Looks great, easy to use, comes with car seat mount, battery life good
Disadvantages:
Image quality is poor
Recommend to potential buyers:
yes
Full review
Panasonic DVD LS 80
I picked up this portable DVD player a while back when I went on vacation, just to have something to watch really, and my eye was caught by this, the Panasonic DVD LS80 portable DVD player as I was moseying through the airport shop. I'll just take you through some of the features of this DVD player and let you know how it performs and whether or not I would recommend it.
Lets have a look at some of the specs from this portable DVD player:
Screen: LCD TFT active matrix Size: 9.6in x 6.9in x 1.9in Weight: 2.3 lbs Resolution: 480 x 234 Aspect Ratio: 16:9 Headphone Jacks: 2 (handy!)
The Panasonic DVD LS80 has an 8.5inch screen which is larger than some other portable DVD players I have seen, but unfortunately, I did not have the luxury of Ciao to read up on such devices, and as such I was surprised to find that the picture quality on this portable DVD player was actually quite poor. I had thought that DVDs would look great on the small screen but on this player they look a bit blurry and pixelated and everything does not look at all crisp with some visual artifacts popping up now and again rather noticeably. I also noticed that the visual quality was somewhat washed out, due to the black levels not being very black at all, and no amount of messing around with the settings could rectify this. Its not all bad though, the viewing angle of the screen is quite good, and it is quite comfortable for more than one person to watch at a time, without having to jostle for possession of the best viewing angle, and the 2 headphone jacks mean that you don't have to share one pair of headphones with an ear for each person! :)
The Panasonic DVD LS80 will play DivX and VCD formats which is good if you want to play some of these types of videos that you have on your PC, or simply if you want to rip your DVD collection, convert the movies to DivX and burn them all to the one DVD for handiness sake, just so you aren't carrying your entire collection with you! The DivX and VCD movies look quite good actually on the small screen.
The DVD player itself looks quite stylish, with a black interior which complements the outside metallic exterior. The player is not bulky at all, actually quite sleek, and only weighs 2.3lbs, so it won't cause you any problems carrying it around! The buttons are nicely placed and the system menu is easy to use. A nice feature is that you can angle the screen and pull it around its axis to face upwards which means you can watch it while it is flat, rather than having to balance it on your knee like an awkward book.
The portable DVD player will also of course allow you to connect it to a TV via a video-out and audio-out socket located on the side, so you can watch your movies on a bigger screen. Handy of course if you don't already have some form of DVD player, but who doesn't these days?
The sound is a bit weedy as with most portable DVD players, so to get the most out of it you will need to plug in a pair of headphones, which I would recommend as they will help to conserve battery power too. The battery life for this portable DVD player is one very good aspect: at around 6 hours. That's enough for 2 movies, and a few sitcom series', which should make any journey go faster, unless you are driving, in which case you shouldn't be watching it really. Just on that note, you can use the included mount bracket to setup the DVD player on the back of a car seat headrest if you want to use this as some form of in car entertainment. It sure beats the number plate game anyway!
So overall, it is a small, lightweight and stylish portable DVD player that is let down somewhat by its rather poor image quality, which is a shame as the 8.5 inch screen is a good point. The mount included for those wanted to use it in their car is a bonus, and the large viewing angle and 2 audio jacks mean there won't be arguments in the back seats! If you can find this player cheap then I would recommend it, but you might want to look for one with a better image quality than this.
playback, multi-angle viewing and car DC adaptor. The large 8.5" widescreen display pivots for multi-angle viewing so you can adjust the position for optimum comfort...
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