29 out of 29 people found this review helpful.
I Bought A Walkman Because That Is The Only Thing I Know?
Date of Review: Aug 11, 2008
The Bottom Line: I've loved the ease of use and quality of this player. I would recommend to anyone.
As a 24 year old adult, I ve experienced a lot of change in electronic technologies in my lifetime. My first music was on a cassette, which later changed to a CD and I m now slowly watching that technology go wayward also. I ve been coddling my CD s up until recently when I finally purchased an Mp3 player. I selected a Walkman brand Mp3 player because I ve also been the owner of a Walkman cassette play and Walkman CD Player.
Why No Ipod?
Well aside from never hearing much of anything good about an Apple product Ipod turned me off for 2 reasons. One was the lack of compatibility with files and the other was the lack of a built in FM tuner.
The Looks
When I was younger I was a little bit more current with current technology but I based my decision on name brand and style. This Mp3 player is pretty small at 3 inches tall by one and half inches across and about a quarter inch in depth. I purchased a red Mp3 player, but you can find this in a variety of colors if you look around.
The face of the Mp3 player features a one and one quarter inch by one and three quarter inch screen. Below the screen are a set of buttons, one to the left as a Home/Back button and the other a Power Off/Option button. Below that is a 5-way key pad with the Pause/Play button in the center.
The USB cord plugs into the bottom edge of the player and the headphone jack is located at the top edge. The player can easily be slid into a pocket for easy caring.
The Features
The home screen on the mp3 player has 9 different selections: Shuffle, FM Radio, Initial Search, Video Library, Music Library, Photo Library, Settings, Playlists, and Now Playing.
The shuffle feature allows for 2 options. You can shuffle all downloaded music or you can select Time Machine Shuffle where the player will randomly select a release year to shuffle certain music. The shuffle feature is by far the most used feature I use on the player and it does a decent job shuffling the music without many repeats. The Time Machine is something I ve used on occasion, but not often.
The Fm Radio interface is pretty bland, but it functions okay. The screen displays 3 lines: the radio station, the preset station and the time. By pressing the options button you can auto scan and have the player automatically preset local radio stations. You can also set-up your own presets by using the arrow keys to find your preferred channels. The auto set worked well for our local stations with the exception of one that has notoriously had an extremely weak channel. I can t tune that station in on the player. Other stations come in crystal clear however.
In Initial Search you can search for the artist, album or song by the first letter in each. I haven t used this feature much due to the fact that I ve only got about 260 songs downloaded so far. This feature will come in handy as I add more to the player and sifting through all of the artists and/or albums becomes too time consuming.
The Video Library is something I haven t added to. The player comes with a trailer installed and the picture quality looks great, but the actual display of the video is only about one and one quarter inch by one inch. I m not extremely worried about video files and I probably won t download many, if any videos due to the smaller space on this player.
The Music Library allows you to access all of your music files. You can find your selection by going through: All Songs, Album, Artist, Genre, Release Year, or Folder. The lists are all simple with the exception of Album which includes a tiny picture of the album cover. So far I ve been using Release Year the most, because it is the most current songs that I often seek to listen to.
The Picture Library I did add a few photos too, but again the screen is small when viewing them. To me this is a nice bonus option that I could have done with or without. I ll probably occasionally add a picture or two of my son, but nothing more.
In Settings you can alter different items, but overall the options are pretty small. Here you have Music Settings, Video Settings, Photo Settings, FM Radio Settings, Common Settings, and Language Settings. In music you can change playback modes, sound settings, display format, etc. In video settings you can change zoom settings, orientation, display, playback options, and list format. In photo settings you can change display, slide show options and list format. FM Radio and Language Settings are pretty bare. In Common Settings you can change items like beep settings, screensaver date/time, sate/time display format, etc. The screensaver doesn t allow you to put anything personal in place and the beep settings are either on or off.
Playlists can be created on your computer and then put into the device. This is a feature I have not and do not plan on utilizing.
The Now Playing option simply takes you back to the screen where your music, video or pictures are being displayed.
Other Tidbits
The player comes with the connection wire for the computer. This wire covers your charging needs and download needs. The player charges on the computer, when the computer is on and it can play for up to 33 hours. I ve been using the player quite a bit and it has been lasting nearly a week per charge. I m not sure that that really equates to 33 hours, but I ve been pleased with the battery charge life of this device.
The player also comes with a set of ear buds and I ve found the quality to be pretty good with these. I haven t found any reason to invest in another pair, but I am seeking out a small set of speakers to use on occasion.
Downloading Your Music
This was the part that most worried me about investing in an Mp3 player, downloading. My nerves were easily put to rest when I found that dragging and dropping in Windows Media Player made this chore as easy as possible. I ripped and synced nearly 40 different CD s in about 3 hours of time and was ready to go.
I ve also found downloading new songs off the internet to be just as easy. These new downloads show up in the Media Player as soon as they are fully downloaded and you can easily drag and drop when the device is connected.
The only intial problem I had was the auto-sync which didn t work. I quickly ended up having copies of the same song on the player, so don t use that feature.
Price
I purchased my device at Wal-Mart, a Sony Walkman NWZ-S616F, for just under $100 after taxes.
Memory
This device claims to have 4 GB, on my first downloads I had 3.5 GB availability and after about 260 songs I have somewhere in the neighborhood of 2.5 GB left. A little bit of space can be redeemed if you remove the pre-loaded items.
Overall I m pleased with my new Sony walkman, while it is easily the most expensive and smallest Walkman I ve ever owned I ve found it to be of sound quality and extremely easy to use.
