Customer Reviews

Sony D-FJ787 CD Walkman

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1 star:		(1)

 

 

Firstly, thanks Amazon.com give me a full refund.
Secondly, let's talk about the expensive player.

As soon as I got the player, I found myself misleaded by the introduction pictures on website. These pictures suggests that the player is a slim player. Unfortunately, it is not. Actually, it is a half-slim player. There is a big "bump" at the back of this player to commodate battery. You can not notice the "bump" until you open the box and the "camel" style is really weird.

Summary:
Pros:
1. Has both AM and FM tunner, good for those who love to listen to radio;
2. 52 preset FM station;
3. TV channel & Weather channel;
4. LCD can display song name and artist;
5. The CD player also act as a battery charger.

Cons:
1. The weird "bump" makes you uncomfortable;
2. Can not play MP3 at this high price level;
3. Cheap plastic cover, I expect a metal cast at this price level;
4. Who need to listen to TV? Weather channel is useless;
5. FM should be divided into several sub spectrum, 52 preset FM station means you must press 52/2 = 26 times of button to get a random preset station;
6. LCD only one line, can not display enough of infomation;
7. LCD socked too deep, which means you will get a dark shadow and can not see the character in LCD at night unless the LCD is directly under a lamp;
8. The player can not be function when the battery is in charging.

A lot of cons, uhm? But these cons are not the final reason that I returned this player. The big con here is: it is a noisy Noisy NOISY player. As soon as I insert a CD in this player, I heard a loud laser head seek sound. But I think it is not too bad as long as there is no noise when playing CD. Unfortunately, I found myself wrong, there is a random laster head seek sound from time to time (about every 2x seconds). I have a HI-FI headphone (SENNHEISER HD580), and I expect to got crystal clear sound. But what I got is the seek noise :(. To make things worse, you can not ignore the noise, because it is not a constantly noise (e.g. fan). And the CD motor also make ugly noise, it make a loud noise for about 10 seconds (maybe high speed rotation), then goto quiet for about 20 seconds (low speed?).

I suspect it is the anti-shock design cause those noises. Guess, laster head seek to a new track, motor in high speed, read data into memory buffer, then motor in low speed. In the following 2X seconds, what you hear is the data keep in the memory. When the memory goes empty or part empty, the process loops again and again and noise again and again. So I think this is a design flaw in this series of product instead of single product manufacture flaw. Even after I turn off the anti-shock, the player still acted noisly. I just not understand that I can find the "bug" within 10 minutes, what are those Sony QA guys doing?

It is the third time that Sony disapponted me. I got a Sony 21" monitor and a HD-280 headphone, they work excellent. So I think Sony is "high quality". Unfortunately, following 3 purchase: a ear-hurting AM/FM headphone walkman, a awful sound headphone and this CD player let me down. I think the reason is: a big company can not make every product high quality, just simple because they make too many different products. And maybe different series of CD players are designed and manufactured in different departments or sub-companys even located in different countries, therefore, the quality is too much different.

Recommend:
1. Got a iRiver SlimX, almost the same price level, but much better, I will post a review on that product;
2. Only buy products has 10+ reviews and has a above-4 star rate, or you will take the risk.