When I bought this CD-MP3 player, I had very high expectations. For $180, that's natural.

First impressions;

1) It's small. Very.

2) The case is form fitting, and held together by a velcro strap. Nice.

3) The headphones it comes with are Sennheiser MX300 earbuds; not the best, but they don't suck as bad as the other freebies that Sony and Panasonic give you.

4) It needs a special adapter (which comes with it) so you can plug headphones with a big plug into the remote. Annoying, but it works.

Now, onto the review!

Anti-skip, good. There are three playing modes, activated by hitting +10 for a few seconds. One is ET, where it's nice and quiet with little to no mechanical noise. But there's barely any skip protection and it can take time to load things. The next is normal mode. The one after that is the enhanced anti shock mode, the one I used with MP3s, naturally. And why not?

With audio CDs, changing the ESP from 80 seconds to 320 seconds made it sound like crap. With some CDs, there was little to no difference, but the new Thrice CD sounds like crap with all the static it made. So I kept the ESP on 80, and put the enhanced anti shock on, and it worked for me.

Remember - if you carry it, it'll skip a lot less than if it's in your pocket.

If you put it on and two seconds later start running or walking fast with it, and don't stop even for a few seconds, it'll skip and not play. But if you give it 10 seconds or so, it'll start buffering and it'll skip rarely, or never.

If you listen to it normally, it won't skip. But if you like to change tracks randomly while you're walking, make sure to hold it and not keep it in your pocket while doing so. Loading a new track while having it bounce around in your pocket isn't so good. (But of course, this also goes for many CD players in these extremely baggy pockets I have ; )

So anti-skip, is VERY good on this player.

Now onto features:

It's loaded. It's got an Xtreme EQ, where it lets you set your own EQ, and a lot of different presets. It has an Xtreme 3D feature with a later firmware, which I didn't exactly like. It's got a snake game built into the remote. Very detailed options for scan speed, etc.

The battery llasts about 10 hours with Audio CDs, enhanced anti-shock protection and full volume, and it lasts well over 30 hours, full volume, enhanced anti-shock protection, with MP3 CDs. I used VBR MP3s on it, they played flawlessly.

The only thing I didn't like was: it has no buttons or screens on the player, so you always have to keep the remote with you. So I just attached it to the form-fitting case's velcro strap, and it was fine. I kept the remote on my belt clip and the player in my pocket when I could, too.

As far as sound quality goes, most of the time you'll hear people raving about it when they can't even tell a 64k WMA from the original, so I put this to the test. Many portable CD players have that annoying low background hiss. With good headphones, and quiet music, there was no hiss. So the sound quality is near perfect for a portable.

Bottom line, I'd recommend this player to anyone who can afford it, and just wants a real cool-looking, well-working player.

Note; when you don't use the case with it, it never skips. The case is evil...

cool nice review... I need to talk to FUDog about doing a user review section