The Sony D-EJ100, dropped in 2003, was one of those late-era portable CD players that reminded you CDs weren’t going down without a fight. Super slim, lightweight, and running on just two AA batteries, it came with Sony’s G-Protection anti-skip tech so you could actually walk—or even jog—without your music cutting out. It was part of the last wave of Discman models before MP3 players took over, with incremental updates like longer battery life and better skip protection compared to early 2000s versions. If you were still burning your own mix CDs or grabbing the latest album at Best Buy, the D-EJ100 was the kind of no-nonsense player that just worked.