Sony's 8GB Walkman takes square aim at the iPod nano with its small profile and price tag. Is it an iPod killer or bargain bin fodder?
Review summary of the Sony Walkman NWZ-A818:
| Video » Gallery » |
 With the exception of 6GB more space and no FM radio, the guts of Sony's NWZ-A818 Walkman are exactly the same as its tinier, cuter 2GB cousin, the NWZ-S615F. Unless 8GB is their magic number for drive space, we can't imagine wanting to spend the extra $100 to get the A818, which has less features and isn't as aesthetically pleasing. Ultimately, the A818 is a solid 8GB PMP, and for Windows users is a legitimate competitor to the iPod nano. Release: February 2008. Price: $200.
Pros: Small size, full-featured, large screen
Cons: Poor value, Windows-only
| Poor |
Mediocre |
73%
GOOD |
Very good |
Excellent |
|
|
Full review of the Sony Walkman NWZ-A818:
 |
Design - Very Good
The NWZ-A818 is very skinny, and in form factor resembles the first two generations of the iPod nano. Unlike those Apple creations, however, the A818 has a larger 2-inch screen that takes up more than half of the device's face, and plays videos as well as music and photos. The button layout is simple, with a circular D-pad with a Play/Pause button in the center, circular Option and Back buttons (sized differently), a two-way volume toggle on the right hand side and a hold switch on the back. The 8GB flash drive on the device is on par with today’s standard flash-based players, and we think Sony did an excellent job managing screen real estate, letting videos play horizontally on the screen to maximize their aspect ratio. The stated battery life is 33 hours for audio and 9.5 for video, and during our review period we never once had to charge it, and we listened to many hours of music and watched several movies. We admire the device's power management, as we noticed that after only a few seconds the LCD shut down, saving power. However, the clock display would occasionally pop up and then fade away, showing us the time, date and the Walkman logo.
Interface and Transfer - Good
We liked the main menu, which had nine selections that never required more than two clicks on the D-pad. Conveniently enough, holding down the Back button brings you back to the home screen, and holding down the option button powers off the device.
Visually the submenus were less impressive, though we did like the black background, which made everything extremely easy to read. We also liked how we could see thumbnails of the album covers when browsing for songs by album. There is a top-level search option that lets you type in letters to search.
Navigation through the menus was extremely quick, and we experienced absolutely no lag, even when viewing videos, long or short. We wish we could have made playlists directly on the device. Scrolling through our songs wasn’t as easy or as fast as we’d like, but the device did show the letters we were scrolling through along the top of the screen to give us a better idea of where to stop. With no wheel or touch device for scrolling, we would have liked Sony to move things along more quickly.
The NWZ-A818 is Windows-only, so if you're an Apple devotee, look elsewhere (you probably already have an iPod anyway). For Windows users, the transfer process in Windows Media Player 11 is relatively simple, allowing us to sync whatever folders we selected and manually add or delete songs and videos. Speeds were on par with other USB 2.0 devices, but on-the-fly transcoding with MTP (Media Transfer Protocol) was extremely slow, taking about a minute for every minute of video. Files could be added manually in Explorer, but we found using WMP11 easy enough that it became our method of choice.
Audio - Very Good
The NWZ-A818 supports MP3, WMA and AAC for audio playback; while this certainly covers the most popular formats, we still would have liked to see some lossless support so we could play our FLAC or OGG files. The audio quality and amplification was decent, but the included headphones were terrible. They were a little better than those we saw with the NWZ-S615F, and we liked the way they fit, but the sound was simply subpar.
The Now Playing screen displays the track title, artist, album, genre and year, as well as the album art if it is attached to the song. With no touch sensitive screen or buttons and no wheel, scrubbing to a particular point in a track isn’t possible, and subsequently quickly traveling to a point in a song is less than convenient.
When playing a song, the screen will go dark if inactive for a few seconds, but will occasionally come to life with a clock display. Photo slideshows can be played and controlled while listening to music, and we loved that we could play and pause the music while navigating the slideshow. We wish there was a bit more flexibility in photo formats, only JPEG is supported, but it is by far the most common and has a decent compression rate, so we’re not too upset.
Video - Very Good
Like all PlaysForSure devices, the NWZ-A818 is designed to play purchased, DRM’d video files from sources like CinemaNow, but both the available library and implementation into Windows Media Player 11 don't come close to the iTunes Music Store. While the disappointing library of DRM content didn't bother us too much, the device’s sheer contempt for other formats did. It played H.264 and MPEG-4 videos, which are common enough, but with only two formats supported, the NWZ-A818 falls short here.
Attempts to import files encoded with the popular DivX codec onto the NWZ-A818 result in the MTP immediately transcoding the file for playback onto the device. We’ve documented how slow the process is and how terrible the resulting video quality was when this happened with the Toshiba T400. The only videos we were able to play with any success on the player were home videos encoded in WMV format, although we assume similar success could be had with PlaysForSure movies downloaded from CinemaNow or other outlets.
The video we were able to play properly on the device looked good; the LCD fought off glare well and the images looked clear and crisp. Only the video’s most basic information was viewable in the menus, we also liked how videos resumed from our previous spot in playback, but we would have liked to have the option to start from the beginning or to resume from the last point stopped during playback. Overall, the experience was average, about what we’d expect for such a tiny device playing video.
Accessories - Good
The NWZ-A818 comes bundled with a CD-ROM (packing the Napster, WMP 11 and mp3 conversion software), a pair of headphones, a USB cable and a quick start guide. It includes everything one would seemingly need to watch videos and play music on the device, although a case to protect it would have been nice, as would a wall charger so that we wouldn’t need a computer to charge the device. It also includes a dock adapter that can be used with Sony's optional dock.
Comparison
Compare the Sony Walkman NWZ-A818 with similar products
Who is the Sony Walkman NWZ-A818 for?
DadsKidsMomsMultimedia enthusiastsMusic aficionados
Price and availability
Available in the U.S. in February 2008, the Sony Walkman NWZ-A818 is priced at $200 .
|
|
|
|
|
Archive