Hitachi CX68

Author's product rating:   

Radio Quality	Excellent
Sound & Volume	Good
Range of Features	Excellent
Durability	Excellent
Value for Money	Satisfactory

Advantages:	Good tone quality, looks, reliability and functions
Disadvantages:	no cassette player facility

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

I wanted a portable CD player for my home-office desk, because I found that playing CDs on my computer whilst I was working seemed to use up memory and sometimes caused my computer to crash. I wanted one with a decent tone, but one that would not take up too much room on my desk. My birthday was coming up (last year), so that answered my wife's question of what to get me for a present. Off we went to Comets.

When we arrived there were many CD players that would have suited me for around the £20 mark, but my wife pointed to the Hitachi CX68 saying how good looking it was with it's round, blue-lit window on the front that indicated radio stations or CD information, depending on what was being played.

I noticed that it also played MP3s, and that I thought, would be great if I wanted to download music from the internet. I've never tried it, but apparently, you can get loads more MP3 tracks on one CD than you can with conventional tracks. But one thing I do have is hundreds of well loved, music CDs ranging from classical to rap. Yes, I do like some rap!

This player runs on battery or mains and is sort of an oval shape, charcoal grey and light silver in colour, the front rounded with a chrome speaker to each side. On getting it home and opening the box, I found a comprehensive instruction manual, although I didn't need it because all the knobs and buttons are well marked and easy to understand. I particularly liked the quirky volume and tuner control knobs - little chrome "golf balls" inset into the top of the machine.

It had sounded fairly good in the shop, but at home the tone was even more impressive with both radio and CD, and I could see why it was called a "boom box" - with the volume turned up the base was really good - I like plenty of base. It was probably enhanced by the fact that I keep it on my desk that is made of wood.

Playing CDs is easy and there is a facility for programming in what tracks you want, a repeat (all or single track facility), and a preset equalizer button which when pressed selects digital sound preferences, suitable for classic, rock, pop and jazz music.

All the functions can be accessed from the remote handset that takes two AAA batteries, that I have not had to replace since I got it just over 6 months ago.

Other facilities include a real time clock and timer that can be set for both the radio and CD, both of which I don't use. There is also a sleep facility.

At a penny under £40, it was not the cheapest portable CD player on the shelf, but it certainly had the best looks and of course the extras.

My Hitachi is played every day and is holding out quite well to the way I "punish" it. I do use a lens cleaner because from what I can understand, a laser operates through a small internal lens and reads the CD. In all CD players, this lens can get minute particles of dust on it and can cause the CD to malfunction, like skipping tracks etc. I think I've got this right. A Lens cleaning CD can be bought in many electric appliance stores including Tesco/Sainsburys etc for a couple of pounds.

The only thing that I could criticize about Hitachi, is that it does not have a cassette player, but seeing that I have a CD player in my car, that is not a problem for me and I have transferred my many music cassettes onto my computer and burned them to CD, but that is an article for another review.

Thanks for reading.