Home > Consumer Reviews > AMW 7-Inch Portable DVD Player (M-270)

I've seen them all (portable DVD players), the Samsung L200, The Panasonic L95, the new Toshiba. No question solid peformance in the $500-$650 street price range. Some play DVD+R's, some play DVD-R's, some may play SVCD's. Low in-behold I stumbled on the AMW-M-270 at Best Buy this week for $199!,(new start-up high tech company). Excellent 7" screen and it plays vertually every format-SVCD, DVD+R, DVD-R, DVD-Ram. Excellent quality player for the price, even if your just interested in playing plain old DVD's there's no way Panasonic/Samsung is worth 3x the price. PROS:Great picture quality for 7" screen, plays multi-format discs of all kinds, superior quality versus other low budget players, i.e. Apex, Initial. CONS: Nice small profile but a little bulky (thick) with battery

I was about to buy the 5" Panasonic, but in the end decided the screen was too small for the price. So far, the AMW seems fine. The picture quality is OK, and the sound is loud enough with headphones. Given that some people have had quality problems, I did purchase an extended warranty.

By the way, you can fix the aspect ratio problem some others are reporting by pressing the "Set Up" button on the remote _when no DVD is inserted_. The first "Set Up" menu is the "General Setup Page." Under "TV Display," change the setting from "Normal" to "Widescreen." I have no idea why widescreen is not the default, given that the aspect ratio of the physical screen is widescreen. Its also puzzling why they don't make this adjustment explicit in the manual.

As others have noted, the player should also include an auto adapter.

I was excited after reading a positive review regarding this fairly new personal DVD player. In addition to the great review, the price($199.95 @ Bestbuy)was super.
Alas, I went to Bestbuy and had to wait for the sales staff to dig one of eight AMW M-280 from the locked case (there was not one setup on the display with six other brands). The first one just didn't work...at all. The second one had a good picture but no sound. The third one had problems recognizing the DVD disc, once it did full volume was audible only if you pressed one ear against the speaker. This made it difficult to watch a movie and listen to it at the same time.

After three bad players I scratched the AMW product off of my want list. Based on this experience, if you want a cheap, feature packed personal DVD player I found the Initial 7" and the Cyberhome 702B&712 very good choices. If they hold up as good as my nearly two year old Apex cheapy I will be very pleased..I think I am going for the Cyberhome 702B at Wally-Mall.

Wife was sick in hospital and wanted to cheer her up. Tried to keep the price low. First I got a 5" Mintek and the Mr. Bean DVD set. Worked great at first and very funny but the Mintek started to freeze up on us and I returned it for a Polaroid 7" model for a few bucks more. Didn't freeze up but when we got home I did notice that the picture was too fuzzy. Fiddled with it and set it to sharper picture. Pretty decent unit and I liked it but I thought the picture was sub-standard. Returned it and finally got the AMW at a similar price to the Polaroid. The picture on the AMW is just much better. I realize the build quality isn't as good as Sony or Panasonic but the performance is there at a very reasonable price. It also plays MPG's burned on a CD which is nice. I've tried JPG's, MPG's, VCD's and DVD's and they all work. You can't play a widescreen format movie without black bands on the top and bottom but that's true with my other DVD's as well. In all I'm satisfied with the AMW, especially it's good picture.

Problem #1: 10% of the time it failed to read DVDs I put in it, although these DVDs were readable by another (different brand of) player.

Problem #2: The sound completely stopped working after a month.

Still waiting for customer service to get back to me.