First off, let me say that this thing is TINY! It is just barely smaller than two MD cases stacked together. However, despite its small size, it feels very sturdy. The body is some type of Magnesium Alloy, and it feels quite solid. Even though the buttons on the unit are tiny (smaller around than a drinking straw), they are placed in a good spot and can be easily manipulated. They are well spaced, so it is not hard to avoid pushing the wrong button. The unit is very light! Also, I'm told that the rechargable battery will last for ~16 hours, and a AA battery for ~24. Both can be used for ~40 hours of battery life!
As far as sound quality goes, the player is excellent. The audio response is great, and even at full volume (which is very loud!) the unit is DEAD SILENT between tracks. There is no hiss, or white noise. There is one Bass Boost setting which adds a nice rich low end. HOWEVER, for those of you who like real massive bass, this might not be sufficient.
The supplied headphones, although they look kind of weird, are actually quite nice. Listening to a Marvin Gaye MD, at high volume with the XBass setting on, there was no distortion. I'm sure with the Koss 35s everyone is raving about, it's even better.
The remote is also quite small. It's about 90% as big as the old sony remotes found on the MZ-30 etc. It is also very thin. There is no clip on the remote. Instead, there is a strong metal(?) clip that attaches to the headphone cord. The clip is small, but opens wide enough to clamp firmly onto my winter coat. It's a little different, but a nice feature. The remote is backlit, and although the buttons are small, they are pretty easy to use.
My unit came with the rechargable battery, tote bag, battery charger, external DC battery pack, 1 AA battery, Remote, Headphones, and remote clip. I purchased it from ESM, and got it right on time.
This is a great unit, and for those of you looking for a really small MD player, I'd say you can't get much better than this!
I bought my Panasonic portable MD player couples
of days ago. First I was impressed by its so
fu^*"ng small size. This unit really is portable.
Yeah, everybody is raving about the size of this
player..."the smallest in the world"... yeah...
right... but great portability is not enough to
make a GREAT MD player!
Now I'm not going to spend my time to tell you
everything about battery life, remote control,
functions, dimensions, supplied headphones or any
other things that you can find in WWW. I'd prefer
that sound quality is the most important thing in
audio players.
Is the size the only great thing in this player?
No, absolutely not. I think that if you use good
Hi-fi headphones Panasonic sounds as great as MD
(and ATRAC)technology allows. Everything that is
recorded to Minidisc you can hear and anything
that isn't recorded you can't hear. That's the
way it should be and that's the way it is. Of
course the result is not the same by using
supplied headphones. If someone wants to use bass
boost and likes bass boosted music I'd say that
this unit's bass boost option works pretty well.
I'm not the best person to tell you something
about XBS (or what ever it was) because I never
use anything that changes frequency responce.
I've never tested any audio player where some
kind of bass boost wouldn't make it sound worse.
Panasonic SJ-MJ70 is truly worth of its prize.
I'm very satisfied with it!!