A solid CD player... And it has a radio too!. Review on Sony D-FS18

I have been running for a couple of years and I am now getting into longer runs of 8 to 14 miles, which can go over two hours. I was looking for something to take with me on those runs and listen to music. I don't have a lot of MP3's, and I do have a lot of CD's, but I was willing to consider either an MP3 player or a CD player. Unfortunately, there didn't seem to be any good choices of MP3 players that could play two hours of music but cost less than $150, which was all I wanted to spend. I was all set to go with a sports-style cassette tape player when I found the Sony D-FS18. This seemed like a potential solution

My main concern was: will it skip? It has Sony's G-Protection feature, which is supposed to provide ''a higher level of shock protection than the traditional one,'' according to the manual. In the store, I turned on the G-Protection, started a CD playing, and shook the player as vigorously as I could without risking accidentally throwing the player across the room. I found that if I started shaking the moment the track started playing, I was able to make it skip, but otherwise I was not. With G-Protection turned off, it was fairly easy to make it skip.

My concern out of the way, I bought the thing. However, when I got it home, I was horrified to discover it wouldn't play a disc! I thought perhaps I'd gotten a defective one, but it turned out that the problem was that the rubber lining that lines the CD compartment and keeps it waterproof had gotten folded somehow, and was rubbing against the CD. I moved it out of the way and tried again, and everything worked fine. It hasn't been a problem since. The CD compartment has a large C-clip that snaps on and off to secure the door. It's very solid and won't come open during a run.

I have taken the player on three or four runs now, and have found that it works well. It has no belt clip, but instead has a hand strap that I was a little dubious about at first. However, it turns out to be surprisingly comfortable. The controls are laid out so that if you carry the player in your right hand, you can easily read the button labels and press buttons with your right. If you carry the player in your left hand, however, everything is upside down. It's still usable that way, though.

One annoyance about the player is that it's supposed to take either regular alkaline batteries or Sony NH-WM2AA rechargeables. It says not to use any other brand, which you'd kind of expect, but the annoying thing is that I can't find the Sony rechargeables for sale anywhere on the Internet.

The FM/AM radio that's also built into the player works fine. Reception is adequate but not fantastic. There are 25 presets, which is really too many if you ask me, but I'm not complaining.

I have played both commercial CD's and CD-R's that I have burned myself, and they have both worked fine. I haven't yet tried it with CD-R/W's yet. One thing I have observed about the ''G-Protection'' mechanism is that if the player loses track of where it is in the song, and it's near the end of the song, it will skip to the next song instead of resuming where it skipped. This can be annoying.

I was more than willing to return this player within 30 days and get my money back if there was anything unacceptable about it. Needless to say, I kept it!