Other decks in the price range that I’ve used are the Denon DN-S1000, Stanton M.303 and M.304, and the Vestax CD-x05. Of these, the CDJ-200 is by far the best for strictly mixing. If you can’t afford a CDJ-1000mk3, don’t want to scratch, and can deal with weird pitch bending (I’m sure you can), then it’s a great deck for the price. Pioneer, in my opinion, made the right sacrifices to make this a $400 deck, as it does what it does very well, it just doesn’t do everything.
I’m glad I got them, but I won’t keep them after I can afford something better.
CDJ-200 Tabletop CD/MP3 Player: Packed With Excitement
The Pioneer CDJ-200 is an entry-level CD turntable, combining the key elements of Pioneer’s professional digital CD decks with a host of innovative features including full-function MP3 playback, hot loop, beat loop and the unique one button loop cutter, for creating loops within loops until the beat has been cut to infinity. This technical excellence is complemented by a design that’s both visually stunning and supremely practical. The unit is robust, compact and portable, not to mention truly affordable, making it the ideal choice for serious home DJs, bars and other installations where space (and budget) is limited.
Since the CDJ-200 is MP3 compatible, aspiring DJs can now include the very latest downloaded tracks in their sets, without having to convert the audio from other formats. The MP3 functionality also allows DJs to locate tracks more quickly (via folder search) and to see the name of the disc, artist and song on the unit’s bright dot-matrix display window. This screen also has a bar graph showing the elapsed and remaining playing time of a track, plus an Auto BPM Counter, giving DJs the real-time information they need to create better mixes more quickly. The unit has a tempo read-out as well as a separate Master Tempo button with three settings for locking the pitch of a track as it’s sped up or slowed down.
The unit uses an electric-blue light at strategic locations to give the DJ constant feedback about the status of the CD and the effects in use. The light above the CD-slot, for example, shows that there’s no disc onboard and also guides the DJ to the user-friendly quick-load slot. With the disc inserted, that light goes off and a blue illuminated ring appears around the edge of the jog wheel - indicating that a CD is loaded and ready for playback.