Sony MZ-R55

This was the first portable MD recorder I purchased and I didn't quite realise how mediocre it was until it broke and I got a new player.

My MZR-55 broke after just over a year of me having it - 1 month outside the warrenty. After doing some research on the Net, I discovered that this was unnervingly common and quite a few people had similar "MZR-55 sudden death" incidents, despite treating the unit well.

Having forked out nearly £200 for it at the time and being told that to repair it would cost at least £100, I vowed not to buy Sony MD products again and to sink my cash into a new setup. I got a Panasonic player-only unit and a Yamaha MD deck for recording.

Invariably, this'll end up being something of an unfair comparison (as the Sony is a recorder while my Panasonic is player-only). My Panasonic player feels like a feather compared to the Sony, is significantly smaller, has noticably superior sound quality and a battery life of 15+ hours (still going strong after 2 years) verses the Sony's 3 hours (which seems to drop to more like 2 after a year or so).

I cringe when listening to recordings I made with the Sony. It is a blurry, muddy and mushy sound verses the crispness and detail of the Panasonic/Yamaha combo. While this combo is obviously not the last word in performance by any means, it puts the Sony to shame in all departments.

The moral of the story? Buy a fixed MD recorder deck and a decent player-only MD portable if you want decent performance and avoid Sony (or buy a good extended warrenty).

This little minidisc recorder is so small it fits on the palm of your hand or neatly in your shirt pocket. The functioning of the Sony MD Walkman MZ-R55 is fairly straightforward for normal operation, but some of the more advanced features are somewhat confusing at first and take some getting used to. The unit runs of a single 'chewing gum' sized rechargeable battery call which gives about 3 hours of playing time on average, although there is an external battery holder which takes two standard AA batteries and gives up to an additional 6 hours playing time. Battery life is clearly shown on the LCD and alarm warnings given when the battery is close to failure. The recording operation is fairly straight forward, and you can record from any audio source with a standard 2.5mm jack plug line out, or from a digital source with the optical digital cable. There is also a USB PC adapter available which lets you record MP3's and other audio files which is very useful. The sound quality is as you would expect from a Sony CD product, very high quality. I have found the sound quality is at its best when using the novel Sony colapsable 'in ear' headphones, which are supplied only with units sold in US I believe. Although this model is rather old and no longer being made, they are still sought after. All in all a worthwhile buy if you happen to find one for forsale which is fully complete with its accessories.