First thing, if you're hoping to open the plastic packaging with as little destruction as possible for return purposes, good luck. I found it difficult to do so, and ended up with about five scratches and two band-aids on my hand. But after the battle, I found the player to be a true keeper. The big difference between the two is that the Aiwa uses 5V of power while the Philips uses 4.5V. Neither of them comes with a car kit, but there are plenty of third-party car adapters that can supply 4.5V. It's hard to find one that can handle Aiwa's 5V and I didn't want to rely on batteries.
The Good Stuff: The digital tuner is excellent. The AM antenna is inside and the headphone cord acts as the FM antenna. The alarm clock function is great. It can be set to alarm with a beeping sound, the tuner, or a CD. I use a powered external speaker and a CD to wake me up. The standard sound and two extra DBB levels sound very nice. The DBB levels produce very clear bass boosts. The player has two small rubber footpads that keep the player from sliding around. My CD's haven't skipped yet, even after I pounded the player a few times, which I wouldn't recommend but it was still fun. The player also comes with a power adapter and huge bulky headphones. Also, pressing a button wakes up the player, but it can cause accidental wake up calls. If you had batteries inside and accidentally pressed a button, the player would wake-up and stay on without you being aware of it.
The Minor Stuff: The buttons are a bit small but workable. I would have preferred larger buttons for use while driving where I could feel my way around the player without looking at it. The power off button is the "Stop" button, but a power switch would have been nice to prevent accidental wake-up calls. The volume control wheel is also small and nearly flush with the casing making it a little difficult to control. The battery compartment is inside the CD compartment, which requires you to remove the CD to change batteries, but unless you plan on using cheap batteries with a two-hour life span, this is very minor. The high beeps from pressing the buttons is probably the most annoying of everything else and I don't believe this can be muted, but eventually you get used to it.
Overall, I gave the Philips AZ923017 five stars because it has all the features I wanted in a CD player. The design issues are very minor and don't take away from the overall quality of the player. I recommend this CD player to anyone who likes to burn his or her own CD's. If you are as picky as I am when it comes to burning CD's, using CD-RW's gives you the added flexibility in making your perfect music CD's.
The AZ923017 CD player is 10 times better than the one I had previously. 45 seconds of skip protection instead of 40, CD-R and CD-RW compatibility (the most important feature for me), 2 bass (DBB) levels, and an AM/FM radio which needs no antennae and still does an excellent job picking up radio signals. The only cons to this system is the alarm system, which I would probably never use anyway, and the headphones are huge (but fit my big head nonetheless :P). Also, like on the other player, the annoying beeps for every button you push, and your CD player settings are resetted to the default every time you open the cover. But these are very extraneous and do not make a big difference, and don't even compare to the durability of Philips CD players. I won't have to worry about this one holding up if it is built like the last. Definitely recommended a million times over other CD players I've had.
