Price Paid:  $299.00 from Crutchfield

Summary:
A great small compact memory MP3 player. lasts up to 50 hrs playback. very small, compact and light to carry. Has outstanding sound quality for a small unit like this. no moving parts in the player, never skips. all digital format. Supports MP3,WMA, AAC. "AAC stands for advance audio compression" which has better sound quality then mp3 and uses less space. you get to put more song on the player. In a 64 MB SD memory card you can store music up to 128 minutes in long play format with lower bits with lower sound quality. still sounds great. or you can store up to 64 mins of hifi sound quality with AAC format with 128 bit sound in a 64 mb memory card. you use the real audio juke box to select the compression type any where from AAC to MP3 and WMA. highest compression and best sound quality is AAC at 128 kbps. You can also use AAC at 96, 64, 48 or 32 kbps format. but the sound quality slightly reduces as you go to lower kbps. I always recommend using the AAC 128 kbps format. I recommend always changing mp3s and recording cd audio to AAC format rather than using mp3 format. since it is smaller and have better sound quality. the software will do it for you quickly and compress to AAC format. Panasonic will soon release 128 and bigger SD memory cards. which is a great for longer play with hifi AAC format. I would strongly recommend to buy a additional set of headphones. since the one comes with the player is not sufficient. I would strongly recommend a German made headphones called Sennhiser. get one of the ear bud headphones, the MX series. I bought the MX-300 separatly and it had made a huge difference in sound quality and play back. a very great player to have.

Strengths:
Amazing great sound quality with AAC format, compact, small, long battery life, portability of ease. fast copying of songs to the memory card using a USB connector device.

Weaknesses:
No remote or backlit on the LCD display on the main unit. Would like to have a backlit on the LCD display so can see what are being played in the dark. need a larger SD memory card with at least 128 mb SD memory. I heard Panasonic will soon release a bigger SD memory card this summer or fall 2002.

Similar Products Used:
none so far.