The Sony MZ-R700PC (Sony MD Walkman MZ-R700)

Member Name: vincent.buchan

Product:	Sony MD Walkman MZ-R700
Date:	24/11/01 (4434 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: size, sound quality, battery life and anti-skip

Disadvantages: cheap remote and headphones, hard to get the hang of at the start

After a long time wanting a MP3 player but having trouble finding one with a good memory space and one that won't break my budget. After a long time looking I was about to give up looking until I seen this new MD player. The MZ-R700PC lets you download music onto a mini disc so there is unlimited memory space if you can afford the mini discs.

When I first opened the box, I thought the body of the player seemed much bigger than described but that was just the tube at the back for the battery. You also notice that this is a top quality piece of equipment. No tacky plastic covering on this machine, it is heavier than it appears. The top cover is 100% magnesium and can surely take a beating. The rear panel is plastic, but feels very solid and not cheap like other minidisk players. In the package you all accesories you need (except for minidisks).

AC adaptor
ni cad battery
headphones
optical cable
remote control
pclink
mini-analogue cable
two instruction manuals

The sound quality of this machine is almost always superb no matter what source you use. The optical cable provides a 100% digital signal, and thus provides the best sound quality but I find no noticable difference using an analogue cable.

The pc link is the Xitel DG2. It is compatiable on many different systems, win 98, 2000 ME, and Mac. It is a small tublar box that plugs into your computer via a USB port and into your minidisk recorder via the mini-analogue cable. When you plug it in for the first time, it installs a quick program in. The link converts the digital signal from the computer into an analogue signal that the player can understand.

The remote or finger panel is the o9nly cheap part of this player. It is useful for most normal tasks like playing and stopping but the lack of a LCD screen limits is capability.

The free headphones are good but not exactly brilliant. I find with nearly with every Sony produc
t the supplied headphones are of avarage quality. They seem to distort slightly when the volume is past 90%. I would pay a little more to get a good pair but it is hard to find a pair with a short cable so it isn't too long when you plug it into the remote.

There are several recording modes on this player which made my mind up for me that this was the one I wanted. Stereo, mono, MDLP2, and MDLP4. Stereo can store 80 minutes of music on a single minidisk, mono 160 minutes. MDLP2 uses a higher compression ratio than stero and can thus fit 160 minutes on a single disk. Use of MDLP4 causes a drop in quality, but allows the player to record 320 minutes of stereo audio onto a single minidisk and the drop isn't too signifacant.

The battery life is approx. 56 hours with a dry battery. With the supplied rechargeable one, il lasts approx. 20 hours but charges itself up slightly when not used.

Overall, this is one of the best MD players around and can save you money with the LP4 mode as the MD's will hold more. It is a decent price at 200 pounds and doesn't feel or look cheap at all.

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