The Sony Bean's other key advantage over the iPod Shuffle is its FM tuner, which allows for both manual and automatic preset selection (up to 30 presets total). You can't record radio, however, and again the controls make for somewhat awkward operation.
The Sony NW-E300 series supports direct playback of MP3, WAV, and ATRAC3 audio files; Sony's Connect music store uses the last of those. The player also supports unprotected WMA files--as long as they're first wrung through SonicStage for ATRAC3 conversion. Obviously we'd prefer protected-WMA support, which would permit access to a wide range of online stores. But to be fair, the iPod Shuffle has a similar limitation. The difference is in the software: Apple's iTunes is a robust, appealing music manager/store interface, while Sony's SonicStage remains a slow, clunky, relatively limited application. It took more than five minutes to import our 10GB collection of MP3s, which is an unusually long time. And SonicStage is just generally unintuitive to use, with a design that smacks of midgrade shareware. The exception is the nicely presented Connect music store, which you can sample thanks to a coupon that Sony includes with the Bean for five free tracks.
Ultimately, any audio player must be judged by its sound quality. Note to Sony: Loud doesn't equal good. Although the Bean can play really loud (concerned listeners should enable its volume-limiting feature), it suffers from noticeable background hiss. Our sample MP3 and Connect ATRAC3 tracks sounded quite good overall, especially when we ditched Sony's bass-deficient white earbuds, but the hiss was distracting, notably in quieter tunes. Thankfully, FM radio suffered no such problem, and reception was excellent.
In CNET Labs' tests, the Sony Bean transferred files at a disappointing 0.61MB per second. Even deleting songs from the device seemed to take forever: nearly three minutes to remove just two dozen songs. However, the player more than redeemed itself with its incredible battery life of a bit less than 47 hours. That's not quite the 50 hours Sony promises, but it's outstanding all the same.
- See more CNET content tagged:
- Sony Walkman,
- Apple iPod Shuffle,
- Sony Corp.,
- cover,
- D-Pad
Where to buy
Sony Walkman Bean NW-E305 (512MB, Coconut White):
$64.87
| store | price | in stock? | rating |
|---|---|---|---|
|
Amazon.com Marketplace
|
$64.87 | Yes |
|
%20MP3%20player%20reviews%20-%20CNET%20Reviews&srcUrl=http://reviews.cnet.com/mp3-players/sony-walkman-bean-nw/4505-6490_7-31470460-2.html){kind=small}