Having recently purchased a JB-980 and the MDX-65
I felt compelled to purchase a portable. The MZ-
E55 is amazingly small- being only slightly
larger than the minidisc itself and only perhaps
1/2" thick. I was able to buy it for $99 at a
local chain electronics store. I've had it for at
least 8 months and use it several times a week
and it has performed perfectly. Analog cassettes
are no longer being used in my home.
It comes with a single NI-MH "stick" battery, the
charger, some bud phones, a thin storage pouch,
an auxiliary battery holder for a convention AA
battery. Battery life is at least 6 hours on the
NIMH stick. With the extra AA, that goes to 15-16
hours. The controls include bass-boost, standard
playback modes (shuffle, continuous, normal), a
volume limiting system. The stick remote
controller has an LCD display that has the basic
information- playback mode, battery status. If
you program song titles- you will get a scrolling
screen that displays these stored titles.
Drawbacks? Yeah there are some. The bud phones
are a joke, at least for me. I purchased an
inexpensive set of normal phones to use. The
stick battery is very expensive to replace-
something like $35. While the aux battery works
fine, it looks something like an afterthought,
piggybacking on the side. The battery door looks
suspiciously flimsy, as if the snap retention is
going to stop holding it closed with repeated
use. I've seen some newer models use an onboard
AA battery, but creating a thicker overall
enclosure to accomodate it. I never used the
pouch, but hey, it's free.
On a 1-10 scale, I'd give it a 7.