Sony Walkman NWZ-A828K (8GB, black)

Summary: This is a great bluetooth headset product for those who hate wires. Player is always in a "standby" mode even when shutting off. Menu simple and easy to use. Great sound equalizer selections. Manual says that the battery has a limit of 500 charges. Will this be a future problem?

Summary: The main reason why I bought the Sony A820 series is for its high audio quality. I am definitely critical of audio quality and Ipods just do not do the trick for me. Sony, with its new audio enhancement functions, makes Ipod sound like a tin can. Only the VPT (surround) function has no added value. The rest really improves your listening experience without distortion on the EQ bands.

The video playback is great. The larger screen makes a big difference compared to the A810 (formerly owned the A810). It is very easy to convert any type of video to the correct mp4 320*240 format (I use Nero Recode - included in Nero 7). Again, the sound is great providing you a cinema experience on hand held format.

I find the Sony A820 series very user friendly. It provides good overview of your music collection and allows for easy search. However, since Sony does not use a software package to manage the player, it is hard to keep to player well organized. For transferring and editing files the normal functions of windows explorer are used. While this is very convenient for data transfer, when trying to organize all artists on your player it is a hassle. Windows does not discriminate in caps and small letters, but player does resulting in one artist being listed several times. This is difficult when you for instance want to play all songs from one artist. You have to delete the name first and then re-enter in exact format since windows ignores changes of caps to small letters (v.v.) when spelling remains the same.

So far, I have found that the battery life, while good, is not as good as the A810. This is probably due to the larger screen. Every time you touch a button more energy is required to light the screen again. This is why in practice I think its battery life is not as good as with its predecessor.

The EX headphones are good. They are a class apart from anything standard you would buy in the store and they are no match for Ipod earphones by far! However, I am going to match this player with the Shure SE530 in ear monitors for the ultimate quality sound experience.

Conclusion:

The Sony A820 offer high quality in all aspects. Getting your track lists organized may be a bit of a hassle, which is my main draw back on this product. The price is perhaps a bit high but in my opinion is definitely worth the while.

I would certainly recommend this product to anyone who enjoys the best audio quality for his ears!