I was deployed to Kuwait/Iraq earlier this year and decided to pick one of these up in the states at my mobe station before flying out here (I'm still here). I have a lot of mixed feelings with this product. I have also put this product through endless abuse and have a good idea of its downfalls.
The two places I use this player is indoors, in barracks but usually in a living tent. The other place is on missions, I bring this in the hummer or whatever vehicle I'm in to listen to music on long drives (since we don't normally get radios in the vehicles). On these trips, the system has to put up with hot weather ranging from dry to very humid, a lot of dust and sand (sometimes in sandstorms), exposure to sun, and long operation (sometimes over 8 hours in a day).
The system has mostly held up. Indoors, the sound is pretty decent and has some good bass. My biggest complaint with the sound is lack of eq control. On trips, with all the background noise and movement, the ESP holds up really well (hardly ever skips), turning off the bass-boost clears up the sound at loud volumes, and the jog stick works well. One problem that I have had in the past few months though, is that it starts acting up sometimes and will skip on any CD. It doesn't always do this, but there have been a few days where it just couldn't play a CD without severe skipping throughout each track. It seems to get worst on the final tracks. Indoors, it rarely does this. The headphone amp works great, I can crank up the volume pretty high on some high power consumption headphones with no problem. The jog stick comes in handy at night or when I'm not looking.
By far the biggest problem is reading mp3 files and CDRs. My unit has read certain mp3 discs ok, but it has problems reading a lot of my mp3 discs. It also has problems with the slightest spec of dust. Even with some brand new burnt CDs it has problems. I have a Philips exp431 mini cd mp3 player, and it can read the same CDs much better. If there are any scratches, it can skip over them and will never skip since it reads the whole file at once rather than continuously spinning and reading like the Sony does. If the Sony gets caught on an mp3 file, it emits a horrible hissing and scratching sound and often locks up or freezes on the file. It gets annoying. If this system could read files like my other mp3 player and hold up on other CDRs without skipping, it would get 5 stars. I almost wish I bought the Philips mp3 boombox instead. It doesn't look like it can handle as much abuse, but I feel that their method of reading mp3s is far superior.
The units took a lot of beatings, dirt, water, moisture, and heat, and it still works. If you are looking for a really tough CD boombox and don't care for mp3s so much, then buy it. Out here, we have seen a lot of other boomboxes and mp3 boomboxes from companies like RCA and cheap brands sold in the PX that couldn't hold up in the conditions out here and quickly broke.
I was deployed to Kuwait/Iraq earlier this year and decided to pick one of these up in the states at my mobe station before flying out here (I'm still here). I have a lot of mixed feelings with this product. I have also put this product through endless abuse and have a good idea of its downfalls. The two places I use this player is indoors, in barracks but usually in a living tent. The other place is on missions, I bring this in the hummer or whatever vehicle I'm in to listen to music on long drives (since we don't normally get radios in the vehicles). On these trips, the system has to put up with hot weather ranging from dry to very humid, a lot of dust and sand (sometimes in sandstorms), exposure to sun, and long operation (sometimes over 8 hours in a day). The system has mostly held up. Indoors, the sound is pretty decent and has some good bass. My biggest complaint with the sound is lack of eq control. On trips, with all the background noise and movement, the ESP holds up really well (hardly ever skips), turning off the bass-boost clears up the sound at loud volumes, and the jog stick works well. One problem that I have had in the past few months though, is that it starts acting up sometimes and will skip on any CD. It doesn't always do this, but there have been a few days where it just couldn't play a CD without severe skipping throughout each track. It seems to get worst on the final tracks. Indoors, it rarely does this. The headphone amp works great, I can crank up the volume pretty high on some high power consumption headphones with no problem. The jog stick comes in handy at night or when I'm not looking. By far the biggest problem is reading mp3 files and CDRs. My unit has read certain mp3 discs ok, but it has problems reading a lot of my mp3 discs. It also has problems with the slightest spec of dust. Even with some brand new burnt CDs it has problems. I have a Philips exp431 mini cd mp3 player, and it can read the same CDs much better. If there are any scratches, it can skip over them and will never skip since it reads the whole file at once rather than continuously spinning and reading like the Sony does. If the Sony gets caught on an mp3 file, it emits a horrible hissing and scratching sound and often locks up or freezes on the file. It gets annoying. If this system could read files like my other mp3 player and hold up on other CDRs without skipping, it would get 5 stars. I almost wish I bought the Philips mp3 boombox instead. It doesn't look like it can handle as much abuse, but I feel that their method of reading mp3s is far superior. The units took a lot of beatings, dirt, water, moisture, and heat, and it still works. If you are looking for a really tough CD boombox and don't care for mp3s so much, then buy it. Out here, we have seen a lot of other boomboxes and mp3 boomboxes from companies like RCA and cheap brands sold in the PX that couldn't hold up in the conditions out here and quickly broke.