If you are lamenting having to give up your old collection of CD's and in addition are not a huge fan of the quality of MP3's, then the Phillips eXpanium is for you. This is not a car MP3 player, but does have CD playback capability. I am going to take a good hard look at this CD MP3 player so that you can see whether or not it is the one for you. CD MP3 players are not for everyone and this model is no exception to that, but if you are looking for a solid CD MP3 player then the eXpanium is a good option.

Why The EXpanium Is A Solid CD MP3 Player

The first thing you want to see in your CD MP3 player is that it is capable of playing MP3's from a burned CD. This unit supports both CD-R and CD-RW media types so you can rest assured that you will be able to play whatever music you have saved. Just pop the disk in and away you go. I enjoy downloading and recording the entire album history of bands onto one CD then being able to play that back. CD's can still hold a lot of information and it can be far less expensive to simply get a 50 disk stack of writable CD's and record all your music to that then having to take up valuable space on your hard drive.

The other advantage of recording your music this way is that it is practically permanent. As long as you take proper care of the CD's they should last for as long as you need them. I still have CD's from the inception of the RW technology that work. I also have some that do not that have been scratched or damaged. I recommend in addition to getting this unit that you get a good case to hold your CD's in.

The other advantage of this CD MP3 player is that you can buy CD's from the local record store and play them in it. This format is of a far higher quality then MP3's and many band's music will sound superior on the actual CD to their MP3's.

The one draw back of the unit is that it runs on AA batteries. While you can get rechargeable ones, it is a pain to take them out, recharge them and keep track of the batteries. In addition you will need a special charger to re power the batteries and finding a place to plug it in can be difficult.

Hopefully this honest look at the eXpanium helped you to make the decision as to whether a CD MP3 player was right for you.