Review 1
Me, Myself and Philips AZ5150
Before going into details about this player, I want to share an episode in my life with you all, during which this player became a part of my life. I was once having a Philips tape recorder. It was working fine for two years but after that it was of no use so I went for this Philips 5 in 1 player which includes a tape recorder, FM, VCD/MP3/CD player.
When I was staying in college hostel while doing B.E, it was one of the best companions of many music lovers in my hostel and was always in demand and going rounds to various rooms in the hostel. So the problems I faced with this system that I am going to list shortly may be because of the lack of proper maintenance and rough handling of the system. If the system was handled well with proper maintenance, the system would have been fine and may not be as bad as I am going to describe it here.
Philips as My Friend
After my college studies are over, I joined a software company in Chennai and I was staying alone in a mansion room. The only friend to whom I can share everything was this player. The player knows my mood better than any other human beings around me. Because the type of songs that I chose to hear makes the player to best recognize my mood. My passion for music is best known to my player than any other friends of mine.
And during this period, it became my best friend and I was the only friend there to take care of it unlike its hostel life. The player also took care of me well by being an instrument which decrypts the soul (music) to flow in the air out of the body (CD) to keep me alive and make me forget my worries out of loneliness. Soon I became too possessive and I stopped sharing my player with anyone else. But my friend is not without its flaws, but even though it has lot of flaws in it, it was, is and will be my best friend ever. I believe in the theory that a good friend in one who accepts his friend for what he is and not for what he feels he should be. But anyway it also duty of a best friend to point out his flaws and mistakes.
Soul Said To Me?
?Hey, wait? said my soul to me. ?What? Why you ask me to stop?? asked me. My soul said, ?Just go back to your review on five worst reviews on MS. You have written that writing personal stories in the reviews on products is one of worst style of review writing. Now think about what scrap you are writing?. My soul opened my eyes and saved me from me contradicting myself. But what to do when a product is so close to one?s heart and influences his life so much, he is bound to write such emotional personal stories in the review and the same is what I did. Anyway, I am going to start writing review a fresh again.
Review 2
The advancement in technology always works towards shrinking the world or even anything for that matter and making our work easier. You take example of any new technology in hardware; it will be one step up towards the compactness and multi purpose usability of the electronics products. Take for example; the purpose of mobile phones has been completely changed than what it was initially meant to be. We have radio, TV, internet, camera, songs, computer and what not in our palms by owning a mobile phone. And one such advancement in audio systems which gave birth to a term called 5 in 1. They put everything radio, tape recorder, VCD player, MP3 Player, Audio CD player in one system. And among the two companies which released 5 in 1 systems with power of 100 to 500 PMPO Philips is the best one though a bad one. Thompson model was proved to be a failure.
Pros
The only plus of this system is we have everything in a single system except DVD player and it is quite handy and the power is just 100 PMPO. It has an attractive appearance too with a silver colored body. And there are no more pros that can be listed about this player.
Volume Control
The first and foremost minus of the model is there is no volume control in the remote. We have to manually reach the rotating knob on the player to adjust the volume. Of course, it cannot be said as a problem as we know that it lacks this feature while buying the system itself. It is just a basic flaw in the model itself and nothing related to its performance.
VCD Problem
While playing VCD?s in the player, it is hard to watch a single movie at a stretch which comes with 3 CD?s. After playing two CD?s the motor gets heated up and it doesn?t even recognize the third CD and says that there is no disk in the player. This was happening from the day one and cannot be claimed as fault due to lack of maintenance or rough handling. After two years of use, suddenly one day the CD lens worn out and I paid 1500 bucks to service centre to replace it with a new one.
Cassette Player
After six months of purchase, the tape recorder got messed up with lot of problems. The songs were running faster than its usual speed, the volume level decreased to a very minimum level, it was not able to pull and run tapes of 90 series cassettes. The cassette tapes got stuck with the reader. And even after two services, it didn?t return to its original condition and so much pathetic was the Philips service too. This can said to a fault because of bad maintenance but six months is too short a time to get trouble like this, no matter how bad the handling may be. This made me to go for only Audio CD?s and now I am buying only CD?s and not the cassettes.
MP3 Playing Playing
While playing MP3?s you will hear two voices coming out and by hearing don?t turn and look around to find whether anybody is singing along with the song. It is the same player which produces the doubling effect. Also the track shifting and playing songs with MP3?s are quite uncomfortable in this player.
Full Throttle
Don?t ever dare to hear any rock song or grand orchestration of John Williams?s scores with full volume in this player; you will hear an eerie sound along with the music.
Shifting Knob
The shifting between VCD, Cassette and FM is effected by a knob operated manually. After much use of this knob, it looses its ability of positioning and will stop somewhere in the middle between Radio and Cassette player and you can?t use either.
Having all been said, I still like this system as I got used to it but I strictly don?t recommend it to others.