Naxa Electronics NPB-252 BK Portable MP3/CD Player with AM/FM Stereo Radio (Black)

I've been putting this player through more hard use then most folks would and am happy to report it's stood up to everything I ask of it with sound quality and volume that I'd hoped for but really didn't fully expect at this price. I am learning to play guitar and this device has been the my most valuable tool. I easily record to tape, from a CD selection. This way, when I'm attempting to learn the notes, I can replay any part over and over without having to play the entire recording to the part I need, like a CD would require. This entails literally hammering the play, rewind, record, etc keys repeatedly. Same with the CD when I use it, play, back track, play, repeat. No issues have surfaced. The 2.5 watts per channel is far more power then three others (roughly in this price range) I've owned, provided. The sound reproduction is superior to those as well, better still with the bass boost on. BTW, as on all machines I know of with a CD and tape player, there is no master on/off switch because switching the master switch to tape player and not turning the individual tape player controls on, is off. This portable player is not going to replace my home theater, it is not quite the sound quality of my friends Sony either but it doesn't cost nearly as much and I consider it a great value and perfect for my needs. The sound is reasonably low distortion even to moderately higher levels and loud enough to hear throughout my modest sized home. At about 17-1/2” wide, it's large enough without being too big to transport to band practice as well.I am very happy with this purchace.

I love this set it's a little thing with a big voice an im enjoying my music 🎶

1. DVD player is clear and sound good. Not as clear as regular TVs but regarding this price range it is good enough.1. Radio can be hard tune with cheap plastic rotating knob but it might be that certain radio stations are difficult to tune into this way as I have seen other boom boxes have this issue. There is however a workaround. Most radio stations have an internet broadcast so you can connect your smartphone to this boom box via blue tooth to listen to a radio broadcast.1. Doesn’t accept mp4 movie files but it accepts avi movie files. I think it is because avi is the older format. I haven’t tested other video formats.It doesn’t accept sub directories- only one level folder directory. Not a deal breaker but just something to be aware of if you organize your movies, photos and mp3 into various folders.1. Mp3 works from sd card and thumb drive.2. TV works but for you it depends on your location and your antenna. I haven’t tried to stock antenna. I use a cheap Walmart antenna that has to be near a window for my situation. I catch about 80% of the free TV shows. I think that is reasonable. I’m not sure if I would want to invest in a more expensive antenna.3. Can view jpeg pictures within one directory. There is a 32 GB limit to SD cards but that is plenty of room for pictures or mp3. The default setting seems brighter than necessary. Meaning pictures can look over exposed to light but I haven’t tried to adjust settings to view to see if it would improve the image quality. To me the image quality is acceptable. To me the slides changes too quickly and I don’t think there is a way to slow down the transition of the slides.4. The quality of the knobs and switches is cheap so a toddler or an impatient kid could break it if they are kind of rough with handling the boombox. If you are careful with using this model, I think the quality is acceptable for the price.5. Without batteries the unit feels front TV heavy- like an obese stomach on a skinny body. It carries at an angle like the belly drops and the back tail lifts up rather than a straight horizontal box. Not a deal breaker but just something you would notice when carrying.Overall I am satisfied with what I get for the money spent. I think 2 years ago it was $50 cheaper so I am wondering if the current cost is because of the after affects of covid, chip shortages, inflation and gas prices. It would be awesome if the unit was $120. It feels like this unit has milked 20 year old technology to the limit and no R&D effort was made to upgrade the unit. For example accept more video formats or increase SD storage size or offer option to adjust slide show timing or think of ways to improve knobs and switches to work the unit. Also would have been good if this could have rechargeable lithium batteries rather than 8 C batteries.I suppose these boomboxes are in a conundrum because DVDs are obsolete and TV and radio is a shrinking market due to streaming music and TV - so not much effort is made in the tech industry to improve on DVD, TV, and radio tech.I suppose I fall into this demographic of folks that are still willing to buy these things and see some value in it and wish it had updated some of the tech in these units. What would totally save this unit from extinction is if it played a wider variety of video formats, if it had smart TV app and wifi connection, if it had a digital radio tuner, if it had rechargeable lithium batteries.

Bought this for my son that has CP, easy to run, and has everything he wants. Nice unit, not too big not too small. Like it a lot

This review is for the Naxa NDL-287 BoomboxMy most distressing complaint with this Naxa NDL-287 boom box relates to the remote controlThe purchaser can mute the sound when playing a video from a loaded DVD. The sound can also be muted with the remote when watching a TV station.You cannot mute the sound when using the radio function.But there is worse to come.....There are NO volume UP or DOWN buttons on this remote control, as surprising as that may seem.Therefore, the user cannot raise or lower the volume level when playing a title from a loaded/mounted DVD, watching a TV channel or using the AM/FM radio function.Some remote buttons do double duty because they were too cheap to make the remote large enough to allow the necessary buttons but none of buttons will allow the user to raise or lower the volume. You simply must walk over to the the boombox and manually twist the volume control.If I had known this in beforehand, I would never have made this purchase. This is a deal-breaker. No way round this problem.Also worth noting relative to the remote control for this Naxa NDL-287 boombox,the customer/user receives NO batteries from the mfgr, so before you finalize your order, swingover to the page for some AmazonBaiscs AAA batteries, ha ha. What a joke, but it's on the customer andit's really not funny at all.Overall, the remote, is much too small, all the buttons too tiny and all of buttons are crammed too close together. Whatever thumbs-up virtues this thing has is wrecked by the remote because you can't get away from using the remote control.On the back of this unit, there are old-school RCA phono plugs/jacks, OUTPUTS, single A/V yellow video port, and the red and white audio ports.If you connect these output terminals to ANY RECORDING DEVICE, whether it be an old VCR you may have that still works, or a DVR which you may have bought years ago when they were still available (which they are NOT available now, unless you get a 2nd hand unit), you will be much disappointed to discover that ONLY THE AUDIO will be recorded. These rascals deliberately BLANK OUT the video signal. When you play back what you recorded, all you get for video is a black screen.No, I'm not talking about recording HBO or some coveted + expensive channel from your cable or satellite service. I'm talking about FREE, OVER THE AIR channels, none of which contain anti-recording signals to prevent their being recorded.I'm talking about using an older Sony VCR that dates back 18 years, and on the DVR side, I'm using a Magnavox MDR-537 and MDR-557, both of which were available here at Amazon when they were current. Neither of these Magnavox units are receiving the required video signal from this Naxa NDL-287 boom box.But if I try to record the over-the-air TV stations from Springfield, Missouri DIRECTLY, to either the Magnavox MDR-537 or MDR-557, they record just fine, as one would expect, as broadcast stations make no attempt to block viewers from recording their broadcasts.So that confirms the problem is not with the broadcast signal but with this Naxa NDL-287 boom box, deliberately blocking the video signal so you cannot record.However, this situation is more complicated than it might seem at first blush... The music record labels and movie studios go ballistic over copying and/or duplicating music or video content. They've nearly wrecked the industry with their extreme demands. Whatever, I understand Naxa can't fight the movie studios so I understand why there would be no video output from the DVD transport because if this were the case, then it could be recorded on another device. But with a small engineering tweak, they could have satisfied the demands of the movie studios and blocked output from the DVD, but still allowed the video OUT from the TV tuner to appear at the yellow VID connector on the back panel. Why even bother putting those connectors on the rear panel? It makes no sense whatever. What is accomplished feeding the video OUT from this unit, to the VIDEO IN of a larger TV, if same even has a VIDEO IN port. Lots of TV's no longer have such connectors. But if this is the strategy, why not just use the larger TV and skip fussing with this unit and its tiny screen?I never got the SD card feature to work with my unit. And I DO have the approx. one inch wide ADAPTER you will need. You cannot just plug in the tiny SD card directly. The slot is about one inch wide and you insert your SD card into the adapter, and then slide the adapter into the slot on top of the boombox. I think SanDisk is where I got my apapter when I purchased one of their SD cards. Some memory mfgr's include an adapter and some don't.Another thing to be aware of is the 32gb limit.What?? 32gb? 32gb flash memory devices faded from the computer scene about 20 years ago. Who still has a 32gb stick drive to use with this thing? Certianly not me. I recycled those things a long time ago and it may not even be possible to buy one unless u go to eBay or the like.I also had no luck getting past the root directory playing with a 32gb USB stick drive. I could see the content at the root directory but could proceed no further. I have no idea what happened here, thus we did not get to see how some music tracks would sound.If a TV station is playing, and you want to go back to the loaded DVD, pressing the EXIT button is useless. Pressing the TITLE button will not bring up the Title list on the DVD. I had to press the MODE button (far upper left corner), which amounts to returning to Square One, where you just start over, keep pressing the MODE button until you see the LOADING message on the display.When playing a DVD, I have to run the Volume control full max, clockwise, for a level I can hear on the other side of the kitchen, and I'm not talking about a large kitchen. Volume level from the TV, when playing, is much stronger/louder, for a given setting.The POWER ON LED indicator (red) for this contraption is planted at the upper right corner of the LCD viewing screen, just one half inch above the corner of the screen. I'm going to the trouble of mentioning this BECAUSE IT IS VERY ANNOYING, and distracting. This is totally and completely the WRONG place for a Power ON indicator. If the user is watching something on the LCD screen (which does have excellent quality, BTW), isn't it rather obvious that the UNIT IS ON??? I would think so...This red LED is really quite annoying. There are plenty of spaces on the top of the unit where they could have parked the Power ON indicator. Poor design.If the user accidently presses the EXIT button while a DVD is playing, you cannot resume where you were in the video by pressing the PLAY/PAUSE button. You will have to go back to the MODE or TITLE buttons and bring up the title on the DVD and start over.To be able to receive TV stations, you will have to use the SETUP and MENU buttons and thread your way to the CHANNEL SCAN feature and let it scan for channels. When you have a TV station on-screen, the only way to bring up the list of other available stations is to press the ENTER button, in the middle of the arrow keys on the remote. Then you can use the UP or DWN arrow keys to select the station you desire and press the ENTER button again and it will change to that channel.On the plus side, this Naxa NDL-287 TV tuner has excellent sensitivity. Whatever my $400 Sony Bravia 32'' TV can receive, using the same antenna, this unit can also bring them in. Tuner sensitivity is much better than expected, but this hardly counter-balances its many faults. The speakers, obviously, are not large, but the sound output from playing a DVD or the TV is distortion free. Excellent audio quality.There is a compartment in the bottom for 8 size D batteries that could give one a functioning radio/DVD/TV player during a power outage. You could also power it off a 12VDC gel-cell, something like a 9 amp/hour size would keep it running for 2 or 3 nights even with a lot of use, where the 'D' batteries would be dead in short orderI think this represents sufficient cause for the one star rating.Not a good purchase, at least not for me.Even if one wishes to write off my other complaints, the remote control just ruins the purchase.Wish I'd bought something else, but the complaints I offer here are not things one would expect to encounter.