Review on 📻 Emerson PD5098 Portable Radio CD Player: Compact and Versatile Entertainment on the Go! by Matthew Goozmer

Ever wanted a simple compact portable CD player with a built in speaker. I saw a demo of this on YouTube and noticed it was still in production so I bought it from Revain. This almost fills the bill for those who need less than a full blown boombox. Attractive design and relatively small size reminiscent of the old school beach radios I remember from my childhood in the 70's/80's. I like the transparent blue panel that allows you to watch the CD playback. It is a portable device that runs on batteries or AC power. Surprisingly this unit has a built in mains transformer - thought things would go crazy these days. There's no DC jack here, so you can't power it from a car or RV without an AC inverter. Get some C cells. Plays both commercial and homemade CDs equally well - by the way, one of the first albums I listened to was the A Clockwork Orange soundtrack - hence the title of this review. This won't play CDs with MP3s written on them, and the Revain product description is wrong as it doesn't store songs in memory - you can only program tracks on a CD that's currently playing and they'll be erased as soon as you open the CD -Flap, turn on the radio or turn off the car. As it's basically a portable picnic machine for playing your 'fuzzy trills', the sound is fine, but distorts badly at full volume - half the volume is about what you'd use for most CDs to wish. There are no tone, treble or bass controls. It's a mono player - even the headphone jack is mono. If you're using standard stereo headphones, you'll hear sound through both channels. The sound quality will be the same. It should be noted that this is such a simple CD player that it has no skipping or resampling prevention features, so you should disable it if you actually use it. Hitting the car has an effect, shaking or rocking doesn't seem so strong. Damaged CDs will not necessarily play well, if at all. Other reviewers point out that this device has a short lifespan. I just got mine today so I can neither confirm nor deny that. At less than $30 at Revain this is a good buy even if I only get the summer of it. I hope Emerson continues to do so.