Sony NWZE464RED Walkman MP3 player - Get Your Cheap Price For All Electronics And Gadget

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L. B. Keller (Connecticut) –

  

We now own *3* of these units (mine is the step up 16 gig version, but basically the same). The other two units belong to our 7 and 9 year old. I spent 2.5 solid days researching mp3 players, iPod Nanos (5th and 6th generation), and iTouches. I learned a lot. Let me summarize our findings and help you understand why we purchased 3 of these great little units.

Needs: audiobooks with bookmarking, podcasts, music, video, voice recording for the occassional lecture/seminar, and pictures (nice to have)

Sony meets all of these needs with the best price on the market. iPod nanos were expensive: the 5th generation is tough to find for a reasonable price, the 6th generation is TOO small for any of us to enjoy, and the iTouch is far more than we wanted to spend – and was overkill for our needs (I really don’t need an app for that.)

We use iTunes to manage our music (too many issues with Media Player). The mp3 player comes with the transfer software in the memory. Simply attach the player to your computer with the supplied cord (yes, it’s proprietary – it is necessary to connect to their bases and speakers), surf out to the folder using My Computer, copy the file to your hard drive and install (then you can format the player from inside the player to give you back that space and ditch the preinstalled music). The Content Transfer software allows us to drag from iTunes (or Windows) over to the player and the software takes care of conversions, file smooshing, etc. File smooshing, yes, a technical term for reducing an 890 meg, 27 minute video file to 342 meg.

Bookmarking… let me educate you. The mp3 industry does not have a standard on what this means. For Sony, bookmarking marks the track (at the beginning) so you can easily find your favorite song or the chapter you were on in your audiobook easily. Bookmarking does NOT bring you to where you were IN the track. In music, no big deal. In an audiobook with a 30 minute chapter… nightmarish. BUT, don’t be discouraged, I found a workaround to make this work BEAUTIFULLY. Read on.

I discovered that if you pause a Podcast, go listen to some music, turn off the unit, do some other stuff and come back to your podcast, you pick up where you left off – no bookmarking required, it just is smart like that. So guess what we did? We went into iTunes and made all of our Audiobooks podcasts (select the files, right click, under Options, change the media type to “Podcast”).

There are 2 BIG benefits to having done this: First, I can pause my audiobook and come back to where I was without fast-forwarding. Second, my audiobooks are no longer in the music queue. I can randomize/shuffle ALL of my music and ONLY music plays.

Sure, I know. iPods do this nicer with podcasts being podcasts, audiobooks being audiobooks with pausing and holding your place in the track. Have you looked at the price of iPods lately? Especially when you compare feature for feature, an iPod will run nearly TWICE the cost of the Sony and you get a dinky screen on the Nano (6th gen) and frankly, as I said, an iTouch is overkill (and overpriced).

Other cool features: carrying around photos of my kids, FM radio with preset capability, language learning (if you are studying a foreign language, this ia very cool feature), audio recording for lectures/seminars, or even recording my own audiobook for our 2 year old.

We are MORE than pleased with our Sony for the kids and for mom. 8G is plenty of space for them.

If you aren’t looking for frills, but a good solid mp3 player, you have found an excellent choice, and for the price, you can’t beat it (besides, with 5 available colors – it is great the kids are never confused as to which mp3 player is theirs!).

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 Comments (30)

For what its worth, I like the unit, the battery last long enough for me to make my 18 hours in flights. This unit has but one down fall, You can not create a play list with it. You have to create the play list on your computer and then load it in. I find this very inconvenient. I like to play music I am in the mood for, not plan on what mood I will be in. If this unit had that I would have rated it higher. Playing only one song or one album at a time really stinks sometimes, unless you want to hear the same one over and over just hit the replay option and you’re golden.

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 Comments (3)

First of all, there is not doubt that this is a great music player. This is light weight, portable and my 8GB model has a good enough of space for my songs which is use mostly at gym and at work. Sound quality of the headphones is not that great, but also not bad if you don’t want every minute details.Screen resolution is good. As a simple music player and a good alternative to ipod shuffle/nano in terms of price and screen size,i think this will be a great buy if one can live with the below drawbacks.
–The player starts off with a light press of any buttons (mind you the buttons are big). That means when you keep it in jeans pocket and a light press on any of the button will start of the player. That means drainage of battery. Gave me around 20 hrs of battery life on my first charge. This might be because 90% of the time when i took this out of my pocket, i found this switched on accidentally. Wish sony has a dedicated on/off switch for this
–Headphone wire gets entangled easily
–No shortcut key to navigate to the current songs.

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 Comments (4)