Philips eXpanium EXP303

This player is fantastic. It works superbly as both a CD player and an mp3 player. The kit that comes with it isn't so good - headphones are bad, tape adapter doesn't last long - but so what? All players come with awfull headphones. But if you replace the 'phones with a decent pair the sound quality is more than satisfactory. I've heard better but not without forking over at least twice the price.

But the real clincher for me is longevity. I've had mine more than three years and its still going fine. Its lasted longer than every single other mp3 player I've had put together. And in the time I've had the eXpanium my family has gone through at least five different CD players. An eXpanium will put up with more abuse than any other media player I've encountered.

Got a Philips Expanium EXP303/05 - marvellous player - paid 100 GB pounds but it did come with car adapter kit (audio & power leads) though unfortunately has no line-out like my old Sony Walkman so in-car playback takes a bit of fiddling to get right. Nice layout with the main play buttons sensibly placed. No backlit display. I don't miss the ID tags. This will play long tracks (I have 1 album that I had to burn as a single track at over 40mins with no prob) though the skip forward/reverse is slow (it doesn't get quicker the longer you hold the button down). DBB bass boost works well - though I find I hardly ever need to use it. Never seem to need the ESP (anti-skip) when playing MP3's. I generally use Philips CDR-80 discs (700mB) but it will play those blue TDK ones that cause some DVD's and CD players a problem. I'm running it on Uniross 1700mAh NiMH batteries with no problem (they even seem to last longer than duracell!) battery life is allegedly up to twice that of the 200 series. Has a battery life indicator which is useful. Having read other reviews I suppose the button around the edge (volume, drawer catch, hold/resume) could be a little more proud but I have no problem with them. Shuffle/repeat modes are good. Seems to cope well with various bitrates though I use 192kbs CBR. Slight pause between tracks in MP3 mode, though not as bad s the manual suggested, means life/mix/ambient albums etc are interrupted. Wouldn't be without it. One other unrelated thing - do not touch the Ministry of Sound MP3 players - especially the cheapest one with built in radio - the hiss/noise between and during tracks is unbearable.

Great value for money £49.99 from amazon.co.uk

high quality music play back in mp3 format and can rip upto 12 albums onto 1 disc all sectioned into seperate files for easy play back

I'm not sure what the other products on the market are like.

The Philips eXpanium EXP303 is my first MP3 player. There wasn't a lot of thought put into the purchase. I would like to investigate what features other products of similar price have to offer, after all I have 30 days to take it back.

Overall I think it's quite good and has great sound.

I believe if the few bad points that I found were not an issue to me it would be a lot better.