Dav310 Ultimate review
Written: Jun 05 '01
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Pros: Multi-Function out the wazoo And does it pretty well to!
Cons: Battery Live - Listings on LCD are poor Other minor nits
The Bottom Line: The Dav311 is available for little more than this unit, get that one, overall I am very impressed and hope to enjoy it for a long time to come.
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| nerys71's Full Review: A-MAX DAV310 Personal CD Player |
I purchased this on ebay for $90 - I was actually hunting for the VCD capabilities. The MP3 ability was a bonus.
First Impression:
Upon opening the package I was impressed. This unit is by no means small but it is not large either. Considering its video capabilities it is very portable. The remote looked impressively small and it came with everything !! there is NOTHING to buy. All wires cables adapters etc.. are included. In fact out of the box I could only see one improvement. it would have been interesting to have a short VCD or MP3 cd included to impress the newcomer who may not yet have anything to play on it.
Second Impression: Closer Inspection:
It is built average. it is not a super heavy duty magnesium peice of art or anything. it is plastic but not bad and well built considering the price.
I was impressed with the lithium battery but would later become unimpressed!
Personally I like the look and style of the unit and it did get attention especially when I mentioned that I had 9.2 hours of music in it :-)
Alright lets start this baby up:
The first thing I did was to start burning an MP3 CD. I had some 150 Christmas songs I wanted on a single CD to take to a christmas party with me.
While that was burning I stuck in my last of the mohicans CD. It played acceptable. I detected no problems and apparently I did not get the hiss I heard mentioned by others. That might be on the older 309 model I am not certain.
The CD was done so I stuck it in. It started reading the disc and counting off the files it found. I then started the fun. I was pretty impressed !! the sound quality was about the same as on my computer (at least I could not hear a difference)
I have heard people complain about song change delays. This was not an issue for me. I was not buying this as a personal music listening device (MY Minidisc is far more portable and superior at that job) I bought it to play at places where I needed a lot of music and did not want to do any disc swapping. Fire and Forget kind of deal. So I set it for random play and hit go. I then walked away and let it do its thing.
There is a delay when changing tracks. at first I thought the remote was screwy but it also delayed a little when I used the onboard buttons. Not an excruciating delay to me at least. I even went so far as to get new remote batteries to no avail. It simply has a very small window of effectiveness. Also when you do something. Don't do it again give it some time. Again though this was not why I bought it so it was not an issue.
VCD Playback was fine. Equivalent to playing it in my DVD player or on my computer. I was very pleased.
I also purchased a 4" lcd monitor on ebay for $120 (with this unit in mind) Once I hooked it up to the DAV310 and either a cassette adaptor or headphones I now had a portable video viewing solution very equivalent to those (at the time) $1000 portable DVD units for around $200 !!!! How sweet it is !!!
If I have time and money later I am going to mount 2 LCD's on the back of the seats in my jeep and rig them to one of these units to let the kids watch movies or cartoons or anime on road trips. Headphones will keep it private !! For $360 ($100 for the DAV310 and around $120 for each LCD and say $20 in other misc parts)you could have a 2 screen system equivalent to something you would pay in the thousands for !!! I am going to have a lot of fun with this unit !!!
The Dark Side: is this thing perfect?
Heck NO !!! it has many flaws that I would like to see fixed. Some already are others I am not sure about.
First Batteries. That lithium battery I was so impressed with just plain sucks. I only got about 3-4 hours playback out of it and it takes a long time to recharge. It is not the battery persay IT just needs more juice. On the newer unit (the 311) which I have already ordered they have fixed this !! it now takes 2xAA and even comes with 1600mah Nimhs !! (I have lots of those) and this also means in a crunch a trip to anywhere usa will allow you to grab some Alkalines and keep on having fun.
The remotes limited window of use is a real pain in the butt !! this needs fixing. I am not sure if it is fixed in the new unit or not.
Positive confirmation is mandatory !!! I do not think they can fix the delay problems in this price range and I do not expect them to. What I would expect is, for example, a BEEP from the unit to acknowledge Remote Button presses just like on the Sony Minidiscs to let you know YES the player did recieve your command now just wait for it to happen.
Also Scrolling text for WHAT it is your playing would be nice. I do not care or even want ID3 support since some of my Mp3's are foreign so the ID tags are foreign. I just want the File name. But again for most of the ways I will use this unit it is not a requirement.
I rate the Battery Life POOR although you do get 3+ hours out of it. Epinions battery ratings are not good to me. I consider it poor since the "design" should be capable of getting twice the battery life it does. Now for videoplayback 3 hours would be aceptable although I have not tested this aspect.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 89.99
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Epinions.com ID:
nerys71
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Member: Chris Taylor Jr.
Location: Edgely, PA
Reviews written: 37
Trusted by: 2 members
About Me:
I Love Rockets, Airplanes, and off course Gadgets :-)
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