Meet Sony's Colorful New MP3 Player

[cookoy]

looks the same as their old B series, only with brighter color schemes. some of their Vaio notebooks have really bright colors - catchy because their really awful to look at.

 

[Pawessum16]

[citation][nom]assmar[/nom]No FLAC?[/citation]
FLAC LOL....I was thinking more like AAC. Sorry, but I doubt this thing has the hardware components to warrant the audio quality of FLAC let along the capacity. I like to keep FLAC to my computer and make AAC conversions for my portable media players. Besides, if you get Sony's Media Go software it will automatically convert your FLAC files to whatever your player supports when you have them transferred over. Super handy btw

 

[kkiddu]

Looks cool, but it also looks like it was made by a fashion house rather than a tech giant. Where's the 2011 tech ?

I've been seeing stuff like this for the past 5 years or more.

 

[Guest]

fog this design when are they gonna make a fogging MP3 player that is a HEADSET ONLY?!?!

 

[ProDigit10]

I knew it! They would come with very limited space, a high price, and a very small file extension support!
Typical Sony!
They look good, but I'm sure as soon as 2 or 3 people own this device, you'll no longer feel special.
Looks alone can not convince me!

I'd rather go with Panasonic or other brands! They are about just as good, look less nice, but at least offer a wider file extension support (like ogg, flac, wma, mp3, mp4, m4a, etc...), and usually offer extended storage, like 8 or 16GB is nice for carrying around a small library of CD's!

MP3 players are so old, Sony would have done better in creating something people find excitening, like a tablet or so, but even then, it'll probably come with Sony's proprietary OS, and all possible ways to do something other than playing music or watching video's disabled!

 

[adamboy64]

This looks pretty neat actually. Quite nice indeed.
Capacity is a little low though.

However, in saying that, I have well under 1Gb of MP3's.. so it doesn't affect me,
but I'm sure it will a lot of others.

 

[light27]

I'm still using my Diamond Rio PMP300 which only has 32MB of memory and has to connect to an old printer port...I dusted off an old laptop, formatted it, and installed Windows 98 SE on it. The company, Diamond, doesn't exist anymore and have had to find user created program that emulates the original software. The laptop's floppy drive is dead, and the cd-rom is still working...I just got it networked (Pain in the butt) but know I put files on the hard drive through the network connection. I think my MP3 player was the first ever MP3 player to be made...it came out in 1999, just when MP3 music was starting to take off...remember the days of napster, but before napster..I would have to find FTP sites that were hosting mp3's for download...those where the days

 

[belardo]

Looks pretty neat and a decent size, the price and function is along the lines of an iPod Nano. Its interface means it can go from PC to headphones to a car-stereo without cables.

As long as it works like a thumb-drive, uploading files (non music) and MP3s should be very easy. It doesn't play OGG files?! Aw, come-on - its a free format!

A 2GB Nano is $50. So these SONYs going for $45~47 isn't a problem.

Some have posted here about its small 2 / 4GB size and compare it to a 32GB thumb drive.

A) Thumb-drive isn't an MP3 player with the extra parts to produce audio and manage files.
B) Not everyone needs a 16/32/64 GB media player.
C) Too small for a display
D) For those of us who do work-outs, its a great little size. (Does it have a clip?) Were if it can hold dozens or hundreds of songs, that is enough.

 

[milktea]

With capacity in the GB range, quality is most important. More music would be in FLAC. So I'd rather they put in a a Burr-Brown DAC and TI opamp.

 

[Guest]

I used to have a Sony similar to these. (NWZ-B105F)

The good:
- They gave pretty good sound.
- The were easy to maintain as all you do to sync is to treat it as a USB drive and drag and drop the files you want on it. You could use 3rd party software but personally, I loved the file system way better.
- Charge from USB and charge lasted pretty long. No special hardware.

The bad:
- If you don't put your files in folders the random play (at least on mine, not the above model so I can't say if they suffer the same problem) would play about 15 songs and then repeat. Come on... What about the 470 other songs on the device? Turn off the machine. Turn it back on, it would play the same songs in reverse order. I thought it was messed up. Sony can't make a proper random number generator or something. (Something I've see with the PS3 when it jukeboxes the MP3s I've put on it as well.)
- Navigating to a particular song took forever compared to, say, an ipod.
- I'd set a setting like boosting the base and they would suddenly get lost just through navigation of the machine.
- FM radio reception was crap.
- Limited storage. 2-4GB was done years ago and even then I thought it was small. These devices should really be up to at least 8-16GB now. Makes me think that Sony just put a new case around the same machine that I bought and sold years back.

 

[light27]

I'm curious...what is the FLAC format and how does it compare to MP3?? I'm use to MP3's encoded at 160Kbps to 256Kbps at 44kHz to 48kHz stero and I find that to be alright. I guess I'm just old school...I know some people still prefer Vinyl Records

 

[bustapr]

[citation][nom]nebun[/nom]wait, i can't upload any files because i can't connect to Sony's Network, lol[/citation]
you fail dude, Sonys MP3s and walkmans all work with Windows Media Player, and you can upload files and stuff either through media player or simple copy and paste...

 

[hannibal]

Well I have NWZ135 and have to agree with Zekaric with good parts. Relative good sound for mp3 device, small, easy to put on new songs. The battery still does last long enough after many years of use! And the armband is guite nice when jogging!
The navigation is not so nice... And the ZAP funtion was/is so easy to put on accidently... Well some people really like ZAP but I think that it has been more problem than a bless...

I would like to see from Sony real good sound quality (including flack!), bigger capacity (flack eats so much more memory) and sturdy case from their old sport series... It was water proof sturdy aluminium. Really nice to have when jogging in the rain... And ofcource that long playing time! That have been good points so far allready.

 

[milktea]

[citation][nom]light27[/nom]I'm curious...what is the FLAC format and how does it compare to MP3??[/citation]
You can lookup FLAC from Wikipedia. Basically, it's a "lossless" compression format for audio, which means no loss in quality compare to the original/source. You only benefit from lossless audio if you have high-end equipment; mainly for audiophiles. If you've ever listen to 24-bit/96kHz audio, you'll see what night & day difference compare to 16-bit/44k CDs.

 

[eddieroolz]

I miss the days of ultra-portable MP3 players that looked vibrant. At least Sony's doing something about it, but 2GB/4GB is nothing...it would be filled with 3 albums in FLAC. That is, if it even does support it.

Still, not everyone wants an iPod/Zune/whatever.

 

[ProDigit10]

[citation][nom]light27[/nom] I think my MP3 player was the first ever MP3 player to be made...it came out in 1999, just when MP3 music was starting to take off...[/citation]
Don't flatter yourself, I had an mp3 discman since 1998, and I can't tell you if they where the first or not!

 

[ProDigit10]

ogg (for bitrates above 88kbps) and m4a (for bitrates below 30kbps) are the future!