Customer Reviews

Panasonic DVD-LS855 8.5-Inch Portable DVD Player

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

We bought the DVD-LS855 this week for a road trip for our 2 1/2 year old boy. We unpacked it, attached the battery, dropped in the DVD, and he was hooked. He wanted to watch all DVDs on it (even inside the house) because it was perfect for his size. I was easily able to attach the car / headrest holder, although it took a little work to get it snug.

The video quality isn't going to set any records, but it does the job. Our 2 year doesn't care.

There are two headphone jacks, but I wouldn't want to try and share it between two kids sitting on opposite sides of the car. It'd be fine for a hotel room though.

The manual has a chart that shows battery life. If you want the longest battery life, you have to have brightness at minimum and use headphones. If you have the brightness cranked up, don't expect more than 2 hours. The good news is that the battery is detachable, so you can buy a spare battery and/or buy an extended life battery.

Pros:
Good size for a car trip.
Includes a carry bag that holds everything, including DVDs to watch.
Included car holder is greatly preferable to the bag stands. It sits at the right position to be seen in the car seat.
Plays movies in DivX format.
When you turn the player on, it resumes playing from where it stopped.
The kid loves it :-)

Cons:
Video quality
Play and stop buttons are along the top front edge of the unit. If you try and pick it up anywhere along the front, you'll almost certainly hit the wrong button.

In summary, if you want high quality video on a larger screen, use your $1,000 laptop computer. If you want a convenient player for your kids for car trips, this is perfect.

I read many reviews about portable DVD and DivX players. I wanted to DivX player as a DVD holds about 2 hours of movie where as a DVD-R media holds about 6-7 hours of DivX/AVI movie file which is good for a long trip w/o switching the DVDs in the middle and etc. This certainly plays DivX/AVI files very well.

I was bit worried about the volume as I read a lot of complains about sound being not lound enough on other products. This I don't see how a volume could be a problem. It gets very very lound at the highest volume (w/o the headphone) and I can't imagine a volume could be a problem unless the file itself was recorded at a very low volume.

I ordered a separate case that I can use to attach between the headrests, but I shouldn't have. The bag that comes with this is made so that I can easily make it sit between the front seats with a bit of creativity.

Image quality is good compare to TV screen, but probably excellent comparing to other portable DVD players. I am happy with what I see from it.

The control buttons at the front does bother a bit, but once you have it set and start playing, you don't really need to touch those buttons, so not a big problem.

One thing.. this doesn't come with A/V cord as listed by Amazon. Only DVD-LS865 model comes with A/V cord.

Headrest bracket is included and I haven't used it yet, but it looks to be good, stable, and easy to install. And easy to attach and detach the DVD player unit.

I can't wait to take a road trip with our two little kids (3 and half, and almost 2 years old) and this unit playing the movies... hopefully they will sit through and behave. :)

Panasonic DVD-LS855 8.5 Widescreen Portable DVD Player- Black

For me the biggest factor in buying a portable DVD player was durability. After reading reviews of many players I selected the Panasonic DVD-LS85. I purchased two of the factory refurbished players. Both units came in a sealed Panasonic box. The players looked just like new. They even had the plastic film on the screen. These players are well made and have the "feel" of a high quality unit. The controls are easy to use. There is no remote, but that wasn't an issue for me (I don't need it). The screen is bright and clear. The manual says the battery will last 3 hours with the screen set on highest brightness level or 6 hours with the screen set on the lowest bright level. We've played a few movies and the battery lasted as stated in the manual. I am very happy with this purchase and would highly recommend these players to anyone looking for a good quality portable DVD player.

10 MONTH UPDATE: We use these players all the time. We've taken them on at least 4 vacations. The brackets to mount then on the car seat backs are GREAT!! The kids also use them to watch movies in their rooms. We bought two and both have worked flawlessly. After 10 months I'm still happy.

2 YEAR UPDATE: Both players that we bought are still working great. After 2 years I'm still happy.

As a mother, I found this to be a great product. It met all of our needs, which was a DVD player for the car for our 2 year old's DVD (cartoons).

We looked at a lot of other models and this one was well worth the money. Excellent quality for what we needed.

The headrest attachment is easy to install.

We recommend it!

The picture quality is poor as is the audio (not loud enough). No remote and sensitive controls that you constantly hit on accident because they are on the front. Controls make finding a particular scene all but impossible. On the upside the headrest attachement is perfect.

I took mine back and purchased a Sony DVP-FX930. The Sony is much better in every catagory but I really miss that Panasonic headreast attachment.

In 2008, we bought a LS855 for our special needs grandson to use on long auto trips. I worked fine for at least the initial trip but when we tried to use it later in the year (just post warranty expiration) it took a veery long time to read any disc we tried and ended up giving us a message of "This type of disc cannot be played. Please insert a different disc" despite the fact that we were inserting discs already played. A local repair shop, recommended by the Panasonic web stie, indicate that the repair would cost around $200 - more than the unit costs new. So much for the vaunted Panasonic durability

I also have the model above this which I paid quite a bit more for at Sam's. This is nearly identical. The only difference I notice is it didn't come with a video out cable (3.5 RCA, easily found for cheap on Amazon). It plays DIVX movies which was my main reason for buying because swapping discs on a road trip for little ones is a big pain! I think the sound is PLENTY loud unless you're playing a poor quality video. I rarely turn it up above 1/3 of maximum. It mounts easily on the back of the seat and easily taken out of the mounted cradle. We've had our other one for almost 2 years and the only issue with it was the video out cable wore out (again, easily replaced for cheap). I've owned others that were plain jane DVD players and owned a Phillips Divx capable one (though wasn't even able to play half of my DivX files). I highly recommend this and it's a great buy for the money.

Used this for traveling in our car for our 1 and 4 year olds. Took it on a long trip with us; used it on a plane, rental car, hotel room. It worked great! The dual headset plugs were nice so the kids could hear the movie on the plane, although it was very hard to hear because of the surrounding noise. Sound would only go up so lound. Would recommend this to anyone!

To make a long story short, my 2 year old broke our LG portable dvd player which was purchased back in 2006. I went to Costco and bought this Panasonic model with confidence as I am a big fan of Panasonic products. Well, upon popping in a dvd I found that the resolution on this player is much lower than my 3 year old LG model.(and the Panny cost $30 more) I love all the features, car seat mount, car charger, long lasting battery, tilt screen, etc. (note screen does not swivel left to right, you can only adjust the tilt/vertical viewing angle) Unfortunately, I'm so disappointed with the picture quality that I will be returning it ASAP.

Overall not so bad, screen is nice, has what you need, problem is the very gentle dvd cover that breaks so easily, and then it's a problem