Customer Reviews

Philips EXP103 eXpanium Portable MP3-CD Player with 45-Second Anti-Skip and Car Kit

5 star:		(63)
4 star:		(55)
3 star:		(25)
2 star:		(14)
1 star:		(14)

 

 

This eXpanium is the best, I think, of the MP3/CD players. It does not display text, but does a CD player? And I am not personally interested in short, one line text displays like the Rio Volt anyway. When they come out with a text SCREEN like display that displays multiple lines of data, so you can search through folders, then I will upgrade.

The eXpanium worked flawlessly out the box. Other's I have tried did NOT, and were returned. I kept the eXpanium! I think it is very reliable. It has never failed to read any brand of CDR. It does read CDRW, but I have never tried one. And it won't skip! Even in MP3 mode! The ESP skip protection is switchable for CD, but always on in MP3.

Strong Points: No skipping. Good battery life. Handles folders well (some brands don't). Has good bass boost. HAS A RESUME FEATURE!!! With RESUME turned on, it will remember the last track played, even if you remove CD or the batteries go dead! Love that feature! Good feature, if you have 150 songs on a CDR, and the battery dies at #75, and you were not watching what track you were playing! The RESUME switch has three positions: OFF/RESUME/HOLD. HOLD turns off buttons, you don't inadvertantly press one. You can program it easily. You can scan through tracks or folders easily. Has LINE OUT connection. Analog/dial type volume control. Has many modes, like repeat and shuffle. Comes with AC adapter, DC CAR adapter, cassette deck adapter. Sound quality is very good. Better than my other CD players (portables). Good quality construction. Good manual (some players come with manuals that look like photocopies). AND THE WARRANTY IS A ONE YEAR EXCHANGE, NOT FIX WARRANTY. The warranty says they will REPLACE the unit if it has a problem the first year, and take it to dealer or Philips. How many portable electronics items do you know that do that?????

Ok, now the downsides......

Display is dim, and basically, slightly yech. Hard to see in dimmer light, or if you have eye problems. The output power to the headphones (volume) is not impressive. It is barely adequate..I use max volume or near to it sometimes. So if you want to destroy your hearing with loud volumes, this may be a limitation. The battery compartment cover is a very tight fit over the batteries, and sometimes you have to work it a bit to snap completely shut. It will "fast forward" within a track in CD mode, but NOT in MP3 mode. If you press the ">>"/fast-forward button while playing an MP3 CD, and hold it down, it will just jump folders.

Out of curiosity, I connected the eXpanium to my $6000 stereo via the LINE OUT of the unit. I did not expect glorious sound better than my home components! I wanted to see if the sound was "nasty", like some devices that use audio compression are, especially at low bit rates. The lower the bit rate, the smaller the mp3 file, and more you can fit on a CD or MP3 device. But the lower the bitrate, the worse the sound, and it can be nasty in some cases. I use freeware CDex encoder/ripper program, with the "LAME" (yeah, that's the name) encoder option, set to 256 kbps. Sounds fine on my stereo. No nasties at all. 192kbps was also great for my classical music. Very good for what the eXpanium is. For rock and roll and many other types of music you can do fine at 128kbps, or in some cases as low as 80kbps. You can really store a LOT of songs on a CD with the low bit rates. At 256kbps I can get about 6 albums on a MP3/CD disc.

In summary. I love the eXpanium. The only other contender for me was the RIO VOLT. I had my reasons why I chose the eXpanium, even though they are about the same price. I am 51 and have been an audio enthusiast for many years, and do have a background in electronics. My choice, the Philips.

I enjoy the Expanium, but was a bit disappointed because some of my MP3 CDs contain more than 100 titles and the Expanium only reads 20 or so. It took me some time to discover why, so I share these tricks which I never found anywhere:

- only the first 30 characters are read and must contain ".mp3". This means that longer names are ignored. Directories with only long names do not appear in the album count.

- as far as I have seen, you can use any character in the names, but only one dot, the one preceding mp3. Songs with more than one dot in the name are ignored.

- songs are played in alphabetical order, without making a difference between uppercase and lowercase. Put the track number first if you wish to follow the original disc order.

- directories are read first, then level 1 sub-directories, then level 2, ... So, if you have 5 directories and 2 sub-directories in the first directory, these will appear as albums 6 and 7: not very practical! Songs outside directories are counted as an album: a CD without directory has AL00 only; a CD with songs outside any directory, plus 5 directories will have AL01 to AL06.

Follow these rules when burning your CDs, and you will not lose any song!

As an AVID music lover who travels a LOT, this unit is EXACTLY what I wanted. I have SEVERAL GIGABYTES of MP3 music and want to travel with it all <grin>, and the traditional "memory type" of device just was NOT big enough for what I needed, and if I did get one of them that was big in memory, well ... it was also very big in price.

I had ORIGINALLY seen the Kangaru MP3 CD player in a computer magazine, bought it and was TOTALLY disappointed - skipped like CRAZY even if you just breathed on it (seriously). BUT I later saw THIS unit in an ad and went out and bought it without hesitation and high hopes, and have NOT BEEN DISAPPOINTED. This unit is AWESOME!

PRO'S

(1) Put close to 170 songs on a CD-R / CD-RW for HOURS of play on CHEAP media. I could take my whole music collection with me on just three disks!

(2) I have NEVER EVER HAD THE UNIT SKIP! I have shaken the heck out of it while playing and NEVER had it skip. Although when the battery was dying (after about 8 hours of play mind you) the music started to "skip and scratch" ... understandable when the battery is dying <grin>

(3) GREAT FOR CAR TRIPS! The car adapter kit works flawlessly

CONS

(1) EARBUD EARPHONES - OUCH ! They just do NOT fit my ear. Got some good Sony earphones

(2) DISPLAY IS HARD TO READ - ID3 tag is not a big issue with me, nor is a backlight (that eats up batteries big time). But the LCD display is small and a little hard to read in daylight and impossible at night <grin>.

(3) SEARCH FF/REW - would be nice if you could FF / REW through a track without having to start over again, but I can live with it.

SUGGESTION:

A "different" car kit. I often rent cars and some of them have CD players in them but NO CASSETTE PLAYER ... thus rendering the cassette adapter car kit useless. I would recommend that if you are like me you obtain one of the adapters that transmit the signal to a "blank band" of your FM band on the radio. I was SOO bummed on a long trip with a NEW car with NO CASSETTE DECK to plug my adapter.

OVERALL:

THE BEST DARNED UNIT OF ITS TYPE ON THE MARKET - PERIOD!

I like the new expanium very much because it let me play CD burned in multiple sessions. However, I have just bought the new AIWA XP-MP3 and it has all the features of the Expanium plus ID3 Tag support for the same price. If you are going to buy an MP3 Cd player, you should first check out the new Aiwa mode.

This is going to revolutionize the way people listen to music. I have had the player for about a day now and I think it is crazy! I feel as though it is so good, that in about a year or two, it will become standard such as DVD Players will. Here are some things I would like to clear up:

· The ear buds are not as bad as other reviewers put it. As a matter a fact, they are not bad at all! But I prefer using the new Sony MDR-G59G headphones. These are great but the ear buds will suit just fine.

· The car adapter is not bad either. I find it really great how you can turn up the bass in your car and have the DBB on the Expanium turned on! Great bass boost! Do not listen to other reviewers, the car adapter works just fine!

· Yes, it does have 100 second skip protection @ 128 Kbps! The minimum protection is 45 second, which is still not bad and will still assure you that the CD will not skip.

· I'm sure if you are going to buy this you are thinking, "Well, going through all those tracks must be a pain!". Speak no more! Hold in the next track or previous track buttons will skip through tracks in second! This does mean, however, that there is no skipping through a song (Such as skipping to 2 minutes and 10 seconds into a song, meaning you must listen to a whole song if you want to get to a certain part in it).

· If you put Mp3s in subdirectories, you can travel to each directory by holding in the next track or previous track buttons. This means you can not fast scroll through songs in seperate subdirectories.

· One thing I must agree on which the other reviewers have said is that the LCD display is horrible during the night! Make sure you have some light with you because the display doesn't light up at all. It is just a simple LCD display which is unfortunate for such a hi-tech machine!

Well, that about sums it up. Personally, I would encourage all people who are interested in purchasing this item to buy it. I found when I bought it, that it was exactly how I imagined it. I'm sure it will be like that for you too!

- BgM

I've only had this thing a couple days but i am extremely pleased. The sound quality is great. If you have a cd burner your a fool if you buy an MP3 player over the Expanium.

The good: Hundreds of songs on one cd. I put about 13 albums on one cd (700mb),they were ripped at 128 kbps. The sound quality is excelent and plenty loud which from what i understand can not be said about many MP3 players. This thing works with both 650 mb and 700 mb cds and the shuffle works over all albums(in order to organize your music the player allows you to place your songs into separate folders which it refers to as albums: eg. If you have a bunch of Doors songs you place them in a folder labeled Doors etc.). The player reads songs and "albums" in alphabetical order. Don't use characters other than numbers i wasted a couple cdrs before i figured out the player wouldn't read the songs with symbols in them.

The Bad: Buy a nice pair of headphones b/c the ear buds that come with the player are horrible. The LED display could be made darker/easier to read. When the player is laying on a table its fine but when you look directly down on the player the display looks faded. It can't read ID3 tags, which means it won't siplay the name/artist of the MP3 song your listening too. When used in a car with the tape adapter there is a fant hiss if you turn the volumn up, I'm not sure if this would be corrected with a better tape adapter or not; but given the quality of the headphones I would imagine if you bought a high quality adapter the hiss would disapear.

Overall: Its cheaper than the MP3 players out there. MP3 players usually offer 64mb with the ability to expand dependent on you willingness to buy flash cards(expensive), the Expanium offers you the ability to use 650-700 cdr/cdrw (cheap). So if you have a CD burner and your a big music fan then having 11 hours of music in your player is all you need to hear. I recommend highly.

Philips has a few advantages at the moment over the other players out there

(1) 10 hours battery playtime (Genica and MPtrip have 5 hrs). (2) supports all bit-rates 32-320 Kbs including VBR.

(3) multisession CD's are supported. (4) Easy skipping forward from album to album (folder to folder).

(5) A real shuffle / random feature which is for me the highlight. Other players come sometimes with a shuffle that has the same track order time after time.

(6) Resume, starts at the track which you have previously stopped.

Best MP3-CD option out there at the moment.

Ok, here is the good stuff--

The Philips EXpanium has a tough, rugged case. It plays regular audio CDs as well as homemade CD-Rs and CD-RWs, which is a real PLUS! The biggest plus is that it also plays CDs that have been recorded with MP3 files. It can play up to 999 MP3 files, if you can squeeze that many small ones onto a CD. More likely, you will have about 200 songs. Compare that to the 10 or 12 songs you get on a standard audio CD!

The sound quality is, as you would expect, great. It has anti-knock protection. It can play the songs in sequence, or shuffle them. It has all the standard features found on most portable CD players. And, it has a separate audio out jack in addition to the headphone jack.

Now, for the bad stuff--

The silver control buttons look pretty sharp, but they're hard to identify. The LCD display is tiny and not very bright. If you record more than one "album" (that's the name Philips uses to designate a separate file folder), the CD will play all the songs in all the folders (shuffled or not). You can "program" it to play only certain songs, but that's kind of tedious. It would also be nice if the display showed the file name or song title instead of just the sequence number of the file. And, although it does come with a car adapter, I found the volume is not high enough. You have to turn your car stereo volume up to the point where it begins to hum.

Overall, it's a good buy, and in my opinion, it represents the future of music players.

O.K., we all know that usually the first line of any product seems great at first, which the Philips Expanium does, but after a closer look, it's just not all the way up to par with current tecknology.

1. The positives: a. Good sound quality. If you think otherwise, I suggest recording at only 128 kbps or better. This will keep you from hearing too much distortion. b. Easy to use. While the features are limited, they are easily navigated throug without ever touching the instructions. And if you're like me, that's a plus. The shuffle and playlist functions work especially well. Not to mention the anti-skip feature also is all that it claims to be. c. Accessories! Philips was kind enough to include all that you need to put this thing in your car, which is exactly why I bought it. They include the ac adaptor plug, tape adapter for the car, head phones (not needed for the car but also included), and a regular ac adaptor. Even though I believe the price is a little steep, you would spend about 30 dollars extra on all this stuff.

2. The negatives: a. Not enough features. No fastforward or rewind, no id3 support. C'mon, you guys could have done better. b. Pricey. Although it is the MP3 capability you are paying for, not worth the suggested retail of 200 dollars, even with all of the accessories. c. Terrible LCD display. Just too dark. Just plain bad.

3. The skinny: a. If you've got to have it right now, it's not a bad investment. I recommend finding a better deal than the retail price though. Even with the limited features it still offers good sound quality with the convenience of MP3 from CD (10 hours worth at 128 kbps) and not to mention tons of accesories included. If you just want one and can wait, do. Something improved will definitely come along at a better or comprable price.

I owned one of the Memorex players and returned it after a week to buy the Expanium and now I love this thing. Before having the Memorex to compare it too - I was hesitant to buy the Expanium but now I see they've made some intelligent trade offs to get things right.

1) You can navigate through a cd w/o looking at the player - the memorex had a complicated procedure that was impossible to use w/o looking at the lcd display.

2) Battery life rules

3) Resume is actually pretty good. I don't even have batteries in mine (works through car charger) and I had it unplugged for 8 hours and somehow it still knew were to start the cd!! (sure it doesn't get the same part of the track, but the same track is close enough) - they say they have Magic ESP - I think they have Magic Resume! And a work around to those long tracks in audiobooks - get a program to split it into smaller files.

4) ESP that's great! I haven't heard the expanium skip yet, and I keep it vertically in a bag that bangs all over the place when I walk! The Memorex only had ESP on Audio CD's. It skipped if you looked at it.

5) Audiobook usage: I'm a big audiobook user too, and in my opinion the skip between tracks is better than the Memorex and than most other cd based players - the only time it's noticeable is when the tracks are split in the middle of a word - but this is actually pretty rare. The only problem is that Old Time Radio would have to be broken into parts by some software before burning the cd. No big deal for me though because I can generally listen to an entire program before I get anywhere decent in my car...

6) Sound quality is great.

7) It's available right here! (when in stock)