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"One of the BEST" on by D23S
Pros: Quality of the player, battery life, SOUND quality, file transfer, FM tuner..
Cons: nothing really
Summary: I’ve been a ipod user for about three years… last week I bought the new ipod classic but took it back due to its slow software and same old design…. Then I looked at the ipod touch but immediately said no after hearing all the problems with screen… I’ve always liked sony but hated their software… so after hearing that sony got rid of their “software” I went to a sony store to try out these new walkmans and let me tell you, ipod’s sound quality is not even close to sony’s. Sony nwz-s618 is not as big as it looks in pictures, matter of fact it’s really tiny. Differences between nwz-A818 and nwz-S618 are that A818 comes with MDR-EX082 Headphones and S618 has a fm tuner. Headphones that come with S618 are pretty decent. A618 screen size is 2 inches comparing to S618 1.8 inches. I picked S618 because of solid look/feel and fm tuner. Transferring files are fairly easy with drag and drop (including videos & pictures) or you can also use windows media player. There’s an extra option of browsing files by folder. It’s a great player & much much better than the ipods. Only thing I would recommend is that I wish sony could add more memory…. What more can I say, I just love my walkman
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"Better than an iPod" on by 3rdalbum
Pros: Great bass response, drag 'n' drop music loading, nice looking interface
Cons: Finiky with accepted audio formats, lanyard is impossible to get in
Summary: I can't believe that nobody has mentioned this MP3 player's biggest selling point: You load music onto it through drag 'n' drop! That's right - you can load music onto the player whether you are running Windows, Mac OS X, Mac OS 8.5, Linux, FreeBSD, Syllable, etc... absolutely no software required, your operating system just needs to support the basic USB mass storage driver.
When you load music onto the player and unplug it, it automatically rebuilds its own music database. This is a clever innovation that makes a lot of sense.
The audio quality is excellent, and Sony's ClearBass feature gives amazing bass response without distortion. There is a full graphic equaliser too.
The user interface is quite nice looking, which is a bonus. It's not rocket science to navigate either. One amazing part of the player (amazing to me, since I'm used to an HDD player) is that when you switch on the player, it immediately goes back to the exact part of the song you were listening to. When I say "immediately", I mean that it's playing again within a fraction of a second. Battery life is reportedly 33 hours for music, and so far my player is on track to achieve this.
The build quality is good, except for the lanyard. For some reason, I got a bonus lanyard with my player (included in the shipping carton), but it's impossible to feed it through the little hole. That's a bit disappointing. You do get a little plastic cradle which you're meant to put onto the optional charger accessory, but I found that the cradle was stable enough to keep the player standing upright on its own.
My other quibble is quite a major one actually. I have been trying for days to get video onto this MP3 player. You need such ridiculously precise specifications for the video, that your encoder is unlikely to meet all these specifications. As yet, all my attempts at encoding video for this thing have met with failure. I haven't given up yet, but would you really expect an ordinary person to go through all this struggle? Let's hope the upcoming Walkman software from Sony will help the situation.
All in all I've been happy with this MP3 player. Sound quality is good, build quality is solid, features are good, and its ease-of-use for transferring music makes iTunes look like Gentoo. If Sony can release a firmware update that loosens up the video format requirements, or include a Wine-compatible video encoding tool, they're onto a winner. -
"Much better than a 7.3/10" on by xanderk84
Pros: Sound quality is crisp and full; EXCELLENT navigation and UI; dedicated volume control on the side; player instantly turns on, no wait time at all; great battery life; nice to look at and hold.
Cons: there are no on-the-go playlists which is the most significant con, also, any button turns on the player so the hold switch must be set to "lock" after it is turned off but no big deal
Summary: CNET should have given this player better than a 7.3. I come to this site whenever I want to research electronics, but I find it irritating that CNET places so much importance on fancy features and style, while focusing less on practicality and quality. Electronics manufacturers respond by putting out shiny, snazzy gadgets with cool features that are poorly designed and not fun to use.
I've owned 2 iPods, a Creative Zen Micro-Photo and a Sandisk Sansa e280. I gave this a ten because it is the best mp3 player I have ever used. However, Sony should have included on-the-go playlists.
Navigation with this player is superb. Forget scroll-wheels or touch-pads or fancy-pants impractical touch-screens. The right and left arrows move through the artist list alphabetically. The up and down arrows are then used to select your choice. So simple. The "Now Playing" screen can be returned to from anywhere. Also there are 2 custom equalizer settings and playing around with them is a treat when the sound quality is so good. Also there is a loop in the side for a lanyard. Get the hard clear case from Sony. It makes the player much easier to hold and use. Get the player as well. -
"best all around player on the market" on by theweblord
Pros: sound quality - easy of use - excellent battery
Cons: crappy stock earbuds
Summary: I finally am happy with my setup. I have tried Ipod, Zen and others nothing comes even close to this unit. The most important thing a MP3 player can do is to sound good. The sound on this play blew me away! Its important to understand that the stock earbuds that come with this unit and ever other unit are mediocre at best. A few years back I decided to invest in some high quality earbuds. I ended up with the Shure e4 and then went and had custom fitted ear pieces make from Westone. Believe me when I say that upgrading to good earbuds makes a huge difference! This unit really strives at the following features above most:
- Clean sound (as I stated above... much better than others I have tried)
- No software needed to upload. (what a blessing this is)
- Instant start of mp3 files. (Others I have tried take a second or 2 before the mp3 starts)
- Easy to navigate. (Song db is updated from ID3 tags automatically after undocking)
- Very long battery life (I only have to charge this unit every couple of weeks verses every day or 2 with others) -
"Tremendous!" on by smashie²
Pros: Size, sophisticated feature set
Cons: No "relative FFW" feature
Summary: I just unloaded my Sansa e280 for this, and it's superfine. Sound options and quality are top notch. I checked out the new Nano "fatty" in store two weeks ago and i'm glad i didn't bite. Video is vivid, navigation is a snap, and it feels rock solid. The only disppointment is the lack on an intelligent fast foward. Much of my music library is composed of one hour+ DJ sets and getting to the middle of one takes a while. Only the Toshiba Gigabeat S (other than the iPod) would speed up when fast forwarding through a long track.
Sony just dropped the price for the 8GB version to $160, while the Nano 8GB sells for $200. The Sony NWZ-S618 is now a ridiculous bargain.
Sony NWZ-S618F user reviews (8GB, black)
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