Sony S-Series Walkman (second generation, 16GB, black)

Pros: Powerful Speaker, Nice Screen, Good Computer Interface, Great Sound!

Cons: Long time to load playlist list, Reboots with large playlists, No expandable memory, Will not allow you to remove bundled software.

Summary: This unit boasts great sound, great sound enhancement options, a user friendly and robust menu and GUI. Linking with computer is fast and easy. However with 16GB (actually 14.8 usable) you have a lot of music and have a good chance of having a relatively large playlist (especially considering that you can sync by playlist in many computer music programs, i.e. Media Monkey, WMP 11, etc.). Well, this unit will not play large playlists, actually it will not even recognize them. When the unit loads after a sync it rebuilds the library, but apparently this library does not include the playlists. When you first go to the playlist menu, it takes forever to load (20-30 seconds easy), then when it gets to a large playlist, it locks up, clicks, then reboots. And even further, the reboot is a hard reboot, the unit takes about 3-5 min to turn back on because it has to reload the library all over again. Even after reloading, the unit will not recognize the playlists, and repeats the same problem. Bottom line, Sony made a great unit for a great price, but practically made the unit unusable with this issue. Small playlists work fine and load fast, large ones, no luck. The speaker is great, user interface and display are pristine, OS could use some work. I have synced the same playlists with many other MP3 players with no issues what so ever. Hopefully Sony will come up with a firmware fix in the near future, unfortunately at this point, there is no internet support in forums, etc. to find if this is a reoccurring problem because the unit is so new. Maybe I will try the unit again later when it has had a little more exposure on the market and the bugs have been worked out, but at this point, both units I tried (while hoping I got a lemon at first) are going back. Fellow non-Ipod users, use a your own risk.