Customer Reviews

Classic Portable CD Player with MP3 Capability (CM544)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

If your looking for a High quality cd player, you do not want to buy this. But if your looking for one of the cheapest CD-MP3-RADIO, on the market then this is for you. I have used this cd player for 2 years because i am too cheap to shell out [money amount]+ to get a decent MP3 player. THe unit plays MP3s in a easy simple way, simply burn a data cd with the MP3s on it or in 1 level of folders. IT does not support more than one level of folders. This is not a especially high quality cd player, and it did mess up after 6 months, but if your looking for a transition before going completly Mp3 this may be a option for you. The only real problem is that the anti shock is terrible. Its ok in a car, or in a plane, but if you try and simply walk with this cd player, [or god forbib you jog]it will skip almost everytime. It says 120 seconds in Mp3 mode, which is complete BS. You might get 30 if you crawling, with it but if you start to walk, you will probably prefer the radio. So if you want a cheap MP3-CD-RADIO, go with this, but if you want a cd player that doesnot skip i suggest speding more $$ and getting a SONY.

I seriously wonder if the person that wrote the other review in this area had the (E)xtended (S)kip (P)rotection (ESP) turned on when he tried this player. I stood in one spot and did jumping jacks, while playing a 128 kbps mp3 cd, for 117 seconds before it skipped. It was comparable (about 25 seconds) with a regular CD. I loved the rich bass and sound quality. A few things to consider are, 1. Buy a higher quality pair of headphones, you won't regret it. 2. Use 'better quality' cds when you burn your music and use the highest bit rate encode that will allow you to fit the amount of music you want on the cd. 3. High capacity nimh batteries (2400 mah) will give you longer play times and can be recharged hundreds of times. Remember! The antenna for the radio is the headphone wire so your position affects reception greatly.
Overall I rate this player as excellent for the price. ENJOY!

Bought this in '02 and it's been terrific. Headphones were bad but I always use my Sony Studio monitors anyway. I love all of the features: MP3 search, bass boost, AM/FM digital stereo, line out (so I can use it with a cassette adapter on weekends when I drive my '88 Cadillac ), and many different programmable features. The anti-skip on mine works perfectly (9/08) after 6 years of dropping it 25-30 times to where the player busts open and both batteries and CD goes flying. Every time I put it back together it works. The last time I dropped it the headphone jack broke. I opened it up and found the headphone line separated from the circuit board. A mini soldering kit and 10 minutes of my time fixed it and it still works as good as the day that I took it out of the box. $50 price tag and six years? I think I more than got money's worth. In fact, until it dies I refuse to buy an IPOD or another MP3 player. I can just burn data discs with about 150 MP3s and listen for hours. I can't find my belt clip though.

First things first, don't buy this thing. I had researched this all over the net reading reviews, etc and i finally decided to buy it after hearing all this good stuff about it. well I bought it and the first thing i did was throw out the headphones. they're very low quality and will damage your ears if you use them for too long.

This performed nicely when I got it. I burned an MP3 CD (700 MB CD which held about 150 songs). put it in there and turned it on. The search option is pretty nice. You search by artists. however it's not that great.

Anti skip- Worked ok for about a month. Then somehow it would start skipping randomly even when it was sitting still or on a desk!!! i figured it must be the disk so i burned a new one without scratches and it still skipped. It gets pretty annoying when you're listening to music and then it skips in the middle of it even when you're not moving. I would say you would have a 75 percent chance of it skipping on you.

The battery life was good. I used 2 AA Duracell batts and they lasted about 8 hours. then when the low batt sign came on, it lasted about 1 hour after that.

HOWEVER the biggest problem is to come. After about 4 months, the CD player screwed up bad. It was a routine day and I turned on my CD player ready to get on the bus, however, when I turned the volume to the lowest setting, it got stuck on a quite high volume. so then I tried turning it up to high and it got even louder. then back down to low and it was still that same high volume. so now my CD player's stuck on a high volume on the lowest volume setting. unless you want to blast out your eardrums, don't buy this. it's not worth the hassle.

As of now, I'm about to buy a Creative MuVo TX FM 512MB. It's a way better deal than the CM544. It can hold about 160+ music files, uses only 1 AAA batt and the batt life lasts twice as much as this CD player. the best thing is, you can also put data files, documents and photos on it. it connects via USB so there's no software to use to load music and stuff on it. It's just like a USB data device. It's only about 110 dollars. Really good deal. it's also smaller than the ipod mini.

So, bottom line, if you want a CD player that'll crap on you in a few months, buy this, but I would NOT recommend this.

This is a cheap cd player that sux! man this thing cuts off so easy and falls apart. IT SUXXXXXXXX!!!! DONT GET IT LOL