Sony D-NE500

The Sony D-NE500 would've been a truly good player if it wasn't for Sony's conservatism and somewhat careless treatment of features.

The user interface is decent, it has the typical Sony joystick/scroll wheel that are common for professional-line Sony equipment. The player came with a remote and a simple belt-mounted plastic clamp for the player (it is not, however, a case, as the product description states). Both the remote and the ...
...apparently has to do with Sony trying to promote its proprietary format.

The D-NE500 had no trouble reading VBR MP3 files; it does tend to skip and inject noise on scratched CD-Rs or poorly erased CD-RWs, but MP3 playback is almost always stable. The anti-shock protection depends on the battery charge remaining; the player almost never, except if the battery's nearly dry, skips even on a bump into a person in a Metro train.
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The Sony D-NE500 would've been a truly good player if it wasn't for Sony's conservatism and somewhat careless treatment of features.

The user interface is decent, it has the typical Sony joystick/scroll wheel that are common for professional-line Sony equipment. The player came with a remote and a simple belt-mounted plastic clamp for the player (it is not, however, a case, as the product description states). Both the remote and the player itself have "hold" buttons. The user interface is comfortable, the playing title as presented by the LCD display is scrollable, and the LCD can display a good amount of information.

An AC/DC adapter is a separate buy.

The player reads ID3V1 and ID3V2 tags (though it gets confused badly by UTF-8, so no international character support beyond the basic European Latinic variations) and CD-Text.

Disc read times, even when reading a CD with several hundred files, are good.

CD-RW discs are all readable pretty well, though it depends on a particular CD-RW make just how well it'll be read after multiple erases. Full erases are recommended for CD-RWs, or the player may not read the disc.

The player has a proper equaliser (though of somewhat limited usage because of the player's lowpass frequency).

M3U playlists are supported.

Gapless playback is supported only for ATRAC files, which apparently has to do with Sony trying to promote its proprietary format.

The D-NE500 had no trouble reading VBR MP3 files; it does tend to skip and inject noise on scratched CD-Rs or poorly erased CD-RWs, but MP3 playback is almost always stable. The anti-shock protection depends on the battery charge remaining; the player almost never, except if the battery's nearly dry, skips even on a bump into a person in a Metro train.

Now, the problems.

The battery lid is inside the disc compartment itself; if Sony engineers' concern was the battery lid's exposition to shock and mechanical damage, they could've made a simple rubber lid, and mount it externally. As it is, especially on bumpy roads and in public transport, it can be very annoying to open the case, remove the CD, open the lid, remove the battery, pop in the replacement battery, etc.

The CD player runs off only one battery, which almost naturally guarantees a so-and-so sounding and low volume levels with the more serious headphones (a portable headphone amplifier is recommended). 16/24/32-Ohm semi-open cups are recommended (the ones used with this player are Panasonic RP-HT357).

The headphones that came with the player don't do it any justice. They don't do justice to anything other than an old tape player or radio.

The actual frequency response is artificially limited to 40 Hz - 18000 Hz. This muddies and compresses the sound. Especially with closed headphones this CD player tends to sound as if out of a dark chamber.

The only settings preserved across battery replacements are those of the equaliser. The button-press beep and light, obnoxious and unnecessary extras, are always turned on after battery's been replaced. Now, with the little memory space that simple settings take (basically an on/off state register), could Sony spare a few additional bits to store all settings? Volume is also reset to lowest on battery replacement.

In summary, this is a decent starter player, with a comfortable user interface, a good gift for maybe an elderly person (who allegedly have more limited hearing capped by those 18 KHz...), but not an audiophile's player or a player that's a delight to listen to. The beep and the light can also be "accessibility features" that could be of like to an older person or a kid (at least the first couple months of use...), but they're simple annoyances to anyone else (Sony seems to have taken them off their newer models of CD players). The player does have a good (though not as exceptional as Sony claims) battery life, so it could be liked by somebody who doesn't yet have his set of rechargeables. But, there are much better alternatives with better sounding and less annoyances in the same price range, CD players made by Panasonic/Technics, IRiver, etc. 

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