Budget Portable DVD

Cheap DVD players are hit-and-miss

Unfortunately, portable DVD players appear to be one of those "you get what you pay for" items. In our research, we failed to uncover any great bargains offering good performance and reliability for a low price. Most portable DVD players costing less than about $130 receive mixed to low reviews from owners.

The one exception is the Coby TF-DVD7377 (*Est. $85). This portable DVD player receives a better average score than other inexpensive models at Amazon.com, Newegg.com and Walmart.com. The Coby has a 7-inch widescreen that rotates 180 degrees. It plays CDs, DVDs and DivX files, and even DVDs you've burned yourself. The player can also display JPEG photos.

Many owners are impressed with the TF-DVD7377's picture quality and consider this portable DVD player a great value. However, a handful report problems getting the player to playback certain file types that it supposedly supports, while others report issues with the player's ports. Several note that the Coby portable DVD player isn't compatible with SDHC (high capacity) cards either. As with all portable DVD players, we came across user complaints about durability and design quality. While some of the more expensive players come with a one-year warranty, the Coby TF-DVD7377 has only a 90-day warranty.

The Philips PET702/37 (*Est. $85) also gets decent ratings on user-review sites. While this portable DVD player is still listed as current by Philips, it has become a little harder to find. A similar model, the Philips PET741/37 (*Est. $90), is newer and more widely available. However we've not seen enough feedback from owners or professional reviewers to count the PET741/37 among the Best Reviewed selections for this update.

The PET702/37 plays a variety of DVD formats, in addition to music and MP3s on CD. Unlike more expensive DVD players that have resolutions up to 800 pixels by 480 pixels or beyond, the LCD screen on the Philips PET702/37 has a resolution of just 480 pixels by 234 pixels. Still, 40 owners on Amazon.com give it an average rating of four stars (out of five). Owners are generally satisfied with the overall quality, and even though it has a low-resolution screen, we saw few complaints about picture quality. In fact, most owners say they are happy with the picture performance. The biggest downside to the Philips PET702/37 seems to be long-term durability, as multiple reviewers complain of problems after several months of use.

In summary, experts and users alike caution that if you buy a cheap portable DVD player, you'd be wise not to become too attached to it. While some owners are perfectly happy, the large number of poor reviews indicates that buying one of these cheap players is a roll of the dice.