Sony Network Walkman NW-HD3 (20GB, Silver)

Pros: Good looking, decent player. Excellent audio-quality. Gapless playback!

Cons: USB-AC-connector combination.

Summary: First of all, I believe it's a fact that there is no perfect MP3-player. They all have pros as well as cons. Consider this when searching for the player of your choice.

For me, this choice was between the iPod (mini) and the NW-HD3. After many nights reading review after review, I finally bought the iPod mini. Audio-quality, user-interface, and iTunes were supposed to be top notch. And they are indeed very good, but still I was a little bit disappointed. Apple's lossless decoder is excellent, but takes enormous amounts of space. And with AAC, I seemed to be missing something in the music, hard to describe. It's clear and nice, but it's flat. And a major con for me: Apple can't play gapless. And the 'join tracks' function in iTunes is not an ideal option for me. By the way, personally I find iTunes not as perfect as everybody says. Same for the so-called Apple intuitive user-interface, it's good, but not perfect. All in all, Apple didn't deliver what I expected... and I traded the unit for a Sony NW-HD3.

As you'll know, many criticize SonicStage, ATRAC, and the Sony user interface... as to now, I didn't have any problems with SonicStage; decoding and uploading went smoothly, and personally I like the way SonicStage organises your library by artist and album, rather than by song as iTunes does.

Then, UI on the unit itself is also quite simple. I don't miss the clickwheel at all. Some people have states that Sony doesn't remember your last entry; that's not entirely true; during playback you can simple move back to song-album-artist; if you press the mode button, then you start all over again, that's true.

But most importantly, audio-quality is the key to all players, and here also the Sony delivers. Overall it's not better or worse than the iPod, just different, and in my ears, more pleasant. About the noise-issue some people noticed, I believe it's there, maybe related to the spinning harddrive, but it's minimal anyway. I find it not very disturbing. And most people listen on the bus/train or plane, so due to the background noise you won't hear it anyway. The millisecond pause between tracks on the iPod is more disturbing to me, especially if you listen to live concerts, of movie-scores. Also keep in mind that many studio albums, although digitally recorded etc, still possess a little bit of noise, anyway.

Add to that, the 20GB harddisk and longer batterylife is a fine bonus!

Concluding this review: neither the iPod nor the Sony is perfect. No player is (yet). It's up to you which player suits you the best; if you care about music-quality and have loads of mp3's on your harddisk, want easy-scrolling on a fine unit, go for the iPod. If you want excellent music quality with gapless playback, don't mind to decode your CD-collection to ATRAC, go for the Sony.

But, the best thing you can do, buy both, and keep the one you like best, return the other. Choose wisely!