New Nano-sized Walkman is small, thin and ready to rock....
... or is it just a dull stone, like a pebble from the beach that looked cool when it was wet, but is now just a lump of basalt? The new S-series model has about the same displacement as an iPod Nano, but adds interesting new features like noise cancellation (no fancy headphones required), 30fps video playback and an automatic playlist generator that makes choices based on your listening habits.
It'll be $150 for a 4GB model and $180 for an 8GB one, both having 40 hours of music playback (or 10 hours of video playback on a 2" QVGA display.)
And if that's too pricey, for $100 or $140, depending on storage size, you can grab one of the new E-series models instead, which lacks the thin form and fancy software of the Walkman-S; or the B-series, which has no video and only 1GB or space, but costs only $45.
SONY RAISES THE CURTAIN ON NEW WALKMAN PLAYERS THAT DELIVER HIGH-QUALITY AUDIO AND VIDEO [Sony]
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i will never, ever, ever, ever spend money knowingly or willingly on a sony product.
ever.
If you're going to cover a Sony product you should, by default, list all the crap you have to go through (ie: proprietary memory, windows-only software, rootkits, etc.).
Rodney, I think such risks are taken for granted.
does it have a radiator? i actually said this in my mind, before i remembered its called a radio. does it have a radio? (im tired ppl :(
"i will never, ever, ever, ever spend money knowingly or willingly on a sony product".
Me Three.
890kb for a static image? Really?
Not that it matters much on broadband, it just seems a bit wasteful. Yes, I know that makes no sense.
I sort-of agree with the anti-Sony vibe, but am increasingly tempted by the Sony Reader. Decisions, decisions...
Sorry, I've fixed the insane 900kb image.
When Sony gets a design right, it gets it perfect.
There's a great anecdote I read somewhere about how Sony design things. Whereas more agile and focused companies have a development process, which involved different departments knocking it back and forth, Sony's design is completely black-boxed internally. The first everyone knows about a new product is when it is too late to change anything. People will ask questions about it and just be told "This is the design" as if discussion or refinement were absurd.
How can both the 4 gig and 8 gig have the same amount of audio playback? Is that a typo?
Battery life.
Having spent a fair amount of $£¥€ for various .mp3 players before finally surrendering to the Dark Side and buying an IPod, I can testify that the device will succeed or fail based on software integration and ease of use.
IPods may or may not be technically advanced or most-features-for-the-money, but they work almost seamlessly. For instance, they can actually alphabetize a list of playlists (Are you listening, Sandisk? I really wanted to like your Sansa...really I did).
Sony is dismal, indeed wretched, at both integration and ease. Similarly the durability of their small devices is terrible. The sole advantage of this device is that corporate America , who worships Sony for some reason, will pay attention and saddle up.
Why don't any of these fancy mp3 players have bluetooth stereo? It's an inexpensive yet transformative feature, but almost no DAPs have it. It has stupid crap like *noise cancellation* but you can't use wireless headphones without a clunky dongle?
thinkerer:
use rockbox, idjit.
esp on the sandisk sansa. you cant expect a hardware manufacturer to get the UI right. leave that to third party open source peeps.
Oh, noes. When will Sony get it? They screwed up MP3 players back in 2001. This led to the iPod winning. Sony just doesn't understand anymore. We saw the Connect music store...what a flop that turned out to be.
Rageahol:
The argument isn't with a particular bit of firmware on the device, but with the assertion that manufacturers have made that the .mp3 player and accompanying software package will integrate with one's computer and function properly and usefully.
A similar argument would be that if you find that Windows doesn't work as advertised, dump it and run Linux. Fine if you like to mess with the intricacies and spend a lot of time getting it configured, but not a productive use of time. It should run well out of the box as paid for, and Apple's product does. I have no great love of Apple but the product works.
Rockbox, though it works well, mostly, has fun things like this waiting in the wings..
"Run the e200rpatcher.exe file and follow the prompts. Your Sansa should have some text on the screen. If the last line says "(something) aborted" then head to the forums and look for threads relating to your problem."
...as well as a drag-and-drop file transfer (that MediaMonkey could handle). None of this should be necessary, nor is it what you pay for when you purchase an integrated music player/software package.
It looks great and probably would have been nice if it was created 5 years ago. I think it's pretty apparent that Apple has moved beyond this kind of MP3 player. You can't play catch up with products that are at the end of their product life cycle and expect to do well. Start trying to shoot down the itouch and iphone if you want to gain some market share and stay ahead. I wouldn't be surprised if apple starts to phase out classic ipods and nanos completely within the next two years.
#16 - Exactly. Yet another 8GB PMP. People's media libraries are getting huge & only Apple offers anything with substantial (100GB+) storage.
What's with the rootkit comments? All the new Sony MP3 players are MTP devices, meaning there's no software to install. You can use Winamp or Songbird or MediaMonkey or you can just drag and drop songs with Windows Explorer. Supposedly Amarok recognizes MPT devices now. So yay for Linux users.
But I'm not too impressed with these new models though. I'm not sure why they changed the design. They look pretty cheap. And I don't like the "Mickey Mouse" button layout.
There's a 16GB version out in Japan, but I have no idea why Sony isn't offering that here. Seems kinda lame considering these things play video too. I think I'll hold on to my NWZ-A818 for a while longer. Maybe Sony will do better next year.
I hate sony. I will never buy one of their products again...
I agree with the complaint about their lousy software except they finally saw the light and no longer use it. I have the very small form factor noise canceling model immediately prior to this and it's drag and drop mp3 with no software needed, and problem free. The battery life is superb at 33 hours and the sound is, to my ears, superior to the Ipod -this through Shure SE 210's, not factory gear. The controls are actually simple and effective to use. I don't miss my mini at all. This new one, if anything like mine, will be quite a nice bit of gear.
#17: Some companies allow SDHC, which turns a 8GB player to 24GB for $50. I prefer that route, because it allows consumers to benefit from flash memory price drops immediately. And prices are dropping like crazy. 32GB cards are about $130 on newegg down from twice that last month and $700 in april. 64Gb cards will be out in a few months and will be similarly exorbitant until they're not. This is the way to go. a SD bay is not that big.
Let me know when the 16GB microSD cards finally land.
...and when the Hitachi 7k1000.b 1TB FDE 3.5" hard drives do too.
...and when the Samsung HM320JI 320GB FDE 2.5" hard drives do as well.
@Hemi
My Sony Ericcson W580i (the Walkman phone) supports Bluetooth stereo. I dropped a 4GB M2 card in it and have plenty of room for photos and music. The earliest version was physically a little flimsy, esp. the keypad, but they appeared to have fixed that.