Philips eXpanium 431
It's small in size, and only works with 8cm CD-R/RW media, but the Exp 431 has a large feature set on offer.The Philips eXpandium exp 431 is a stylish looking miniature MP3/CD player that is sure to grab attention from users who don't like the bulk of the larger MP3/CD players on the market. At 90mm x 20mm x 95mm) users will find it fits nicely in most pockets without being too distracting. This little player only plays 8cm CD-R and CD-RW disks, which are a little harder to get hold of than standard CD-R/RW media, and a touch more expensive. They hold approximately 180MB of MP3's, which should translate into roughly 45 songs compressed at 128kbps.
One advantage of solid state and hard disk MP3 players over MP3 CD players are that they are theoretically skip free. The eXpandium exp 431 combats this with a claimed 8 minute electronic skip protection (ESP). We tested this out by extensively bumping and dropping the device and found it surprisingly enough, quite flawless.
The player has a set of buttons that will allow users to complete basic playback functionality but also allows a welcomed feature that allows one to make a -favorites" list from a disc full of MP3's. The remote control supplied featured only the basic playback functionality. While the remote is nice to have the buttons do take a little getting used to as they seem rather cumbersome and quite unnatural. Both the player and remote featured an LCD screen that shows track number, album number, track name, battery level and playback mode. This marks the 431 out from the other two Philips players in our roundup, both of which are only capable of displaying track numbers but not names.
The sound quality produced from the eXpandium exp 431's bud headphones was decent, although there's no type of graphic equalization for users to customise their listening experience. Philips claims that the unit is flash-upgradeable to support future audio formats.
In all the Philips eXpandium exp 431 is a fun little device that is a welcome relief from the other tank like CD MP3 players on the market but is also much more expensive. At AU$499 it's approaching the price of some of the hard drive based players in our review, and coupled with the more expensive nature of 8cm CD-R/RW media, it's hard to overly recommend the Expanium 431 unless you already happen to have a lot of audio stored in this rather niche format.
Philips eXpanium exp 431
Company: Philips
Price: AU$499
Distributor: Selected resellers
Phone: 1800 009 300
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Hi! I recently put a Sony MZ-N510 on layby of $350. It's my first update sine a discman. Should I keep it or find another one? Any comments are more than welcome! Thanks!