Delving into the various content menus proffers different results, all of them straightforward and easy to navigate through. Oddly, playlists cannot be accessed through the music menu, but have their own icon on the main menu screen. Within music, you can sort by album, artist, and so on--navigating by album is particularly nice as there's an option to do so by cover art. Once you dig down into the tracks, there's a useful twist-like interface feature. You can navigate down lists using the up and down keys, but press the right or left ones and you're taken through sections, such as 0 through 9 and A through D. This is quite handy for getting quickly through long lists. The photo menu offers a lovely 3x4 thumbnail grid, and videos are listed with their titles and a handy thumbnail still shot. It's a polished interface overall, and it makes browsing pleasant.
Sound and settings
In addition to the various features mentioned previously, the Sony NWZ-S610 series offers various audio and display settings. For example, you can flip the screen orientation in order to view photos and videos in landscape mode ("wide-screen")--a convenient feature. You can also choose to view full-screen album art while listening to music, rather than a thumbnail with song info on the playback screen. The player also has the standard playback modes (shuffle, repeat, and so on), and there's a snazzy EQ section that offers a graphic representation of the presets (five in all, plus two user-defined modes). Then, of course, there are the various sound-enhancement tools--Digital Sound Enhancement (DSE), Clear Bass, and Clear Stereo--which honestly don't do much, but they do offer a little improvement. Finally, there are the surround sound effects, for those who want to feel like their listening in an arena or at a rave.
Sony has never had trouble with MP3 player performance (except if you include the performance with its software)--the NWZ-S610 is no exception. As we've come to expect from Walkman players, the rated battery life is fantastic: 33 hours for audio and 8 hours for video. CNET Labs was able to eke out a slightly less impressive 25.2 hours for audio, and a pretty appalling 1.9 hours for video. Photos look very good on the bright color screen, with nice detail and excellent color saturation. Video is similarly impressive, though we wouldn't want to watch more than 20 to 30 minutes on this size of screen. Sound quality for music was fine through the included headphones, but much better through a pair of Shure SE530s (any high-quality earphones should do the trick). The NWZ-S610 series offers nice, tight bass; rich, enveloping mids; and clear, sparkly highs--what more can you ask for, really?
What You'll Pay
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