case is very cheaply made. The battery door is very flimsy, as is the hinge mechanism for the main lid. Unless one takes extra care with this, something will be broken soon. This manufacturer let Amazon down.

i am using this player from 2 months and i dont have any problems with it.it just works and the coolest part is it comes with car kit,its of great use if you dont have a dash board CD player.The only down side is the Max volume is not that much high.i hope this review is helpful to you.