Sony MZ-E501 Silver MiniDisc Walkman

The main plus points were
- Looks fantastic
As confirmed by the admiring looks and general interest created when I popped it onto my desk at work.

- Plays LP Minidiscs.
More music per disk means less disks rattling around in my bag. I can record them in this compressed format so I certainly want a player that can play them!

- Has an inbuilt rechargeable battery.
I find this a real bonus as I don't have to keep searching around for back up batteries. The battery life is nice and beefy. Enough for quite a few tube journeys. You can also add on a normal battery to beef the life up even further

- Great Sound
The sound quality is just what you expect from a Sony MD player. A vast improvement on my previous Panasonic player.

- Good controller.
The controller has buttons in logical places which do logical things! The remote controller is simple to use and does all the right things.

- Attractive cradle charger
The player comes with a handy cradle charger which doesn't look out of place next to your hi-fi equipment (very important for girlfriend "thats not going in my flat" considerations!)

Negative points
- Only charges via the cradle.
I often leave a second charger at work to top my MD players up in case I've committed the usual mistake of leaving it playing in my bag. This isn't an option with this player (unless you buy another cradle!)

- Pathetic included headphones
Why? Why are the headphones they include with your expensive new player always so bad? I would have given this player 5 stars if it weren't for the headphones! With my own headphones the player does sound beautiful though!

O.K first of all;

If your going to get a new MD player, always go for a recordable one. Simply becuase buying the prerecorded discs will end up costing you more than buying a recordable one in the first place. Downloading and recording is as cheap as chips!

Secondly:

Make sure that you have a decent pair of headphones or can afford to buy some: the ones that come with the MD player really dont compare to the rest of the machine.

Some really Good points:

.The beatiful, elegent and light MD player fits perfectly into a pocket, and looks really good on your desk or on your lap on the train!

.It comes with a rechargeable battery and a neat little stand to charge it on.

.They can plug into the car and play all your favourite tunes outloud on a basic car stereo.

.The loading and unloading pop up system is flawless.

Some Bad points ( worth considering ):

.The headphones, in my opinion, are almost pointless. ( but they still play the tunes!)

.The charger-come-stand is the only way to chage the batteries, so if you run out and dont have the stand with you, you will need to rely on normal batteries.

If I were you I would definitely go with Sony, all of the Net MD's a ace!, but stay away from other makes unless your spending a lot of money.