Good sound and bass, great remote, awesome battery life.

Makes loud sounds when it plays, stalls in play, bad headphones(bad sound produced, short wire)

In the beginning, the cd player was awesome. It had great sound, and the features, especially the bass enhancer, were great. Now, over time, it has really started to decline in performance. When held vertically, the cd hits the lid and makes weird sounds. The cd also spontaneously stops playing and stalls. The remote is really great, though. It is really convenient. The player has taken only moderate abuse in my backpack, yet it still frequently has problems. The extra batteries also is great, giving great battery life, but it dangles. If you do buy this cd player, get new headphones.

Similar Products Used:

Philips

g protection remote lcd screen battery life design light and compact rechargable batteries carrying case

headphones sound quality...minimum

for all those people who gave this product such a low rating...you got a lemon. ive had mine for 1.5+ years and it great. it never skips, the battery life is forever, looks good, handy remote, etc. the headphones suck...but dont they always when you dont buy it separately, sound quality isnt the best...you dont get the long lasting battery life for free, and distortion at high volumes...but most of us want our hearing intact later on in life. as for the extra battery case, who cares the battery life is long as it is.

small, looks good, long battery life

quality

mine crapped out on me at a little over the 12 month point. this means no work on it is covered under the warranty, if you don't know already sony customer service is a joke. they want to charge me $80 plus parts for the repair. the problem is that the player constintly tries to bring the eye in. this happens when the eye is as far in a possible. the problem is not mechanical, it is an electronic error, therefore i cannot fix it. before it broke it didn't perform as it should have. occasonally when i pressed pause, and then tried to resume playing, all that i heard was static. this would only cease if i pressed stop on the player. overall it was a good discman until it broke.

Similar Products Used:

many

Price, bought it for $59.99 open box. Great remote, backlit is a big plus. Aluminum lid is slick, battery life is good, could probably even outlive Liz Taylor... neah, that dinosaur will be around longer. NEVER skipped on me even when playing CDRs.

Bass is a little distorted and under boosted, Sony sacrificed great sound with extending the battery life.

I bought this unit for $60 from the Good Guys as an open box item. It was the 1st week of the new year and they were clearing out inventory, NO ONE beats the Good Guys on open box prices.

Since my sister's car broke down, i've been taking the bus and I wanted to have music while I communte. I hate holding the unit coz I don't want to be holding something while walking around.

Thanks to the remote on this unit, I keep the player in my back pack and just clip the controller on my collar. VERY VERY convenient. People bump into me, I run up/down stairs and still NEVER skipped on my once.

I use it about 4-5 hours a day for a whole week and the batteries last for about a week and a half, 50 hours is well worth it.

Sony did have to sacrifice sound quality for battery life. Having great bass response would definately eat up them Alkalines. What Sony did here is pretty smart. Unlike most CD players that spins the CD the whole time, this player spins and loads about a minutes worth of music in it's memory and stops for about 40 seconds. Now in comparison for a song that is 5 minutes long, this player only spins for about 1 min. while most other players spin the whole time. Not only does it prevent skipping, it also saves batteries... Thank You SONY, you have some great engineers.


For $120, this CD player is a fair deal, but for the $60 I paid for it's a steal!

Similar Products Used:

Sony Discman 885 or something, the car discmand with the wireless remote, this one blows the 815 away in sound quality but a little bulky.

Astounding Battery Life
Slim Design
Unit Uses AA Batteries (Not the proprietary "gumstick" type)
Very Good Sound (except at maximum volume)
Lighted Display and Advanced Controls on both Remote and Unit
Skip-Free G-Protection Performance
Metal (not plastic) Top Cover
Resume Feature works properly (resumes play exactly where you manually stopped playback at)
Remote accepts any stereo headphones that have a standard mini-plug (not a proprietary micro-plug, and not permanently hard-wired onto the supplied headphones)

Neither G-Protection nor Resume can be manually turned off
External AA battery holder (though can be used to extend continuous playback) doesn't attach to player except at the DC input; it just dangles around
Mediocre-sounding supplied headphones

This is a bit expensive for a portable CD player, but it is the best value in Sony's "CD Walkman with G-Protection" line. The sound quality is good, for the most part, but distortion at high frequencies can be heard at maximum volume. And I tried... and tried... and tried to get the player to skip, but I couldn't. In fact, you'll have to get this CD player run over by a train just to get it to skip.

The remote that comes with this CD player is handy, especially if you always keep the CD player unit inside a carrying bag. Kudos to Sony for incorporating a standard stereo mini-plug in the remote, so you can plug in your favorite set of headphones (I use Grado SR-60's and Sony MDR-E888LP's with this unit) rather than the crappy Sony MDR-24SP muff-type headphones that come with the version of the D-EJ815 marketed in the U.S. (the same CD player marketed in other countries come with the equally crappy MDR-E805SP earbuds). The remote duplicates all the features that can be enabled on the unit itself - a wise design decision (the higher-end Sony portable CD players - the D-EJ915 and the D-EJ01 - have neither a display nor secondary controls on their units, only on their remotes; if you lose the remote with those models, you can't access the advanced features such as MegaBass, and you can't see the track being played).

The Resume feature is far better implemented on this Sony than on either of the Panasonic portable CD players that I had used. The Sony always resumes playback from the exact point where you left off and in the exact same playback mode where you left off (normal, Repeat, Shuffle or Program); the Panasonics' feature resumes playback at the beginning of the track that you had manually stopped, and if either Panasonic CD player is completely off (including the display), then the Resume Play overrides your previous playback mode settings and switches to the "Repeat entire disc" mode. Too bad there is no way to turn off the Sony's Resume feature, but resetting the Sony to begin play from the beginning of the disc is easy: Simply open and close the lid without removing the disc.

I have yet to measure alkaline-battery life with the batteries in the unit alone, but I did measure it with a pair of rechargeable RadioShack 1500mAh NiMH AA cells: The player ran for an astounding 27 hours between charges.

Overall, the Sony D-EJ815 is well worth considering. I thought I would never buy another Sony portable CD player after my D-E301 pooped out after just over a year, but after I used two Panasonics that weren't quite as easy to use as the Sonys, I went straight for a high-end Sony model. This unit is way better than the piece-of-cr@p low-end Sony models I had demoed.

Similar Products Used:

Panasonic SL-S231C, SL-SW850; Sony D-E301

G-Protection, long battery life, remote

Sound quality not as good as some other portable CD players

I bought this CD player almost two months ago, and I initially liked the player. But now, I found out that its headphone output is very weak (to save batteries) - it can barely drive the cheesy headphones that come supplied with the unit. Also, it clips on bass-heavy music at most volume levels, and on other types of music at the maximum volume setting.

I also tried the "Line Out/Optical" on the unit, and the sound out of that output is all too typical of recent Sony portable CD players: hollow and tinny. What a disappointment for a model that sells at retail for $150! My Panasonic Shockwave Metal unit doesn't perform as bad as this one!

I think I will sell off this unit, and since my Panasonic Shockwave Metal SL-SW850 is on its last legs, I will buy either its successor model (SL-SW860) or the "non-Shockwave" SL-CT470.

My overall rating for the Sony D-EJ815 is now:

Looks/physical qualities and poteintial for great battery life

See review...

Alright, I got this PCDP back in the days I thought my Jensen street styles were the most amazing thing on the planet (good thing those costed the low low price of free).

Onto the review:

I immediately chucked the stock headphones on the unit knowing it sucked and my street style was far superior (hey it was...) and started listening... but that was when I thought "It couldn't get better than this". I've got some Grado SR80s and some Sony EX70s for them now and here are my impressions of the cdp...

Look & Feel:
It looks slim, certainly is nice to look at and when in public it looks like you outclass everyone with such a shiny looking CDP... nice and slim, all that stuff Sony is actually good at. Aluminum case is nice (though I wish the whole thing was aluminum) and it fits easily anywhere (like my pockets). It feels pretty solid too, due to the aluminum casing...

Sound:
The sound quality, is, well, mediocre. A mere 5mw x2 outputs are featured as its wimpy amplifier (but hey, you need to cut corners to get high battery life). Lack of liveliness is present and the highs are unnatural. It all sounds 'closed'. Megabass varies with the headphone you use, with my Grados, megabass level 1 is good, though with my ex70s any megabass will make the whole experience sound boomy. Double megabass is overkill, sounds very poor. However when using the unit as a transport, it is pretty decent (skips the crapo amplifiers).

Physical Quality:
Sure it is aluminum but the interior just sucks. It does not accomodate the cd properly, if I shake it a certain way I can scratch the cd on the cd player, you can even hear the scratching noise. The unit also has a bad habit of screwing up reading the cd and outputting static when it is held a certain way for a while. This usually happens when I put it in a bag of some sort, or my pocket, you have to keep the unit facing upwards/vertical to make this not happen.

Battery life:
Battery life is good, once you get some NiMH or alkaline batteries that is.

Features:
First off the stock headphone incldued deserves to be burnt to a crisp, some feature there, included headphones... The remote is unfortunately not aluminum, it feels pretty shoddy in construction but works well. The back lit LCD is cool... recharge circiut is nifty... I wish it had equalizers or something like that so I can tweak the sound a bit.

Overall it is definetely not worth it for the money, I somehow wished i bought the much cheaper Panasonic 470 portable which gets good reviews.

I wouldn't recommend this pcdp but I wouldn't say it absolutely sucks... Now I just need to wait for it to break (like the infamous headphone jack of Sony pcdps breaking) so I can buy a better pcdp.

G-Protection, Remote, Thinness/design

battery life on two batteries, sound,

Everything is good but the quality. I bought a pair of Sony 50 dollar headphones (MDR-V300) and when I use it with the Cd player, the sound only comes from the left ear. I dont know whether it's the cd player or the headphones. And the player will freeze on me sometimes. It'll just stop, and i gotta turn the system off, then off again, then back on. Its a real pain. Plus Either its the headphones again or the player but but real loud static will come out without music.

Very long battery life,
Doesn't skip (I'd refuse to buy a cd player that does),
Very good sound quality,
Looks great,
Very light weight & compact

Why the hell do you need a remote, if the thing is so small you'll carry it around anyway ? Waste of money !
The display is in murky blue on murky blue, which isn't the most readable.
Second battery case is just hanging around & doesn't attach to the unit, which makes it unusable
Distortion at high volumes.

I'm a bit of an audio fan and I'd spend quite some money on equipment that will make my several hours a day of listening an experience to look forward to. But when I moved to L.A. for 3 months, it wasn't really worth moving all my equipment and converting all of them to 110V. Getting frustrated after 2 weeks, I decided to go for a discman with a *good* set of headphones. I ended up buying this one, because I felt a bit weird heading for the twice as expensive D-EJ01 immediately. I combine this cd player with a Sennheiser 570 that I payed the same price for. I must say that I'm not disappointed at all !

I listen to everything from classical to death metal, but most of what I listen to needs a really good sound system to be enjoyable. Not the death metal, of course, but classical, jazz, electronic music and some pieces of rock do. Specially with the more quiet music, the player is really enjoyable. While the headphones might be a bit bright, the cd player brings out all the detail that's on the record. Even yesterday, I was listening to a piece for 12 cellos. While not each of the instruments is easily identified, the music really sings. The combination of this player with the Sennheiser makes for a pretty detailed, but mainly very musical experience.

At very high volumes, which are sometimes necessary because the headphones are 64 Ohms, the unit starts distorting quite dramatically, which is a shame.

Similar Products Used:

None, I usually listen to full stereos

Sound, battery life, design, slim, remote, backlit display

headphones it comes with, mega bass

This is a great player, never skips, no distortion except at maximum volume with bass turned all the way up. It is very slim and light. The backlit display kicks @$$. The remote is very good, and well laid out. My only gripes are this: get some new headphones, the ones that come with it suck big time. Also the mega bass sucks, dont use it. Also the leather case that comes with it is good, but the cd player doesnt seem to fit all the way. But other than that, this player is very good, and I think it is a great purchase. The whole cd player comes with a remote, headphones, leather case, adapter, 2 rechargeable batteries, external battery pack (which brings the battery life to 76 hours). It plays cd-r's, and has never skipped on me, NEVER!!

Similar Products Used:

Sony D-EJ611