Sony Walkman D-E350 Personal CD Player

I picked up my D-E350 at Best Buy for $45. My old RCA CD player had stopped working after only a couple months, so I decided to go with a player from the more reliable Sony. First off, the sound from this player is great. There is no static or other noises to worry about. The behind-the-neck headphones, while not fancy, serve their purpose well and are much more comfortable than the over the head ones that come with other CD players. The player itself is small enough to carry in a cargo or jacket pocket, and can be held with one hand by most people. It's been knocked around in my backpack and dropped numerous times but still works like a charm.

The Sony has all the basic features of a portable CD player, which is all that most people need. It has 3 levels of bass than you can adjust to your liking. It also has Repeat, Repeat All, Shuffle, Scan and a feature that will shut off the player after the current track finishes. The Hold feature prevents you from accidentally changing tracks or stopping, and is a simple switch on the front of the player. Volume is controlled by a + and - button, instead of those annoying little black spinning things.

The D-E350 doesn't suck down its AA's like many other players, I can usually go 15 hours or so before I have to pop a new pair in. With ESP on, the batteries go down faster, but the player is virtually skip-free even without ESP on. One thing that I find annoying is the inaccuracy of the battery meter. The meter will be full for most of the battery life, then in a matter of minutes the meter goes down and the LoBatt message appears. Although not a major issue, it can be annoying if you decided not to bring extra batteries, and then it runs out.

Sony decided to eliminate the pause button and replace it with the Stop button. Instead of pausing, you hit Stop, and the player remembers where you were on a track. When you hit play again, it automatically goes to where you left off. Although its a good idea, the player usually takes a long time to actually start playing after you push Play, and if you open the lid it loses the memory of where you were.

Despite these minor issues, the D-E350 is a great little CD player. It is stylish, not big and blocky like some others. It sounds great, is easy to use, and doesn't drain batteries. The headphones also sound good and are comfortable. I've had it for a year now and it still works like it was new.