Customer Reviews

Sony 4 GB Walkman Video MP3 Player with FM Tuner (Black)

5 star:		(29)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

this Sony Walkman has noise canceling mechanism built into the player. For what it's worth it does an adequate job. It probably won't do the job those expensive noise-canceling headphones can do, but it is in my opinion sufficient.

My experience in reading reviews were best if I arrange it in points rather than narratives. So I will do that here.

Strength:
1. it has outstanding sound quality. It is not that outstanding right out of the box, however. You have to tweak and toggle some settings. You have to turn on bass features and play with equalizers. I had every single version of iPods and the only iPod that comes close (but not quite) to the sound quality of this is first generation iPod shuffle. It has amazingly clean bass. The earbud that comes with the player is miles better than iPod earbuds. You usually have to spend $40-$50 for this type of earbud.
2. I actually like the size of this player over iPod nano because it is easier on my hand to grab. iPod nano was too thin and it is difficult to navigate since it is too small.
3. interface is really clean and I really like how you can skip fast to the last of the list by clicking right button. This is just one of those subtle feature that makes the experience better.
4. I like how this player has dedicated tactile volume button.

Weakness
1. it does not have gapless playback. This is a problem for me because I listen to a lot of Euro style mix musics.
2. it does not arrange songs by disc numbers. This is a problem since I arranged my albums in a way that it sorts out by disc numbers.
3. the biggest knock on this player probably is limited types of playable formats. It plays mp3, aac and wav. The problem with this is that if you have some odd formats like mp2 or ogg, when you are importing the music via windows explorer you will have problems with system crash. This is mostly windows Vista issue, however.

So most of the weaknesses are either subjective or nitpicky. Overall I love this player's sound quality. Since sound quality is the top 1st, 2nd, and 3rd important thing for me when I choose my mp3 player, this one is a winner.

This is my first MP3 player. It's easy to use and sounds great. I like the noise cancelling feature. That's probably what most influenced me to buy this. I mostly have been using it on the treadmill and when I mow the lawn. The noise cancelling headphones completely block out the sound of the treadmill. Very nice. Also, this is the only music player I've ever been able to hear while mowing the lawn. While the noise cancelling headphones don't completely block out the sound of the lawn mower, they do cut it out enough so that I can hear the music without having to crank the thing up too loud.

I've got three minor beefs: I don't like the design of the headphones. Great functionality, but having the wire that goes to your left ear so much shorter than the wire that goes to your right ear can be irritating. If I've got the player down in my pocket, sometimes turning my head to the right will cause the plug to be pulled out of my left ear. Secondly, I agree with an earlier reviewer that it would be nice to be able to delete songs on the player. If I'm using the thing and decide that there's a song I don't want on there anymore, I need to hold that thought until I'm back at the computer. And with a thousand or more songs on board, it's easy to forget the sucky one you want to delete. Finally, and this might not be a problem with the player, I can't seem to get all of the album covers to transfer from the computer to the player. Many of the tracks just have the Sony logo instead of the album cover corresponding to the track. Pretty minor issues. All in all, I would recommend this player to all. Again, the sound, speed, and ease of use make it well worth it.

this one is a keeper for me. everything is just great in this player. it's my first one and I found it very easy to use, even without reading the manual, file transfer is by drag and drop in windows media 11, very intuitive and super fast. the sound is superb, and you have various enhancing options, starting with an equalizer. functions and menu are easy and the upper right button offers contextualized options. the earphones come with 3 sets of earbuds, i found them very ligth and comfortable, beeing able to use them for three straight hours with no discomfort. and the noise cancelling feat works just great. highly recommendable. keep in mind, though, if you have a very large music colection, that 8 gb may not be enough for you.

I have had this player for about a month and I am very happy.

I have upgraded from the NWZ-818. I do miss the split headphone cable extension- was perfect for the armband case in the gym and my breast jacket pocket. I also miss the chrome/metal case that had a more solid feel than this matte plastic. I dont like the 3.5 jack on top of the player. The cord gets in the way and it feels upside-down in my hand, and would have been better on the bottom.

Tried to buy from amazon, waited a week, no shipment, so I canceled the order. Had to go with Sonystyle. I got the engraving and still took about 10 days to ship.

I upgraded primarily for the FM Radio. BUT The sound quality on this player is so crystal clear that I dont like to listen to the radio on it. Any hiss, imperfection, or interference comes right through and is very annoying. Compared to the downloaded digital audio- FM radio sounds like crap.

Then I was pleasantly suprised by the sound.
The digital sound on this flash player is phenominal- the best I have heard. Very crisp and clean music here. Many differnt digital surround options are available for enhancement and the bass is very powerful. The noise-cancelation is excelent. Equalizer is alright- 6-band not special but i am glad it is there.

I am not able to use these super-sounding inner-earphones on other devices because a small pin protrudes from the side of the plug. The earbuds are very comforable and the cable is thicker so it does not tangle easily. They are excellent earbuds, but now I am curious to upgrade with other over-the-ear noise canceling headphones.

The battery life is a great selling point also with 33 hours. This means I don't need to charge it every day. cant beat 33 hours on a flash player this size.

The Sony propietary USB cable is a pain, I really wish they would use regular connections.

The interface is very intuitive on this player. Transferring files is simply drag-and-dropping files via Windows Media Player 11, or the included Sony Media Manager.

This is a Napster compatible device, so I pay $15 a month for unlimited music. Most of this is on the computer, about 1500 song fit on this player, which is ok.

I have never used this player for video.

I like this player, and will keep it for awhile.

I have an Ipod Nano, which I was very happy with. But, I always thought the audio quality wasn't quite that good. I also wanted an FM Tuner. I have to say the Sony absolutely blows the Nano away when it comes to audio quality. I really didn't realize what I was missing! As I said, I liked the Nano, but I would strongly recommend the Sony instead.

I researched a lot before buying this product. I found good reviews but very few people have bought the product. But I was not disappointed after buying this product. The sound quality is great and noise cancellation feature is great as well. I like the software its as simple as dropping the files in the folder.

While listening to songs I could hear many new sounds in the song which i did not know existed

Overall, a great music player, the best of 5 I've owned (2 ipods, cowon D2, iriver clix). The battery life is unbelievable, the video is really good, the noise cancellation is just fantastic, and the sound is excellent. The UI is very easy and intuitive to use, but with a limited feature set. From a usability perspective, there are three flaws
1) The headphone jack has a ridge on it that prevents you from using it on any other device. So you need a separate set of headphones to listen to music on your computer, or on the exercise machine at the gym
2) You can't make or edit playlists on the fly, you have to create them on the computer, which is cumbersome. And you have to use something like Windows Media player, which, like the itunes interface, I really dislike. I much prefer the drag and drop approach that the Cowon or the iRivers take.
3) I have my entire music library on the walkman, and haven't figured out how to rearrange the existing songs into playlists. The only way I know to make playlists is to copy the songs into the playlist, so if a song is on multiple playlists, there are multiple copies on the mp3 player
If you can live with these issues, this is a terrific music player. I'm torn between the flexibility on my iriver clix and the sound quality on the Sony, but the battery life and noise cancellation makes the Sony superior. The Cowon probably comes closest, but the noise cancellation and sleeker form factors gives the win to the Sony. The ipods were markedly inferior and I gave them away, not worth mentioning them here.

I found myself in need of a new mp3 player when my old ipod kept crashing my computer (Vista) so I went with the Sony. I am so much happier with this product than I was with the IPod. The software for uploading music is very user-friendly. I buy tunes from several sites now, most notably Rhapsody, and upload them in seconds from the music manager to the player (no need to create folders or playlists). The MP3 player is also very user-friendly, as was the IPod. And the sound is excellent. The noise cancelling headphones actually do as advertised, which I discovered on a long car trip with my arguing children. I was able to ignore them almost completely. Battery life is very good, but goes down considerably when using the noise cancelling feature. That's really my only knock.

Sony NWZS616FBLK 4GB Walkman Video MP3 Player (Black)
I own six Apple iPods, but not a one of them will play WMV audio books I can download free from my public library, and not of them have a built in FM tuner. This Walkman has it all, plus a sound deadening feature that is very helpful when using the Walkman at the fitness center! The sound quality is great and the battery life is very long. It is a great bargain for the price!

I've been using this player for a month and just love it so far. I've gotten numerous compliments on the player at work and it's always funny when I tell people it's a Walkman since most remember the old cassette tape players and didn't realize there was a mp3 player version. I work in a warehouse handling boxes so I also bought the armband to go with the player and couldn't be any happier thus far.

The Good:

Sound quality: As mentioned before I work in a warehouse that is also very loud and the sound quality is amazing. Even more impressive is that I only use 1 of the earphones since I need one ear free to hear fellow employees.

Features: I primarily use the "shuffle all" option of the mp3 player at work but it also comes with a time machine shuffle, a radio that you can preset your favorite radio stations, picture viewer, and video player. The video player is something I've used a couple times when viewing videos from YouTube. There are numerous programs that can convert the .flv YouTube files to mpeg4 but I use a free one called Any Video Converter that works just fine.

Battery Life: No issues here. I'll add songs here and there to the player and by the time I'm done messing around the player is fully charged.

Song Information: While a song is playing you can see the song title, album art, artist, album name, genre, and year ... assuming you have that information tagged to the file. For if some reason you don't have album art or song information tagged you can use a free program like mp3tag that will allow you to add whatever you need. Pictures of most album covers can be found on wikipedia or amazon.


The Bad:
Honestly there isn't really anything to put here except two things:

Drag and Drop functionality: The easiest way to get mp3 files on the player is to drag the file from where it is saved on the computer and drop it in the music folder of the Walkman which works just fine, however, for whatever reason the year for the song will say "unknown" if done this way. This can be corrected by using a program like Media Jukebox that will sync your files to the Walkman and is actually pretty easy to do. You can even use Windows Media Player 11 to sync but I found Media Jukebox to be the easiest.

Button size: The main pause/play button is a good size but the navigation buttons around it are a bit small ... or maybe I just have enormous hands. :D

Hope this review helps someone.