Not bad decent value but a few flaws
[Edit: Upgrade from 3.5 to 4.4 stars; see below]
After my poor experience with the Phillips GoGear mp3 player (reviewed here last week) I thought I'd see what Sony can do with an mp3 player.
I bought their first (excellent) FM walkman in 1980 but haven't used one of their portables since. I am in general a Sony fan and my 1986 Trinitron is still running like new. Gotta love that kind of quality! But do they still have it?
First the good:
-Excellent battery life: 30 hours for music and it does get close to that if you don't do much scrolling. Nice.
-Lots of gigs for a c-note: about 6 bucks per gig once you realize that it's only 14.4 gb. I hate the way companies do that btw. Don't tell me I'm getting 16 gigs and then give me ten percent less. Be honest! Stuff like that loses customers savvy ones at least.
-Good sound...but with that traditional Sony eq curve: very flat. I've had a few Sony receivers and cd players and tape decks over the years and they are all very flat across the ranges. This makes for nice tight bass and decent mids but the top end is always a little compressed and lacks shimmer and overtones. Still a solid tone not tinny.
And seeing as most users choose either mp3 files at 128kbps or 192kbps (I'd recommend the latter if you play this through a car or other decent full-range stereo) there's plenty of compression already so no huge loss. Using 320kbps or wav files which this unit does support will result however in some noticeable loss of shimmer and breathing room for the high frequencies.
-You can use folders saves a lot of scrolling time. Put jazz metal etc into their own folders. Any smart mp3 player does this.
-***Please note!***Nice simple drag and drop of files right out of the box with no need to install the software. Just plug the Walkman into your usb and wait for it to show up on your computer as "Walkman". Do a few clicks and you're in the "music" folder; now drag and drop your files all at once or one at a time. Presto! That's sweetness because almost every problem I've had with mp3 players stems from badly written software and avoiding the need for it altogether is preferable. If you can avoid installing your included software for any player do it; it only causes hassles in the long run unless you need a certain feature. Drag and drop is where it's at: quick simple efficient. And no adware etc installed surreptitiously by the software cd a newly common scam.
PS I prefer to make the folders first as opposed to using the WMP sync feature; it has glitches while simple folder drag and drop never has for me.
-Gets good and loud. Helps with certain headphones. Sounds good on my Koss PortaPros and great on my AKG K701s. The phones that come with this are cheese as usual. Buds will never compare to real cans.
-Excellent for running my main use for mp3 players. It hasn't skipped on me once and can take all sorts of shaking and bouncing. Very nice.
-Very thin light sleek. Takes up almost no space in any pocket purse etc.
-A strange design touch that I haven't seen anyone mention but which struck me right off: the control buttons on the front panel are shaped almost precisely like Mickey Mouse's head! This can't be coincidence; surely someone in design did this on purpose. So is Sony in bed with the Mouse or what's up? In any case sometimes I see it and hear Mickey's estrogenic squeal in my inner ear saying "Pluto! Punch me in the nose and let's get this party started!"
-Along with the essential external volume buttons there's a manual lock switch on the side of the unit. Very useful to not have to scroll to make this go on and off. A good design feature that all mp3 players should have. You might want to use this when it's off and in your pocket as the unit turns on with only minor presssure on the front panel button...but that leads to:
-Another major plus this unit starts playing exactly where the last tune you were playing stopped in about a half second after the button is touched. Some players take ten seconds. This baby rips right into the music in a flash (literally; flash drive players have so many advantages). Excellent.
But the bad:
-the screen is waaay thin; it's already covered with scratches after only a few days in my empty pocket. Not good. I don't care about the aesthetics but do need to see the screen!
-to ff or rewind quickly you must first pause the track: took me a while to figure this out. Not a big con but could have been been done without needing to pause.
-There's a bar showing how long the tune is but no way to see time remaining a very useful bit of data. Until a minute or so is gone it's hard to estimate song length via the bar and one must hit the option button (Mickey's right ear) and then scroll down to "detailed information" to get the exact song length; too much hassle for a feature that's standard on most mp3 players. Not a big issue but an oversight worth correcting.
-and the one thing that will make me return this item next week: you can't delete songs or files from the player. You must first hook it up to a computer! Terrible design. My years-old Muvo deletes on the fly as do my Dell DJ and other players. This is a huge mistake: with 4000 songs how can I remember all the ones I need to dump? Very major flaw and a deal breaker for me.
But for those who only transfer stuff they already know and love this is a pretty darn decent player. I don't know who wants to watch movies or vids on a thumbnail-sized screen but as a music player this offers good sound and plenty of storage for a good price.
At this rate we'll get a terabyte for a c-note within a couple years.
Can't wait! Then we can put everything on in lossless FLAC files the only real way to go. MP3 is okay but still a compromise.
Hey Sony: not bad...but how can you leave out such a huge feature as deleting on the fly?
[Edit: 12/30/09. I now have to give this little thang a little more than four stars...and hooray to Amazoon's code writers: we can now finally change our ratings after the original review. I returned my original to the mallwart (so nice of them to let us try stuff out! And so unfortunate they can't pay living wages so I might feel bad about costing them restocking fees...) but after looking around for a few weeks I realized this Sony unit offers far more bang for the buck than any other mp3 player out there. So I picked one up here saving twenty over the mallwart price and am very happy with it barring the above caveats.
The best way to deal with no delete feature seems to be to mark the tracks you don't dig with the "wishlist" feature on the options screen and then when you charge the unit you can open the files and delete tunes you've wishlisted. Much more hassle than deleting on the fly but at least a workable solution to my main negative about the product.
If Sony releases a firmware update that lets us delete on the fly (not sure if that's possible or not; hope so) then I'd have to give this thing an almost perfect rating.
Pair it with Koss Portapros and you will be blown away by the sound.]
[Edit: 5/12/10. Still working fine after plenty of use while running hiking and hooked up to the car stereo. Zero complaints.
And here's a tip I learned from a battery expert: these lithium units apparently prefer to be full all the time and seeing as they don't have "memory effect" like normal batteries it's safe to recharge this unit as often as you like with no resultant loss of memory over the long haul. But supposedly lithiums also work best and last longest if one lets them drain completely once every 30 recharges or so and then fully fills them up again. I don't know enough about batteries to confirm or deny (though I've been doing it that way and my walkman is still running a long time before needing juice) but it was a very detailed well-written discussion by someone with a lot of experience in the field who wasn't selling anything and that's the kind of opinion I tend to trust. Just FYI.]
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