- Average user rating: 3.5 stars out of 102 reviews Back to product review
- My rating: 0 stars
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16 out of 22 people found this review helpful
1.5 stars
"just another pretty face"
Pros: great battery life, great sound quality, excellent exterior design, OLED screen is a step ahead of most if not all mp3 players
Cons: poor menu/navigation system, severly limited mp3 capabilities, 3 line display + roughly 120 songs = too much scrolling around,
Summary: i really wanted to like this mp3 player, really, i did. but who ever is in charge of Sony's Audio Design should be hung, shot and sent to hell in a tidy hand basket for the following reason...
- there is no possible way to just "drag and drop" mp3's into the device (like iRiver) which makes it rather annoying to use because...
- the synchronization software is a mess. compared to itunes where what you enter in the "artist, title, genre...etc" will transfer accordingly to your ipod, the Sony SonicStage software doesn't. infact, you can fill out ID3 tags for your mp3s and once it transfers only some will show up on the Walkman, the rest are filed under "unknown artist and unknown album" (perhaps some tag version conflict?). so then the only way to fix that is to manually re-enter the ID3 tags for the mp3's located on the Walkman (takes about 30 min for 120 songs) so that you can figure out what song to choose.
- ok fine...i'll live with that since the wee gadget still looks sexy with that smooth exterior. the file transfer speed was kind of slow compare to the ipod, Zen and iRiver so i figured my laptop was underpowered and slotted the player to my desktop. smack me silly and call me uncle but the cursed device wouldn't let me transfer/recieve files from a new computer UNLESS i deleted the existing tracks off the walkman!! which meant re-entering those ID3 tags again. BAHHHH
...i know the folks at Sony take this whole music copyright thing seriously, but for the love of God, it seems that they really, REALLY didn't want to add mp3 capability at all to this player. but its ok, it's still sweet looking and feels good in the hand so i'll give it one more shot.
- 2 hours later i managed to load my songs, and with a quick 3 minute charge (you get 3 hours of playback with that!! holy crap thats awesome) i decided to take it outside jogging and immediately noticed 2 things...
- you can't see the screen in daylight because of that reflective coating, and i mean i had to find a tree, get some shade and cup my hand over the OLED screen to get a read out. but running at night, that screen was brighter than day and a sight for sore eyes...really cool.
- the text scrolls length wise on the device, naturally given it's shape, but wearing on a lanyard, belt clip or whatever means you're going to have to take it off in order to look through your menu options...otherwise everything appears sideways (which paired with the reflective coating makes it an olympic feat to read the text).
...i mean in the end, i don't know what to say. for the longest time the public begged Sony to provide mp3 support and the wish was granted, but not willingly i guess. most people can live without the drag/drop function (although it would be nice but a lot of mp3 players don't have that), many won't mind re-entering some tags, fewer might have the patience to re-enter them again...but very few will appreciate the fact that if they paired the device to their laptop first their is no possible way to add new mp3's from another computer unless you delete the existing ones. i mean, it has great sound, the bundled earphone are of good quality, the design has enough flash to make this a hot item among teens-adults...but it just shouldn't be this frustrating to use darn it. i guess i'll go date my ipod mini with its measely 2 hour battery life until something better comes along.
- 6 replies to this review
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thats right, A FLASH. not a harddrive model. these are made for random playing, not selective. y if u must, program it.
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i find it ridiculous that ppl r complaining about the screen size compared to the number of songs that one carries... a player with 512mb should only be used to carry a playlist. i mean i have over 1000songs on my computer, and i have an ipod for carrying all my songs. but in reality, i only listen to about 30-50 songs at a time (in my winamp playlist) and this player is for someone like me, that would rather carry a tiny player play for on the go music, not having to carry my whole library around.
and i read a comment about someone saying that this doesnt support drag nd drop.. again, then this player is not for my kind of music listener, because havong 1000+ songs and only carrying up to 50 at a time means that there must be a fast way to change playlists, i wanna be able to plug in the player, and drag a song into the player quickly and jus take it out and walk out the door. and if this "drag and drop" does really work, can someone plz tell me so ? thanks -
Something better has come along. Try the Rio Carbon Pearl (6gb). Discard the included syncing software and just use WMP. Happy happy. Joy joy.
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http://www.siliconpopculture.com/review/109_0_2_0_M9/
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I use iTune to convert songs from CD to MP3 format in HDD then I edit the song in MP3 format.
I tranfer songs from from HDD to my Sony NW-E505 in ATRAC3. It can store about 250 songs in ATRAC3 64kb, it is as twice as MP3 128kb with the same quality.
The converting time of SS from MP3 to ATRAC3 is a bit faster than the time of iTune from CD track to MP3. -
While I wouldn't give the player a 3, your points are totally valid. I still haven't been able to load ripped mp3's from my CD's because they are on my desk-top and I loaded the sonic stage software on my laptop first. (***?) mounting the 507 on my upper-arm (slaveband style) works pretty well for me when jogging, but I don't bother trying to see which songs are playing when I'm jogging. I made a specific folder for work-out music.
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