Customer Reviews

Grundig Eton Ego 4000 Plus Portable CD / MP3 Player with Built-In Removable Speakers

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(11)

 

 

ok. here's my situation:

i live off the grid in alaska. off the road system, in a goofy little town by the sea. we have only one radio station that we pick up from sitka, some 200 miles away.

i though this little Gundig gadget would do the trick! play my CDs, listen to the radio -- all from my little houseboat and 4 AA batteries. right on! my new home entertainment center!

get the thing in the mail. YEAH! paddle over to the floathouse. unpack the box. shove in the batteries. turn on the radio.

nothing. nada. zippo. no radio station. just fuzzy static where the radio should be.

strange. everyone else's radio picks up Raven Radio. what's up with the Grundig? cheapo!

and yeah. cheap little plastic speakers like mickey mouse ears. little cheap plastic buttons. bizarre cable attachment thingies and just, well, odd. like it seemed like a good idea in some board meeting somewhere, but horribly, and cheaply, implemented.

so i rationalize this. radio doesn't work. OK. i'll play my CD's on the thing. might as well get something out of it -- besides i figured i could get used to the cheap little speakers that have no ability to sound bass. yeah! like a transister radio!

ok! 5 hours goes by. batteries die. WHAT? FIVE HOURS AND THE BATTERIES DIE? are you kiddin' me? this is a Grundig, man --billed as a travelor's paradice: radio / cd / clock / alarm gizmo! $$$$ bucks. Woo hoo -- but: FIVE HOURS CD PLAYING LIFE? most places i travel take more than 5 hours plane time alone -- should i pack a block of batteries with me, too? c'mon Grundig: you guys stink if you think you can charge $$$$ for this pile of cheap plastic poo!

this thing stinks. i'm sending it back.

dissastisfied in alaska.

ian

ps.

happy ending: returned the cheapo grundig. amazon gave me a full refund without any stress. good for them! i bought a durable sony cd player for about half the price of the grundig!

the sony baby works wonders: plays cds, picks up the radio station, the weather station (big deal here) and even a TV channel (dang -- i came to alaska to get AWAY from TV!).

and get this: 2 AA batteries last FOREVER (well, a really, REALLY long time).

i bought two little speakers for a nominal price, and WA LA! I made out like a happy consumer for not half the price the cheap plastic poo GRundig.

Grundig: if you are reading this, you should be ashamed of yourself.

Right off the bat, let me say that this Grundig CD player isn't worth [money], let alone [money]. The reviewer that said he got 5 hours of listening on a set of batteries is lucky. With the first set, I got 1 hour, with the second set I got 14 minutes!! I'm not exaggerating -- I timed it.

Granted, you can skip the batteries and use the AC adapter, but even then, the sound quality is terrible. Cheap and tinny. The speakers are worthless. I am astonished that Grundig is charging so much money for this. Do yourself a favor and avoid.

This thing ain't worth the [money maount]+ asking price. You're better off getting a portable CD player with the same options (minus the clock) and some mini-speakers. The speakers have no bass and and are very tinny. The CD player worked for about a week and now it stutters almost all the time, usually less when you turn the anti-shock setting off. It's all eye-candy.

Unfortunately, my husband bought this piece of junk well before I'd had a chance to read any reviews. I think it's all been said before, but this CD player is a complete rip-off, and an expensive rip-off at that! We were wondering why we only got a couple hours out of a set of batteries, but apparently it's not just us; the problem is inherent in this poor excuse for a CD player. And if you still think you might like to buy one, you can have mine. I'm going to buy something that works.

I received this as a gift and know the Grundig name typically as a quality product. The sound was so poor I decided there must be something wrong with the unit. I called the Grundig tech support and explained that I heard a very tinny sound with no bass at all. The tech without pause said "Thats typical with all of those units." He further continued to say "you'll get some bass response with the headphones but thats as good as it gets." I couldn't believe something with a $150 price tag was known to sound so bad. Do not waste your money on this product.

I purchased this to wake up to a CD. It takes 40+ seconds to fill the buffer for the anti-shock system. During this time, the CD stutters. Extrememly annoying. You can shut the anti-shock system off, but only after it begins playing. By that time I'm awake and irritated.

Other than that, I like it.

When it works, it works very well. My first unit would not play cd's on a consistant basis. It was replaced by merchant. The 2nd unit worked very well for 5 months after which it no longer read a cd or mp3cd. It is interesting than the owner's manual does NOT note that mp3cd's are playable; only standard cd's. The speakers are a joke, but the included headphone produce a great sound. They become uncomfortable after 1-2 hours and the cord is very short. This unit was used by an age 50+ consumer with no misuse and was cleaned regularly. The radio's tuner is weak as FM stations 20 miles+ away were audible only on mono.

I used this product for a year and a half and was very happy with it. Batteries lasted 6-8 hours. The speakers aren't boom box quality but for the size the sound are plenty big for a hotel room and much better than a standard hotel clock radio.

However, last week it just stopped playing the CDs. Looks like a motor problem as it looks like the disc is trying to spin but can't quite make it. I should say that it has taken a lot of use the past few months on several camping trips so it has been exposed to direct sun, humidity etc. But I had hoped it would have lasted longer.

I'm going to switch to a hard drive MP3 player since the mechanics of CDs can be delicate.

I hate this contraption and I stupidly let 30 days pass before I realized how much I hate it. Now I start every morning with a "boy I hate this thing." Why? well here are few reasons why: You cannot read the numbers unless you are within 18" and to get a backlight you must depress "any button"---not a bad idea but horribly executed. The backlight lasts four seconds--way too fast in the night and "any button" is a lie because you can't press "stop" nor the "on" for radio or cd without starting a whole other process which you then, in the dark, have to figure out how to terminate. The cd player spends more time "reading" your cd than it does playing it. The "tuner/band" button is very sensitive and lord knows what you will wake up to, the screech of a not tuned in AM station happens way too often. The worst of it all was I called Eton to tell them how much I hated it, just thought they might want to know. I had a friendly conversation with a very nice receptionist who assured me they wanted me to be happy and would do something, but first she wanted me to talk to the engineer/designer. So I waited a week for him to return my call and he was quite rude saying if there is nothing wrong with it (everything is wrong, but they don't count that) there is nothing they can do. He offered to trade mine for a different one just the same and I said "why bother." It was a classic story of "I made it so it is by definition without errors--now leave me alone,just buy it and be thrilled with my brilliant design.

I've read the other reviews of this product and feel a need to defend this gadget. I've owned mine for about three years and I love it. I use it nightly. The application I find this perfect for is Audio Books stored on MP3. This of one of the only small, portable MP3 players that has it's own speakers. I go to bed listening to audio books and I don't want to wear a pair of earphones or lug a set of extra powered speakers around. However just slightly larger than a CD Walkman when folded closed it is small enough to work great on an airline trip, where headphones are preferable to the endless roar of the planes engines.

The big gripes I've seen repeated in the other reviews are:
1) Poor radio reception.
2) No Bass from the mini speakers.
3) Short Battery life.

1) I never use this to listen to the radio, so I won't comment on it good or bad. But there are thousands of good and cheep radio's on the market so if you need a radio, go buy a radio.

2) I'll agree with the poor bass reproduction in the speakers. Small cone's yield small bass. It's a physics thing. However when I travel and use this to play music in a hotel room, it's been good enough to satisfy the want of a little background music.

3) Battery Life. I'm surprised by the times listed by other reviewers. I get about 30-35 hours of use when I'm on the road using the AA's. When at home or in a hotel, the AC adapter removes the concern about battery life completely.

Perhaps this is because I primarily play MP3 disks which it spins up to read into it's buffer then spins down until it needs more data.

Anyway I wanted to toss in my two cents, as this is a great gadget for audio book listeners, and I would hate to see someone miss out on it because some reviewers expected the performance of a boom box or home stereo out of a Walkman sized device.. It's my hope that we'll see more devices like this on the market and the price point to come down a bit. But bottom line, I've got my monies worth, and if anyone doesn't want theirs, I'd be glad to take it off their hands.