Sony Walkman E-340 Series 8 GB Video MP3 Player - Red (NWZ-E344)

Satisfactory but a few problems

Bought this for a friend & loading it with their music for them (they're not tech savvy). A good player for non-tech savvy people as the menu / interface is fairly simple & obvious. However:



1) Sound is not that great. I had to create my own "equalized" setting (it lets you create & save two equalization curves) in which I boosted the bass and minimized the treble to get it to sound normal. Probably the ear buds -- my Apple iPod sounds much better when I plug them in -- but even so not quite as good as an iPod. However if you're willing to fiddle & make your own equalizer setting with the bass up high the treble down low and everything a straight line in between that's okay.



2) Poor programming in many ways. They may improve the firmware but as I write this (end of Dec 2009) the sort of software bug I find is: load up songs of one album that has more than 9 tracks and track 10 plays immediately after track 1. That is it ignores the actual track number and orders the tracks by a simple alphabetical reading of the name. Shouldn't do that!



3) FM reception is okay but not superb. (Just so you know there is no AM). Easy to set presets and flip around the presets but no way to label the presets (e.g. "WNPR" or "OLDIES"...)



Here are the plusses:



Looks nice feels nice very small (approx business card size about 1/3" thick) certainly saves $ over an iPod if the recipient will definitely not want to put applications on their device or do anything other than simply listen to music.



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