Too Neat To Pass Up!

Recently, I took a trip to Japan to do the tourist thing, and well, one can't visit the electronic capital of the world without taking home at least some gadgets for himself. One of the gadgets that I chose to take home was the D-E01. I was standing there in the store looking at the two top end models. One was US$190 and the other was US$290. I stood there for so long that the store almost closed on me so in a panicked decision, I chose the $290 one, thinking that it be a model that wasn't available in the US. Well, ends up that it is available here. However, the people there were nice and gave me a discount since I was American, so I got the CD player for $270, which is considerably less for what it goes for here.
Well, I am surprised at the quality and everything about the D-E01, especially the shock protection, which they call G-Protection. My last portable CD player was a Sony D-465. That was a $200 player and had 20 ESP, which was pretty good back then. Well, the shock protection that they have now is much better. The old ESP used to suck up batteries in about two hours. And if you kept the CD player in a shoulder bag or somewhere else where it was constantly being jolted, it would eventually skip, and continue skipping until you stopped walking or pulled the CD player out and held it. How long until you stopped depended on how many second ESP you had. I had 20 second and they got it up to 40 second, but I think Sony has solved that problem now with G-Protection.

During my whole trip in Japan, and China afterwards, too, the D-E01 didn't skip once. And well, you know about the tourist thing: you probably leave the country having walked enough miles to cross it. Especially China. Well, my CD player was in my bag the whole time, smacking against my hip, and the cd player never skipped.

The batteries last a long time too. I've only recharged the CD player twice, not including the first charge, since I bought it 2 months ago. While in Japan, I wanted to fully discharge the battery before recharging it again, so seeing that the battery had only 1/4 power left, I let the CD player run by itself, with an optical cable plugged into it so that the laser inside would also be on to drain more power, for almost two hours. Seeing that the battery wouldn't die anytime soon, I went to bed. The battery ran strong for another 4 tourist days before finally dying. By then, I was in China. The two Ni-MH batteries that come with the CD player really surprised me. They also supply you with a backup battery holder which hold two AA batteries, but I haven't used it yet.
The CD player holder that they give you is pretty cool, too. It holds the backup battery holder and has velcro to hold the wire from it, the CD player, a pocket specifically to hold CDs w/o the cases, and another pocket to hold misc. stuff.

The remote is really nice compared to other Sony CD remotes. Since it is their 15th anniversary CD player, they made it a little different. Instead of the usual indiglo remotes, the remote for the D-E01 glows a red-orange color. It's hard to describe. When it's not glowing, the remote display is a iridescent blue. All the functions of the CD player are controllable from the remote. In fact, the remote has more buttons than the CD player does. One nice touch that they put on the remote is that the clip on the back can swivel 360 degrees so you can clip it almost anywhere. And of course, all connections are gold plated.
As for the slide-in mechanism, when I read about it about a year ago, I thought Sony was going to put a motorized type of thing on a CD player. The mechanical one that they put on is pretty cool, too, though. It works well, and I haven't had any real problems with it. The only problem I've had is sometimes the CD won't go in properly so I have to eject it an pop it back in, but that doesn't really happen often and it's not that big of a problem.

The sound quality on the D-E01 is great for a portable CD player and earbud headphones, but being an audiofreak, I prefer a little more bass, so I've used over-the-ear headphones most of the time with the CD player. The output of the CD player to external devices is of professional quality if the optical output is used.

If I were to change anything on this CD player, I'd make it a little thinner and lighter. And maybe a display on the CD player itself, but that's not really necessary. A little lighter and thinner would be nice though. But I'm saying that because this is supposed to be their flagship CD player. They have lower models that are thinner and lighter, but I guess that's because they don't have the slide-in loading. The CD player isn't really heavy at all, nor is it thick. In fact, it's thinner and lighter than my previous CD player, but I guess what I'm expecting from the engineers at Sony to pop out is a CD player that fits on your keychain, is operated by voice command, and is powered by body heat. Well, this CD player will do very nicely for the time being. Until then, dream on!