Braver
Will upgrade headphoneswhen there's a MX600.
(I borrowed the pics from pconline.com and digi51.com, hope they don’t mind, Japanese sites…)
I found there’s a typical lack of good reviews on this particular unit on the net, at least in English. Not fair! This may just be the finest unit on the market, besides the Dr. Seven and perhaps the N10 of course. And although this is last years unit, it may be a while before something new pops up in it’s price-range to challenge it, especially since Sharp’s new line-up doesn’t look that fantastic (larger, uglier, and probably plastic, but with longer battery-life… and you know what that means…).
So, while this is not really a review of something new on the market, it is one of the first reviews of the unit, and a unit that should not be ignored. It’ll be a long review however, so grab a cup of coffee, spin a nice disk and kick back.
The set-up of the review will be like this:
1.My MDPs and me; just so you know where I’m coming from with my opinion on things.
2.The package; what do you get?
3.Specs; what does Sharp say about it?
4.Construction; Will it last?
5.Interface and performance; how does it work?
I could include a part about sound, but nowadays, all MDPs should sound the same. The supplied earbuds are brilliant, the 10mW@32ohms per channel all you’ll ever need (and way more than Sony gives you), and the bottom end is trademark Sharp.
1. My MDPs and me.
I’ll keep this short
I have at times considered using MP3, but I just don’t want my computer to interfere with my music. Real-time recording doesn’t bother me that much I guess. I’ve thought about PCDPs as well, but, in the end, they’re not as nicely built, and they’re too large. Besides, I don’t really want my CDs to leave the house for fear of scratching them up or losing them… I have about 80 CDs in my collection, which is pretty humble (but quite respectable when you consider my age and income
2. The package.
This unit is the real deal:
a remote (no LCD though)
an AAbattery-case that connects to the side
a purple carrying pouch
an adapter
‘Sharpheiser MX400’ earbuds (with short cord and straight plug)
an optical cable
a mini-to-RCA cable
The remote is really nice IMO. Small, light, classy look, covers all the basic functions (play/pause, stop, skip/search forward and back, volume, bass) and has a hold-slider and a shirt-clip. However, when you clip it to your shirt, it’s upside-down. If you clip it to a pocket it’s okay though. And it has no screen, so it doesn’t matter all that much. The buttons feel tight and give a nice click feedback. The cord to the remote is nicely long; it’ll reach the top of my shirt for instance (I’m 1.88m tall). The cord of the earbuds is just a tad too short to reach down to the pants-pocket I usually carry the unit in, just 1cm too short (regular MX400 earbuds are the perfect length).
The pouch is really nice, I even like the color. It has two cords so you can pull it closed. The AAbattery-case it okay IMO, but buying an extra gum stick battery is probably nicer. It’s a bit flimsy, and it adds a lot of size and weight to the unit. The cables are a bit cheap, but they get the job done. I have a couple of longer and sturdier cables, so I’d rather use those. But of course, an optical cable is an optical cable is an optical cable is an…
Here you can see the inputs and where the batterycase connects.
3. Specs
Sampling frequency converter (32/44,1/48 kHz)
Digital anti-shock: 40/80/160 sec
MDLP
A/D converter: 24 bit
Recording time: 7hrs
Play time: 11 hrs
Size: 76x22,9x83 mm.
Weight:With battery: 148g
With MD: 165g
There’s a mic in, which the MT180 doesn’t have.
The line-out is, as usual, hiding in the headphone-out. Just put the volume at full (30) and the bass at 0, and you’ll have a serious line output. I can’t tell if the amp is by-passed, but the volume is good.
10mW@32ohms per channel of course, lotsa juice
The unit is almost the exact same shape as three MDs in their cases. Which is a bit on the thick side of things, but nicely small anyway. It’s about half a millimetre thicker around the screen, but no bulges.
It does get smaller however...
4. Construction
Well, first off, this baby is solid. It’s not so light either at 165gr with battery and MD. It’s all the same aluminium alloy Sharp has used for previous models. The back always makes me wonder, cause it feels a lot like plastic, but I’ll assure you it’s not. It has been so on previous models, and it’s just because it’s a large flat area. And the alloy is just very light. Sharp used to put plastic ridges around the unit, which always end up looking cheap, but not on this one. Looks better this way.
On the front is perhaps one of the most recognizable Sharp design traits, the large chunk of transparent plastic covering the large square screen and the area around it. They’ve done it like this on almost all previous models, except for some of the top-of-the-line models (and they seem to have abandoned it entirely on their newest line…a shame). Also returning is the control pad for volume and skip/search, which is nice but tricky to control blindly as there’s no sure way to tell what function you’re controlling. The buttons feel totally solid however. All very trademark Sharp.
The battery door is plastic, but closes very tightly. I highly doubt it’ll ever open accidentally. In any case a huge improvement on the old plastic AA holders that used to stick out on old models.
The open slider is obviously made of plastic, not even chrome this time. The unit opens only half, you’ll have to pull it open further, after which the MD slides out halfway. The part you slide the MD in is very steady, not the wobbly kind I found on (non recording) Aiwa units, and it also feels better than those Sony uses. Closing the unit gives a very nice ‘snap’. Closed is closed, the door all but merges with the rest of the body man!
The screws always worry me a bit, cause they tend to get loose, and you might loose them. Obviously, this hasn’t happened with this unit as it’s rather new, but it has happened with previous units. Still, a minor annoyance, and I’d rather have screws than a plastic housing or one you can’t open without destroying it.
I haven’t screwed it open as I don’t want to void the warranty, but from looking through in when it's opened, the guts are held in a plastic frame, not the metal on older units. In all fairness though, plastic is tough enough for this application, it's sorta shockabsorbing and it doesn't bend like metal does.
6.Interface and performance
There are a couple of changes here from what Sharp was known for. There’s less buttons: the display, play mode and edit functions are now combined under the ‘menu’ button. The effect is a cleaner looking front, but a mighty hassle to change those functions. On the other hand, the display options are now remembered so in theory you only have to set them once and never worry about it again. I’ve set it so that when it doesn’t play it shows the disc name, when you’re skipping tracks it shows the name of the track, and in playback it shows the time. I think this is the ideal set-up, but you can change it all and it doesn’t reset like it did on older models. Remember there isn’t the space for title as well as time (that’s only for top-of-the-line units).
The volume/search button isn’t concave like the one on the MT80/90/88/99, and a bit smaller. It’s a bit tricky to use, especially ‘blind’ (like skipping to the next track instead of turning the volume up). Minor point, but could cause annoyance if it weren’t for the remote.
Shock resistance is terrific, especially in LP2 mode (which I recommend for your running MDs). To get the whole 11 hours of playback time however, I think you may have to turn on the power-save option, which doesn’t keep the buffer filled all the time (it fills the buffer, then lets it drain down to 5 or 6 secs out of 40, and fills it up again). I haven’t checked if it actually reaches 11 hours, but I’m sure it comes close.
Concluding…
Okay, admit it, you just skipped it all to here
If anyone has picture upload capabilities I could borrow, I could insert my own pictures.
Thanks for reading, hope it was of any use
