Cheap price, cheap durability

We got this unit for long road trips to keep our two kids busy. The sound wasn't great on the unit, but it had a decent picture and played all of the DVD's we had. We treated this unit with extreme care and only adults ever operated it. We used it probably no more than 10 times when it started skipping through some of the DVD's. Shortly afterwards, it stopped playing completely during a movie and then gave the dreaded NO DISC message, even after we swapped out several DVDs to test if it was a specific DVD issue.

It seems that the mechanism to spin the DVD's no longer works. I contacted Coby customer service who were nice enough but lacking on solutions. They suggested unplugging the unit for some time (what that would accomplish, I have no idea since it is unrelated to the spinning mechanism) and to use a lens cleaner. Only problem with the lens cleaner is that it has to SPIN in order to clean the lens, and our player just wasn't spinning. Coby Customer Service had no other remedy or suggestion, other than to try to get some third party to fix it (whose repair price would be greater than what we paid for it) and we are now left with a small square hunk of junk.

Overall, based on reviews of other players I've read, it's extremely hard to find a portable DVD player for under $150 that will last more than a handful of plays. I don't think that we just got a lemon, I think this is true across the board, even for the more well-known name brands. If you don't mind buying a new player every couple of years (or sooner if you're using the unit more often than a few times a year), then these cheaper units are sufficient. We are going to keep looking for that worthwhile investment.