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25 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Cheap Thrills..., January 9, 2007
or,"you get what you pay for."
At just over $30, you get a more-than-decent CD player that plays through your automobile's cassette player, instead of spending $100-$200 for a CD player/radio built into your dashboard. The main advantage is the price, although you can also take the Coby inside and play it inside through Nimh rechargeable batteries (the kind they recommend) or by using an AC adaptor cord (not supplied). It's easy to use, the anti-skip and bass boost work very well, and player allows you to fast forward, rewind, \rogram up to 20 tracks, or shuffle play (mix up the order). It's not as convenient as an in-dash player, and its durability remains a question. (I'll update this is there's a problem).
The primary disadvantage of the Coby, compared to an in-dash CD player, you're more likely to accidentally break it, it lacks certain features (e.g., an equalizer, or even tone controls), the controls are not readily accessible, and the materials are necessarily cheaper than in a more expensive unit. I assume that the electronics and audio qualities are inferior as well. However, here's why a cheaper unit may be the way to go: Since the CX-CD646 runs well and has sufficient features for most people, your weakest link will be your speakers. If your speakers aren't that great, why spend the money for a great CD player. Some people may want to wait for a sale, and then pay for speakers and an in-dash player at the same time.
Requirements.
1. You must have a cigarette lighter to take advantage of the power unit that plugs into it. I suppose you could use said NiMH batteries, but that defeats one of the main advantages.
2. You need to have a working cassette player in your vehicle. A supplied "cassette" links the CD player to your speakers and any electronics that control them (e.g., tone control, volume). The CD player has two mini-plug outlets: One outlet takes the supplied behind-the-neck headphones (at least they're not buds)for non-mobile use, or the cassette adapter that you put into your cassette player. The other outlet takes power adapter line that goes into your cigarette lighter. Both lines come with the kit, and both are long enough to place the player beside you, or between the two seats, in the dashboard, etc.
Features
Anyone familiar with portable CD players should have little or no problems figuring this out. There's random play (shuffle), repeat play (either one song, or the entire CD), and you can program up to 20 tracks in any order.
There's no equalizer; however, there's a nice little bass boost, and you can use the tone control on your cassette player anyway.
Anti-skip mechanism: This actually works (see below), and is the reason you wouldn't want to just buy the adapter and power plug separately (which you can do, for even cheaper), unless you have a CD player with an anti-skip feature, and two line outs--one for the power adapter and one for the cassette adapter.
WARNING (the first of two): DO NOT USE YOUR CASSETTE PLAYER's PLAY, FAST FORWARD, REWIND or any other controls. They won't affect play, and, if your cassette player is very old (like mine) it is possible it could damage the cassette adapter (as it did mine). Instead, use the play/pause, stop, program, fast forward, and rewind buttons on the CD player inself. This isn't nearly as convenient as a built-in CD player, but as I said, you're not paying for that convenience when you purchase this.
WARNING (the second of two): You're also not paying for very high quality materials. THe metallic looking player is made of plastic. Furthermore, this plastic is not as strong as the "hardened" plastic that one encounters on most CD players. If you're as unfortunate as I was and drop the player, you may very well damage it (mine will no longer stay closed, a situation requiring a band-aid type fixup on my part). So...handle this gently.
Audio Properties (remember, while driving your speakers will limit what you hear):
Frequency Response: 20-20,000Hz (that's good)
Wow and Flutter: "Beyond Measurable Limits" (that's totally ridiculous! This depends on what you measure it with. If you measure electronics with something that's not very sensitive to distortion, you too can minimize "measured" error!) For me, though, the important thing is that I didn't notice any annoying distortion due to the CD player while paying primary attention to the road in front of me.
Sampling Rate: 8 times over-sampling.
The COBY has a "60-second anti-skip" mechanism which effectively reduces the occurence of skips while driving over bumps, etc. It works: When you turn this feature off; the CD will often skip.
I like the player, although one really should consider the cautions, advantages, and disadvantages mentioned above. I think it's a good short to medium term solution for those who want to play their CDs or MP3s (if your MP3 player has the two line outs--holes--mentioned above) while going mobile.
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