Panasonic's SVSD50
Written: Aug 09 '03
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Pros: Small, light, sounds good with proper earbuds and battery life is fantastic!
Cons: The software!
The Bottom Line: If you're not afraid of using the clunky unreliable RealPlayer software, BUY IT - it's GREAT!
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| brianbuckley's Full Review: Panasonic SV-SD50 (64 MB) MP3 Player |
Nice and small with great bass in the XBS mode; unfortunately the supplied earbuds don't sound that good - better to get a decent pair (I use Sony MDR-EX71SL's).
Having used the unit for about a month now, and using it for a couple of hours a day on weekdays, it's still using the original Duracell (alkaline) AAA battery!
Transferring the files to the unit's SD card is however a pain. Panasonic have made a REAL blunder here and decided to use RealPlayer, with a Panasonic plugin. Real software is bad at the best of times, but is a bit of a disaster in this case. It took 2 attempts to get it installed on my XP Pro system, and during the installation it grabbed all of the file associations for itself, which p***ed me off. The actual transfer of files is slow-ish, and Real virtually always crashes at the end of the process.
Another gripe is that once the files have been transferred to the SD card (using the card reader/writer which comes with the unit), the play order cannot be changed, and you cannot slot further files in between existing ones. The card reader/writer is another story - it does it's job well, is seen by XP Pro as an external drive, but you cannot drag and drop files onto it - well you *can*, but they won't play. Before transferring, you can choose the type of file (WMA, MP3 or AAC). I've tried using AAC as I have read good things about it, and I have to say that a 128k MP3 when converted to 64k AAC sounds *exactly* the same to me - I can hear NO difference in quality, so that's the format I now use, which allows me to get a lot more onto the SD card. I use a 256mb SD card and currently have 105 songs on it, totalling some 8 1/4 hours! The slight downside to using AAC is that the conversation *to* AAC takes place during the transfer of files, thus slowing it down a bit.
So, all in all I'm pleased with the Panasonic SVSD50 - I recently bought an MPIO FD100 and actually haven't used it since I started using the SVSD50!
If Panasonic dumped the Real software and used something better, included some sort of backlight for the LCD and a belt clip or case of some sort, this thing would be perfect.
I bought mine from Hong Kong on Ebay, hence the price.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): US100
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Epinions.com ID:
brianbuckley
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Reviews written: 1
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