Home > Consumer Reviews > Sony DVPFX720 Portable DVD player - Red

This is a good looking DVD player that we bought for our 8 year old son for car journeys. I don't think the battery ever lasted the 5 hours but there is a car charger and home plug charger so this has never been as issue for us. It does last a good few hours. One downside is the sound quality, most of the time we have to have the sound quality turned upto the highest level. Finally no straps ect for attaching to seats of car.

Lovely little DVD player in a stylish red. Just the right size and weight for carrying around. Fantastic 5-hour battery life. Very clear screen. Would thoroughly recommend.

This Sony DVD player is great value for money. It was bought for travelling in the car and on planes, so the long(ish) battery life is a real boon. We've not managed the claimed 5 hrs yet, but we do tend to plug in larger than average headphones.
The player has superb build quality with all the switches and controls feeling like they'll last for ages. The screen image is lively and perfect for viewing at close range. It's quiet in operation with little in the way of motor whirring as the DVD's spin. We bought a 9" player by another manufacturer, not long before getting this, but it's size and weight, made it awkward to carry for long periods of time.
So in summary, it's compact, performs very well and should last a fair few years. Sure it's a bit more expensive than some others, but you really do get what you pay for.

We bought this for our daughter and found that we are using it ourselves as well. We usually watched DVD's on our computer as we don't have a TV. In comparison, this portable DVD loads very quickly. We were also impressed by the compact size, battery lifetime and open-and-shut mechanism. A pleasant surprise was that we could use it to listen to CDs. The main disadvantages are that the screen is very small, and that navigating the menus on the DVD can be a bit cumbersome.

This player is just what I needed to amuse me on commutes and in the hotel when I'm away from home with work. It's compact, light and saves having to lug the laptop if I want to watch a movie away from home.

The picture is superb, with great colour and clarity. The sound is good with headphones but the speakers are rather tinny, as you would expect with such a small unit.

The player will play my AVI files as long as they're first burned onto a DVD. The fact that you can't do this from a memory stick is one thing which stopped my rating this machine as a 5-star. Nevertheless, you can get several movies onto a single DVD in AVI format and with the small screen, loss of resolution is not an issue; they still look great.

The other niggle is that the small screen size is reduced further by the inability to zoom into a picture (I haven't found a way). An example of this is a home-recorded title broadcast in wide-screen format. Although the picture is in proportion to the screen, it occupies an area in the centre and cannot be zoomed to fill the screen. It can be stretched to reach the edges (making Ally McBeal look like Frank Cannon) but the height remains the same, resulting in a distorted picture. Many people wouldn't mind about that as they stretch pictures on their wide-screen TVs anyway.

The other minor problem is the claimed 5-hour battery life doesn't work for me but there's still a healthy three-to-four hours' life on mine.

To summarize, it's a great little machine, well worth the money and that outwieghs the minor niggles above, which cost it the fifth star. I would still recommend it, however.