Customer Reviews

Sony MZ-N420D Psyc Net MD Walkman Digital Music Player

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

First I am a huge Sony Minidisc fan and have used md's for a long time. Entering the mp3 and wma time, I decided to get a net md to play these files. Unfortunetly Sony forgot to give their users an easy way to transfer their files to the net md. Here's why;

First even though the package says it plays mp3's and wma's, it actually means it will convert them to Atrac then store it to the player. Taking too much of your time.

Second it doesn't even convert all wma's or mp's. Most of my files are wma and it didn't even convert 75% of them.

Third the device soemtimes thinks it's full when not and heres the kicker, you must use batteries to to do any tranfers. Most mp3 player uses the power of your computer to do that.

Honestly I have never been so mad at sony. I do still love most of their products but they should have put more effort into this.
Sorry customers, but if you want an easy to use and better quality mp3 player look at anything other than net md. If Sony was smart they would have made the Net MD like a mass storage device and let the customer decide if they want to convert their music to atrac.

I ended up buying a 40gb Creative Labs Zen. Very easy and also lets me store files other than music too.

I just bought this about a week ago, so take that in stock when you read this review. I plan to update it after I've owned it for longer. BUT here are my thoughts so far.

PROs:

--Over 5 hours of music on one MD
--Sound is very good, even at the highest compression rate it's just barely below CD-quality
--MDs are relatively inexpensive (about $2 apiece)
--Low price compared to most mp3 players
--Bass and treble are adustable
--Transferring music to MD is fairly simple and fast
--MDs can store track information (album name, song name, etc) and display it on the player
--Unit is very small (it fits quite comfortably in my pocket WITH my cell phone)
--HUGE battery life when playing music
--MDs are very easily rewritable

CONS:
--MD has limited memory for storing track information (normally not a problem but if you go much beyond about 80-90 songs it may not store names for all the tracks or albums)
--Actual transferring of songs to MD takes up quite a bit of battery power
--"Shuffle" setting does not shuffle among different groups (albums), but only in one group at a time (probably not a big deal to most people)
--No voice recorder (I don't care, but some people probably do)
--Very small display screen (but I got used to it pretty fast)
--Headphones are crap--use another pair

A good value. The battery life (1 AA) is incredible. All files (MP3 etc.) must be converted to the Sony file format but the included software does this. There are two programs. "MD Simple Burner" is the easiest and fastest way to get music from your audio CD's burned on a MD(3 to 5 minutes per CD.) "Sonic Stage" will convert various file types (mp3, wav, wma) to the Sony format and transfer it to the MD. There are 3 different transfer modes, SP, LP2 and LP4. SP provides the best quality while LP4 the smallest file. I don't download music from the internet so I can't verify this feature. The Good: It is cheap (mine was $100,) reliable, small, each disk holds 70-80 songs (5 hours of music) in LP4 form, good sound quality, disks cost less than $2, good battery life and has good anti-skip protection. The Bad: Sonic Stage is slow, awkward and unstable, tiny display, confusing manual, other than headphones and a MD, no other accessories are included.

It is smaller and much cheaper than an IPOD and has much longer battery life. I use an inexpensive rechargeable NiMH battery. I use it in my car (a Miata) with a wireless FM transmitter. It is small enough to lock in the console and plays through the radio well.

I was given this as a gift and especially since it was given to me, I love this thing. It's the poor man's ipod, who wants to spend $200+ when they could get this for like $60-80. It holds up to 50- *almost* 80 songs per disk I believe (each of my disks have a different amount-depending on the length of the songs),is skip proof, sound is great, and it's easy to transfer music onto. I find no fault with it. I've had it for over a year and it's held up beautifully, even with being dropped. So personally I think it's a great gadget to have if you can't afford or don't want to splurge on the oh so hyped ipod.

Just the type of quality you would expect from a Sony product. This MiniDisc player is durable, sleek, and gets the job done very nicely. The only complaints I have is with the SonicStage software, but none from the Player itself. My problem with the software is just something that gets on my nerves, the fact that once I convert to LP4, I can't transfer it back to my library. Everything else in this is great, I can fit over 3-5 hours of music, less if I want to keep the full titles of songs, and amazing battery life. I listen to my MD Player about 1-2 hours a day, and have to replace the batter about once ever 1.5-2 months (one AA, how awesome). The MD Player is small, light, and doesn't skip (not that I've experienced) so it is PERFECT for joggers that don't want to risk the harddrive of an MP3 Jukebox. MiniDiscs are really cheap and easy to take in and out, come in cool colors, easy to store, and pretty durable. Also, MiniDisc players can stand more extreme temperatures. The only thing I wish that this had that it doesn't is a backlight, but that would ruin the good battery life.

(Review based on the nearly identical Sony MZ-NE410.)

High-capacity, high-quality, lightweight, inexpensive music player that you can carry in a jeans pocket and barely notice it's there.

The player has a major design weakness, which every purchaser should know about in advance: even when plugged into the PC via the USB cable (to transfer songs), the unit runs off its battery (there is no provision for an AC adapter). And transferring music uses up the single AA battery very quickly. And when the battery goes flat in the midst of a transfer, sometimes the session will have to be repeated completely (especially using the Simple Burner software). This is exasperating! It is possible to improvise an AC adapter, but you have to know how. (Also note that Sony has corrected this deficiency in its new line of Hi-MD players.)

But the latest version of Sonic Stage (2.1 at this writing) is a big improvement in ease of use over the original one, working well. And for playback, the AA battery seems to go on and on and on....

good sony minidisc player,
but a few things need to be asked.. you need to hook this machine up to a computer ..I have onwed a sony minidisc in the past..and the computer thing is fine no problems about that,
but when I try to play my older minidiscs on the computer they wont play..
I figured out the answer.. the older discs are "analog' and the new recorded discs are "digital' and thats fine but I have a standard minidisc player for my stereo and when I try to play a disc in from the computer.. again.. no playback... the stereo machine reads.. " no music"
my question is for sony....
why couldnt sony think of a way to make everything work together and configure right ?? perhaps make software that can configure older discs to the new digital format ??
I now have discs that play on the computer and then I have discs that play from the older minidisc player.. oh well.this is the only thing that bothers me about sony...
but still a good minidisc player for its price..it has speeds now that you can add alot more music on the discs as well I got a total of 48 songs on one alone..its a great space saver with all that music on one disc you dont need to carry around a ton of discs..I also own an "ipod" but still love my minidiscs too.
the software for sony is now "3.4" if you have not updated your software just go to sony.com ..or sony connect. it is better for the system and your computer. enjoy..

This little product is the best ever! Some of the rewiews I've seen for this has been good but some bad.
Well the player itself is flawless, it almost seemes that I get even more than just 56 hours of playback. I have dropped mine twice and still it keeps on running(that doesn't happen often). Now the sound quality itself is just amazing. I play the drums and I most of the time play to music, so I use this, It's what I bought it for. I'll tell you now it hasn't let me down yet for 2 years. Now they could do a little improvement on the software, It's easy to use but on my computer it kept incountering errors. But I found out that if you have a Sony computer you'll never have a problem.

Unlike earlier Sony Minidisc portables,this unit can't record directly from a CD player.It can only record via a computer and with a computer initiating the recording process.Fortunately,I have a hifi component Minidisc recorder to record on.More troubling is that the first unit I got of this model failed immediately.It powered up,but could never start playing a disc,and the unit made mechanical noise as it struggled to spin the disc.I opted to send the unit back to Sony instead of the Amazon marketplace merchant.Don't repeat my mistake.Sony exchanges for a reconditioned(not new) unit,though I never got one second of playback out of the original unit.Sony's recoditioned unit plays fine,but the piece of computer CD-Rom software supplied has a few scratches(I don't know if there will ever be occasion for me to use it since I'm a MAC owner, and the software can only be used with PC's).It would seem that the phasing out of Minidisc portables that can copy directly from a CD player is a music industry power play to get more control over how,or if music can be copied onto Minidisc.I bought this unit only because I have a substantial existing collection of homemade Minidiscs.For newcomers,I would say,buy a portable CD player and forget Minidisc.

i got this product for my graduation this product is awesome! the bad thing about this is that when you transfer music back to the computer you need to have that same computer, i got a new computer so i cant put it back the good thing is its cheap, it has good sounds, and the disk that they gave me can store about 5 hours of music