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December 15, 2005

Sony NW-E407 review

Infosyncworld has a review on this tiny mp3 player:

"At the size of a pack of gum, the NW-E407 weighs 1.66 oz and measures 3.3 x 1.0 x 0.4 inches. Beyond its petite and cool looks, the NW-E407 aims to push the basic functionality of an Flash-based audio player to the maximum - and does so by claiming a 50 hour battery life for its USB-rechargeable Li-Ion battery as well as offering a 3-minute USB quick charge function to provide three hours of playback time.

Sporting 1 GB of flash memory capable of storing up to 695 songs, the player supports MP3, WMA, ATRAC3 and ATRAC3+ formats; hence, it lacks support for online music services such as Apple's iTunes and PlaysForSure compatible Yahoo! Music and Napster. Sony's own Connect Music Store, however, offers a similar service and can be reached through the bundled SonicStage application which is also required to transfer any kind of music to the NW-E407. Despite shipping with an USB 2.0 cable, the NW-E407 requires music files without DRM protection to be converted to ATRAC3 upon being transferred - a process which tacked in the range of 30 extra minutes onto a 1 GB transfer supposed to take less than a minute.

Depending heavily on the proprietary ATRAC3 codec, the Sony NW-E407 falls short when it comes to being measured as a true MP3 player. On the other hand, a mix of features including solid basic functionality, astonishing battery life and surprisingly good audio performance out-of-box scores the NW-E407 a pat on the back from us; this little acrylic, Flash-based silver nugget comes highly recommended - as long as you don't depend on transferring a significant amount of new music to the player on a daily basis.

What's positive:
Astonishing battery life; stylish and useful OLED display

What's negative:
Forced AAC conversion; lacks iTunes and PlaysForSure support"

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Posted by mp3fan at December 15, 2005 10:58 AM