Sony Walkman® DEJ001 Personal CD Player

A few years ago my husband's job required a lot of walking back and forth outside. Since we are also involved in a leadership development group that puts out teaching CD's, he wanted a portable CD player to could use to kill the dead time while at work and learn at the same time. Keeping prices in mind due to budget constraints as well as brand quality, we purchased the Sony Walkman DEJ001 Personal CD Player for less than $30. It is pretty much a get what you pay for product.

Cool Look.....Poor Designs
Marketed toward the teen and pre-teen crowds, the design of this player is a stylish, rounded aqua-blue with minimal anything protruding from it - it looks cool. On the outside there is a port for the included ear phones (over the ear style), a small LED display screen and the four function buttons (play/pause, stop, forward, backward and a hold button). The display screen is located on the front of the player which causes it to be a little difficult to read. Most of us are used to the display being on the top of a player instead. There is no on/off button or switch; the player is activated by pressing play and turned off by pressing stop.

The lid, although very stylish, is the first major problem with this player. There is a slide lock that you must engage and then lift the lid - it doesn't pop up itself. When you are changing out disks every 30-45 minutes, while at work, this is not exactly a convenient process.

Initial set up is pluggin in the earphones and insert two AA batteries. Here is another place the player falls short. First you have to open the lid to expose the battery housing. Then slide the battery cover back and install. Now this is ok for the initial set up, but if you are in mid-CD you will have to open the player, remove your disk and then install the batteries. This is also a great place to talk about the actual battery life - it sucks. My husband could only get through about two day's worth of work (less than 10 hours time) before having to change out the batteries. After about a week he gave up using the player and handed it over to me.

Jam on Little Player
On a positive note, this player will play any CD (music, MP3, CD-R's etc...) - scratches or not. I have had a few that had been through the ringer (AKA my floorboard and/or toddler) and never even missed a beat. Sound wise, Sony is hit and miss. While using headphones (I use traditional phones instead of the earpieces as a personal preference) the sound comes out as loud as you want it and with a great sound. The minute I hooked up some speakers I received minimal sound, and it wasn't the fault of the speakers.

Saving your place, while saving batteries
Now that this player is mine, I occasionally use it at work while doing my data-entry. (This also helps block out the interesting office conversations that happen around my cube, but that's another story). The big problem that comes with listening to CD's via earphones is having to pause the player if the phone rings or someone comes to my office. At first, I would press pause to keep my place in the disk and the press play upon returning. Unfortunately this means the disk was spinning the entire time, eating up the batteries. Quite by accident I figured out that if I press the stop button which then turns the player off, it would still save my place on the CD. Upon returning to my CD, I could just press play again and it would still be in the same place I left it. Wow, did this save on the batteries. Of course this only works if you do not open the lid, which resets the programming.

Skipping to the Beat
One extra feature this little Sony does have is skip protection. This little feature does suck up the batteries more than in a regular player but this great for those who are on the move with their player, or like to save their place like I mentioned above.

We have had this player for several years now and it gets used intermittently now, since I usually just use my CD-Rom drive on my computer to listen to CD's. It still functions well for these occasional purposes, but is still a pain when changing out disks frequently. I would suggest this for those who need an occasional general use CD player.