- Average user rating: 4.0 stars out of 67 reviews Back to product review
- My rating: 0 stars
Full user review
-
10 out of 10 people found this review helpful
4.5 stars
"Sony's True Ipod Killer"
Pros: Drop-safe hard drive protection, extreme battery life, smaller & lighter than ipod, bright backlight, removable battery, comes with A/C adapterstylish
Cons: silver models have a problem with cracking buttons, plastic topside is fragile- as is the usb/power cover (tiny plastic strap holding it), exclusive sonicstage software is quirky, cheap "bag" included
Summary: $300 will get you this 20gig alternative to an ipod. I'd say the biggest advantages over the $300 20gig ipod are 40 hour (atrac 48kbps / 30 hours mp3 128kbps), and better bass response/eq (6 band eq only available to atrac converted files, mp3 gets bass/treble adjust only) than ipod.
Get a leather case, this velvety bag of a case wont take a drop very well- will protect from scratches, thats about it.
I left the unit on by accident overtnight the first night i had it, after 9 hours playing 128kbps and 192kbps mp3s- it still had 75% battery life left.
Files transfer very fast. My only complaints are that you cant manage files from the player.. And when renaming files on the player from sonic stage, it takes 10 seconds to refresh the list every time. Playlists have to be made using the software, kinda tedious process. Great player, good bang for your buck- I wish Sony would include an FM radio and recording features, but I guess they dont have to do that to sell this, the Sony name sells itself.
- 2 replies to this review
-
In Japan Sony ATRAC/Mp3 players are out selling the iPods. I read this on some financial website. I have been an Atrac user for many years now. You can visit Minidisc.org to learn about LP2 LP4, Atrac, Atrac2, Atrac 2.5 Atrac 3 and 3 plus there.
Sony's format, has been around for much much longer than the apple iPod. The first ATRAC format is perhaps 15 to 20 years old. When it was used in the first MINIDISCS by sony and Sharp, panasonic and several other brands. With the popularity of MP3s came the MDLP i.e. instead of ~320 kbps, ~132kbps and 115 and 66kps were used for lp2 and lp4 standards. Sony then made NetMD technology-connecting Minidisc to PCs for file transfers through sonicstage software. Sharp, Denon, panasonic and many others do have the mdlp versions of minidisc but probably not the NetMD stuff.
Through sonicstage you can also transfer your music files to many other sony devices. make atrac CDs, audio cds, transfer to CLIE' Pdas onto Magicgate memory sticks. network walkmans and to Minidiscs of course.
iPods are new. very nice, great sound. Interface is different, less controllable sound options. Sony has parametric and graphic equalizer, display is decent. Not very fancy like the iPods. What upsets me is that some people think that it is SONY following Apple in some way. it is not true.
Do check out minidisc.org for info on ATRAC and sometimes people post links to interesting stuff. -
Looks like a great player, but as far as I'm concerned, until the software is half as good as iTunes for organizing and interface purposes, they won't have a deal breaker...
%20user%20review%20and%20rating%20-%20CNET%20Reviews&srcUrl=http://reviews.cnet.com/mp3-players/sony-network-walkman-nw/4864-6490_7-31417603-3.html){kind=small}