Philips EXP411 Pocket Expanium MP3-CD Player

by Philips

Product Details

Product Manual [2.40mb PDF]

• Product Dimensions: 3.6 x 4.7 x 1.1 inches ; 7 ounces
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds
• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B000066R5K
• Item model number: EXP41117
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Discontinued by manufacturer: Yes

Product Description

Amazon.com Product Description

More pocket-friendly than the average portable CD player, Philips's second-generation Pocket Expanium takes advantage of the tiny 3-inch (8 cm) CD-R format, playing full-quality CD tracks as well as MP3 and AAC (Advanced Audio Coding) compressed-music files. An 8 cm disc holds more than three hours of compressed music (compared with about 21 minutes of CD-quality PCM audio). Philips boasts nearly two minutes of "Magic" electronic skip protection (ESP), so the device is ready to go anywhere you do.

The EXP41117 runs on a single AA battery (not included), which powers about six hours of playing time for an MP3-CD with electronic shock protection on (eight hours with ESP off). Supported bit rates are MP3: 32 to 320 kbps; AAC: less than or equal to 160 kbps. Total number of music files and albums is around 350 (with a typical file name length of 20 characters). The EXP41117 measures 3.6 by 4.7 by 1.1 inches.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Buy a battery factory first, December 25, 2003

By 

David E. Ratcliffe (Harrisburg, PA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Philips EXP411 Pocket Expanium MP3-CD Player (Electronics)

As a CD player it's so-so. No better or worse than many others I already own, or have owned. The BEEP when you hit pause is major annoyance so I would recommend against hitting PAUSE when wearing headphones. It does this to remind you that you have it in PAUSE mode, and does it about every 6-7 seconds.

The big problem is batteries. It only takes one AA but it sucks the life out of it in record time. And if you happen to put it on the table for a couple of days with a battery in it, expect it to be close to drained when next you turn the unit on. Why? Good question. Ask Philips. My questions about it have gone unanswered.

The resume mode works as advertised. But if you have to replace the battery you'll lose the resume memory and have to start over. And since it eats batteries, well ...

Sound is excellent. I've used it for both contemporary music at the usual bit rates, and Old Time Radio programs at obscenely low bit-rates. It played most of them but has been known to stutter occasionally with OTR material at 24kbps. As I type this I'm listening to a Command Performance show from 6/30/44 encoded at 24kbps. 10 minutes in it has only stuttered once.

You could do worse ...

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Move mountains of music with this tiny cd player, September 14, 2003

By 

Keith Rogers (Layton, UT USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Philips EXP411 Pocket Expanium MP3-CD Player (Electronics)

I've had my Philips EXP 411 for about a year now and I have been pretty satisfied with it by far. The size of this player enables it to be easily stored in a pants pocket, or the breast pocket of your dress shirt. The mini cd may not hold as many mp3's as a full size cd, but if you are in need for such storage capacity, you mind as well go for any hard drive based mp3 player for both storage capability and size convenience, but for people know would like to carry up to 3-5 hours of music (quantity of music varries on size of music files), you will be happy with this mini CD player. If your the kind of person who listens to different music week by week, I would suggest getting some mini-cd rewriteables so that you wont have to keep burning on new cd's everytime you've obtained new music, or if you are sick of the music that you have and want to listen to something else. So what I pretty much explained is that the Philips EXP 411 can be as versitile as any mini-disc player with a mini cd-rw(they can be re-writen as much as a mini disc and cost less too!) The mini discs are also a head turner and capture the interest of those around you. The battery life on this player is up to 6 hours on this player on 1 AA battery (keep that in mind people), so this may pose as a problem to many frugal people put ther, but you can cope with this by purchasing a couple of rechargable batteries which will ultimately start to pay for themselves within the first month of jammin' with the Philips eXpanium. The built quality of my Philips eXpanium 411 has been proven to be good over the past year with some crashes and spills into concrete, linoleum flooring, asphault, and various other surfaces and to this day still works fine without any problems(it still looks new too).

12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good balance of price, storage & size..., January 17, 2004

By 

W. Revis (Chicago, IL) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Philips EXP411 Pocket Expanium MP3-CD Player (Electronics)

There are tons of portable mp3 players out there - ranging from solid state players, to hybrid MP3/CD players to fancy hard drive based players. Of these Apple's iPOD is hands down the perfect player. It's only problem? The darn thing is expensive as heck... and one good drop on the sidewalk will break it's delecate internal hard drive. Still, here in town I see lots of people on the bus and around the city with iPODs. For me though I don't think I could stomach carrying around a $300-400 dollar piece of equipment that I could easily break, have stolen or leave in a bar.

Solid state players are certainly sturdy, and although entry level players can be bought for less than $100 bucks, if you want any type of realistic storage (256 megabytes) your price point will get very close to an entry level iPOD.

At the bottom of the portable MP3 player bucket though are the mp3/CD hybrid players. These are essentially standard cd players that happen to play burned mp3 disks like a standard audio cd. As far as raw mp3 storage goes they are the bargain of the century - some models can be had for as little as $30 bucks. And the media (a CDR or CDR/W disc) is nearly disposable. Unfortunately a cd player sized object is way bigger than what I'm looking for.

Sony has had an interesting player on the market for sometime now - it's NetMD line are essentially compact mini-disc players that also play mp3s. The catch is again price point.

So I had pretty much been relying on my Palm Tungsten for mp3 playback - which has the side of effect of really sucking the battery down - when I happened across Philips' 8cm expanium disc player on Amazon. It works almost exactly like the mp3/cd hybrid players, except it uses small, 8cm CDR/W discs... what that means is that it's cheap storage with a small footprint. And best of all is the price.

I've only had it for about a day, but so far it works great, slips easily into my jacket pocket and if I loose or break it I won't feel that bad. The 8cm discs are cheap and available just about anywhere regular CDR media is sold - they hold 210mb which is enough to fit 2-4 cds worth of mp3s on depending on the bit rate at which they were encoded in - and because they are so small they won't weigh you down like full size discs.

Battery consumption might be an issue for some folks - but a pack of AA batteries are cheap enough at discount stores and is a small price given this player's initial low cost of ownership. (This player comes with an AC adapter too - so if you use it at home or the office you can always just plug it into the wall.) Also - battery life can be nearly doubled by disabling the shock control - which you should only use if you're running or doing some other jarring activity, not sitting on a bus or train.

The sound is great - I tested with mp3s that were encoded at 320kbs and it sounded nearly cd perfect. The player also sports 2 levels of bass enhancement. The navigation buttons aren't that complex, but it does allow you to fast forward a track & skip to the next album (folder on the disc) - two basic features that I wasn't really expecting.