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Sharp MD MT80
by basketcase00
I bought this Minidisc player/recorder in a sale at Argos for the honest sum of £97.99, which I thought was incredibly good value, and I still believe so. The recorder itself looks average. it has quite a bulky battery compartment, but it does resemble one which can be taken on and off, but the fact that is is attached does ... detract from the aesthetics of the recorder. The LCD display is perfectly good, and shows whichever function the MD is currently performing- whether it be playing or recording.
It does has several features such as repeat and shuffle modes, however these are standard with any MD these days. Also, the cable that comes with the player is an analogue cable as opposed to a digital one, so the recorded music is not digital quality, and the tracks are not automatically separated when recording. This can be annoying, as I found myself sitting for an hour or so having to divide the tracks myself everytime a song finished on the cd, and of course if i misjudged the timing i would have to go back and start again. This was highly frustrating. The anti-shock function also skipped a few times, but with only 40 seconds i should have expected it. Also, the MD does not have an inline remote, so i had to fish it out of my pocket in order to change tracks or change the volume. This did get annoying.
But I'm not trying to paint a bad picture of this MD, as it is a good little recorder, and it does what it says it does. The sound quality is good when digitally recorded, the volume is loud enough for me (and that's pretty loud) and it is not too heavy or cumbersome. The MD comes with earphones also, which are also of good quality, and get the job done.
The battery life of the MD is very good, and I'd be able to keep the same battery for a few days. One bad point, however, is the lack mof a rechargable battery. For some reason, an AC adaptor is provided but not a rechargable battery, so I bought my own.
My frien
dship with this MD came to an end when one day, and for no reason, it suddenly stopped reading discs, and a variety of errors were put on the screen. I was pretty worried by this so i sent it to Sharp for a repair under guarantee, but they tried to charge me £166 for the repair- almost double what i had paid! I wasn't happy with this and so i decided to go with the mp3 generation and leave MD for the time being, but i'm sure i'll go back to it soon enough.
Overall, a good player for the price you pay, and of course it has its good and bad points, but it is one of the cheapest recorders and it does exactly what you want it to, even if it can be slightly unpredictable!
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