The D-ej01 does have a terrible headphone out, but it also has a very warm, smooth line-out- one of the best of any player i've used (not very many)... Even Keven Gilmore used a D-ej01 with his portable STAX setup....
So if you're using an amp, its one of the best players- not very many players have linear antishock, and most that do don't offer the same level of skip protection. And if you're using it with an external DAC, you still get full skip protection, something that panasonics can't do.
It is a bit big/heavy compared to modern players (but much smaller than of the "classic" players) and not very durable/reliable. But i do find the slot loading useful for quickly changing discs, and would rather have a slightly larger player to have this feature.
Still, the crappy headphone out and poor reliablity seriously limits its usefulness, so i wouldn't recommend it unless it was used mainly with an amp or external DAC.
(BTW, i really can't figure out the cause of the poor headphone out quality, the headphone amp chip used is virtually identical to the one in my ~1996 "classic" discman- i'm guessing it's largely due to the use of surface mount tantalum coupling capacitors and large amounts of powersupply noise)