Sony D-FJ041 CD Walkman Portable CD Player with AM/FM Tuner by Sony
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Digital camera reviews of Sony D-FJ041 CD Walkman Portable CD Player with AM/FM Tuner
Digital camera Review: Initially: So-so. Eventually: Junk
Summary: 1 Stars
Initially this player was rated three stars (read the whole review below).
Pros:
- Cheap (was! at $34; price went up since: no longer cheap)
- Fairly sturdy
- Adequately functional
- Easy to use
- Acceptable battery life (couple of days, ~ a dozen CDs).
- Remembers where was stopped; when turned on again, continues from there.
- Can be fast-forwarded/rewinded kinda like the tape, in a continuous fashion with aural feedback, not just skip to the next/previous track (this is a very good feature if you want to listen again to a small fragment, just a few bars).
Cons:
1. Dull, muddy sound. Come to think of it, the same more or less can be said about every other Sony piece I've had. It can be somewhat alleviated by replacing earplugs (toss the earplugs that come with this piece w/o even trying: I had old Philips earplugs laying around -- nothing hi-fi, mind you -- and they improved the sound by an order of magnitude; earplugs that come bundled with this Walman are an abomination, maybe good for AM radio but no more than that; what they do with music isn't even funny).
2. Power supply: the manual demands that you use a particular kind -- Sony AC-E45HG -- and nothing else; this particular device isn't sold in the US! A brilliant business move, I say. I had to buy another, similar power supply (Sony AC-E45A; there's also a a simpler version) that, strictly speaking, is not recommended as it produces loud hum on AM (though otherwise it works fine, so far at least). I don't care for AM so this is an acceptable compromise, but come on, difficulty getting a power supply in this day and age? Btw, I have about five billion power supplies in my house, many of them with the correct voltage, but none of them fits this Walkman's socket, with or without a polarity switching adapter (I have a pile of those too), so they want you to buy one more power supply -- from them. Add $20 to the cost of this player -- oops, not so cheap anymore.
Bottomline: does the job, OK purchase, not great.
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Added on 06/06/2010: now nearly a year later, I feel I must, regrettably, add one more "con": the piece is temperamental. A recurring (not too often, thankfully) problem -- it starts skipping, completely out of the blue, on tracks that it just played fine, on pristine CDs. This cannot be because of being shaken, 'cause it's immobile: I'm using this thing in bed, 'cause I'm frequently up at night. Skipping back to the beginning of the track usually solves the problem; if not, then shutting the player off and restarting; if not, then pulling out the power cable does... it's like it wants a hard reboot, or something. Yesterday it got stuck when looping (you can set it to loop over a track; usually it does it fine, but here it played the track twice and then simply stopped as if unsure what to do next; turning it off and back on fixed the problem). I don't think I'd buy it today, even without the absurd price increase I see on this page.
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Added on 10/02/2010: after I posted previous update it quit skipping. Probably read my criticisms here and decided to behave!
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10/21/2010: sporadic skips are back + now the player sometimes thinks there's no disk in it -- even after just playing this disk when I want to play it again and push the start button after the machine turned itself off having finished the previous play-through. Strange piece, really.
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11/07/2010: The player makes noise (always did): first, it makes a soft but distinct burp-like sound usually heard when skipping from track to track, or restarting the player; this is probably the lens moving along the worm screw it rides. OK, other than the noise it doesn't seem to cause any harm. Worse is the other thing: some CDs make the player rattle rather loudly (heard even with the headphones on, music playing). These CDs tend to skip! Not only these, but these definitely do! CDs themselves couldn't be at fault though: some of the "rattlers" were brand-new, impeccable, just taken out of a shrink-wrapped box.
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12/18/2010: A new kind of rattle appeared; this time it comes from inside. The player works despite this rattle, but... I'll post an update if it kicks the bucket.
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02/06/2011: Tada! The thing kicked the bucket: the spindle seized (the radio still works, of course, but who needs it, I never listened to it once via this player). So what we've got here is about a year and a half of (stationary, w/ power supply) use till the death of a major mechanical failure; though never perfect (random skips from the very beginning), the player worked acceptably for about half of that term; then a continuously increasing bad health, after which it "bought the farm". I have to bring the starrage all the way down since this is not what I expect from a piece of consumer electronics these days. I expect to replace these things due to obsolescence, not failure -- and I don't expect them to be "temperamental" from the very beginning. And what am I gonna do with the stupid power supply Sony forced me to buy for it?
OK, so the final conclusion to this sad chronicle is: NO BUY. I can't see on what grounds anyone could recommend this piece. Come to think of it, I've consistently had better luck with cheap no-name items from the local small stores. I did return one cassette player (years ago) but that was due to inadequate functionality (battery life), not failure. My overall experience with Sony products has been discouraging, I must say (I've had some components systems too: all had mediocre sound and, although they lasted longer than this junk here, all eventually broke down due to mechanical failures in the CD player or the changer mechanism). Well, so that's that. No buy.
Digital camera Review: It works, but why the tiny unreadable labels and NO power-supply?
Summary: 2 Stars
Comes with very rudimentary instructions. Three times the space is given to limited liability and limited warranty. I guess I should have expected no power supply but it would have been nice to tell me where i can get one. Like everything else in the electronic gadget business, the labels of the control buttons are nearly impossible to read unless you are 20 years old with 20/20 vision. If somebody started designing gadgets that older ADULTS can easily use, they;d make a huge fortune.Digital camera Review: Nice CD player
Summary: 4 Stars
For people who don't know how to use i tunes this is a great alternative. Unfortunately the radio doesn't get many signals where we live.Digital camera Review: Not Available
Summary: 5 Stars
This is the type of product that I was looking for, however, a few days after ordering the seller told me that he was out of stock. My money was refunded properly.Digital camera Review: Perfect for my needs!
Summary: 5 Stars
Just needed a simple walkman to play my audio books and/or listen to the radio while I garden or do needlework. Count on Sony for quality! I'm loving mine!