Philips MP3 CD Personal EXP220

My first impression is that it is solidly made and attractively styled - looking less like a plastic Frisbee than the majority of players. The controls have a positive feel and the display is clear, although it does only show track/album numbers rather than their names. The display is not backlit, but if it was it would surely increase battery consumption. The player operates quietly and never skipped a track on either pre-recorded CDs or MP3 CDs that I had burned myself.

The sound quality of this player is fair through the supplied headphones, which are not especially good. However, connecting a pair of Sennheiser HD570 headphones (£70) revealed that this player is capable of producing excellent sound quality. I do not like artificial bass boost so would not use it - there is plenty of real bass with a good pair of headphones.

Overall, very good, especially as I bought it from Richer Sounds at the bargain price of £19.95!

1) The only changeable settings are the bass (whereas the Rio Volt had endless presets and tweakable options such as bass and treble).

2) The screen doesn't display MP3 names, only track numbers. And it's not backlit.

3) Between tracks, the player makes a horrible clicking sound, like you've eaten too many of those crackling sweets you ate when you were a kid.

4) The player would intermittently skip between tracks, even when placed in a horizontal, non-shaking position.

5) It says it's got MAGIC skip protection on the front. I don't know about you but I prefer PROVEN SCIENCE to MAGIC.

It's well built, but that's all there is to recommend about it. Only buy if you want a headache.

In brief, this is a stunningly poor product, made all the more surprising, given that it comes from the commercial innovators of the CD. Its principal failings are as follows,

1) It skips - badly. This unit cannot cope with even a gentle walking pace without skipping frequently - whatever anti-skip protection is meant to be provided is worse than useless.

2) Build quality is poor - it does have a nice brushed metal top, but the buttons are cheap and "plasticky" and, after 9 months of use, are very hit'n'miss in operation.

3) What idiot decided it was a good idea to put the battery compartment UNDER the disc space???? In order to change batteries, therefore, you have to physically remove any CD that is in the player, to access the battety compartment. To say this is stupid and inconvenient (especially when travelling) is puttting it mildly.

4) When using mp3 discs, the shuffle function is NOT random - that is, a disc full of mp3's will shuffle the tracks from the order they were burnt, but will always plays them in that same sequence. This defeats the purpose of the function, in my view.

5) Criminally, the machine inserts pauses between tracks - this is not especially an issue with most studio albums (though it does spoil segues between tracks), but utterly ruins the flow of live music.

All I hope is that not too many people made the same mistake as me & bought this pathetic excuse for a product; furthermore, I only hope for future consumers that Philips have righted the catalogue of errors they have made with this player, when designing & building any replacement.

Zero out of ten...