Sony D-EJ 361

Going on holiday a while ago I decided I would buy a cheap CD player to take on the beach with me, so I wouldn’t be too distraught if it broke while there. Initially looking totally on aesthetics and price, I was pleasantly surprised to find this clever piece of audio equipment, the Sony CD Walkman D-EJ361/S.

SPECS
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Product ...
...Type CD player
Enclosure Colour Silver
Dimensions (WxDxH) 13.6 cm x 15 cm x 2.6 cm
Weight 185 g



BRAND
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Sony are really THE market leader when it comes to electronics and I’m a mark with them, having bought many other audio products by Sony in the past. They are the Michael ... more

Going on holiday a while ago I decided I would buy a cheap CD player to take on the beach with me, so I wouldn’t be too distraught if it broke while there. Initially looking totally on aesthetics and price, I was pleasantly surprised to find this clever piece of audio equipment, the Sony CD Walkman D-EJ361/S.

SPECS
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Product Description Sony CD Walkman D-EJ361/S – CD player
Product Type CD player
Enclosure Colour Silver
Dimensions (WxDxH) 13.6 cm x 15 cm x 2.6 cm
Weight 185 g

BRAND
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Sony are really THE market leader when it comes to electronics and I’m a mark with them, having bought many other audio products by Sony in the past. They are the Michael Jackson of the audio world and this CD player does nothing to damage their awesome reputation for producing quality goods at a fair price. Personally I seemed to have amassed quite a horde of Sony products now….having already reviewed an Ericsson phone and a digital camera.

LED AND MENUS
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Featuring a sleek and stylish interface, this walkman reeks coolness with the menu interface easy to use and futuristic in design. Track selection is also pretty easy and it doesn’t take too long to choose them, a bonus when hung-over on a far off beach and barely able to move.

LOOKS
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Apologies for the lameness of this description but this Sony player looks “da bomb!” CD walkmans have really come on in the last 3 years or so and this one is certainly no exception to that rule. I bought it in the sleek metallic silver pictured and it looks very impressive sitting next to my old CD player that just looks old, ugly and clunky. This is definitely a piece of machinery that you wouldn’t be ashamed to whip out and something you could buy for your kids without them dying with embarrassment.

SHOCK RESISTANCE
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This initially seem a poor heading for a review, but it is important when choosing electrical goods with moving internal parts and particularly ones which are providing music as you don’t want any skips or jerks during the playing. For the relatively low price of 50 quid, I honestly wasn’t expecting something to produce a sound as solid and uninterrupted as this one does, even on bumpy car journeys and walking around there’s no loss of quality. The sound is very good and the fact that it is continually good is an essential feature for me.

COMPATABILITY WITH CD R’s and CD-RW’s
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Fairly new in technology and to the CD player market, this feature is particularly useful as it means you can make a compilation of your favourite tracks on computer and burn them straight on a CD from mp3 format for example. Being able to play these re-writable as well as write-once CD’s is useful for me, as post holiday I could erase the easy listening tracks from the re-writable ones and burn over them again.

This ability challenges the mp3 and Mini-disc players out right now and asks “Why get a dedicated mp3/MD player if you can still make your own CD’s to play on me?” A reasonable question to ask Mr CD player and one you should ask yourself too as you are paying a fraction of the price for something like this. In saying that though, the sound quality of the copied CD’s is less than normal CD’s so you should keep this in mind.

QUALITY OF ACCESSORIES
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As with most portable audio players, bin the headphones it comes with straight away, or use them as a back-up as the quality of them is not so great. I personally have a high quality pair that I interchange between my CD and mp3 player whenever I need to. The batteries however are really good quality and have lasted me a long time especially when I needed them over the holiday.

FINAL WORD
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When choosing a CD player, you really need to think about what you will use it for as there are already a great variety of models currently on the market. Each player will have different features, so decide before you buy which ones you need. The D-EJ361/S is a well-designed machine, at a reasonable price and coming to the table with both the impressive Sony brand and a solid performance to boot. This is definitely one of the better models out there right now and if you don’t have a computer to upload songs to an MP3/MD player then a CD player like this would be a good alternative. 

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