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Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Sony S series Review



The Sony Walkman has been a recognizable name since 1978 when Sony changed the way that we listened to music by allowing us to, for the first time, carry/listen to our music on the go. The first Walkman, was originally built so that one of Sony's chairmen could listen to operas on his long plane rides across the Pacific and because of this Sony is one of the biggest contributions to portable media.


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Ever since 1978 Sony has been making the Walkman more and more compact. And with the first Walkman's high reputation to uphold, and with the S series Sony does a great job of balancing its features to the actual product. Let's start with the specs:

-Capacities:8gb,16gb

-Weight:68g

-Screen: 2.4 inches” QVGA 240x320 LCD

-Supported Audio Formats: MP3, WMA, AAC-LC, Linear PCM

-Supported Video Formats: MPEG-4, h.264,WMC (DRM) @ 320x240

-Battery Life: 42 hours music, 6.5 hours of video

-Media Transfer type- MTP

-Sound enhancements:Clear bass, Clear Stereo, Equalizer, Dynamic Normalizer

-Other Features: FM Radio, FM recorder, Voice Recorder, Built in Speakers, Alarm, Sleep timer.


Design: The Sony S series is a decently sleek player, with curved edges and a semi thin body, the player over all just feels cheap. It just feels too light. I frequently find myself letting is slip out of my hand, because it is so light. And that fact that the sides of it are cured contribute to it commonly sliding out of my hand. The button placement is a bit better than the rest of the body design. But they just feel like they are just a bit to close together. Another thing that kind of upset me, was the fact that they put the speakers on the back of the player, so unless that back is uncovered or sitting on its stand, the sound of the already cheap sounding speakers, sounds very muffled. The placement of the Headphone jack was fine, and unless it is in a very unusual place I'm fine with it. In this case the headphone jack of the S series being located on the bottom of the player, it just comes down to your headphone plug size, and your personal preference. And the Connector for the S series is located at the usual bottom.

Audio Quality: The audio Quality is good on the S series if you are wearing headphones. The built in speakers however delivers sound quality that is definitely less than desired. If you care about sound quality, then you will probably want to toss the stock headphones that come with this one, because they are a bit junky and uncomfortable to where. They don't have any sort of padding for the inside of you r ear and feel just all around a bit clunky.

Video Quality: The video quality on the S series was a lot better than what I would have thought. Although in very dark scenes of videos you will see a bit of that off black color (no quite true black, a little bit lighter). But this is quite normal of PMPs that aren't specifically made to be video players. The video can also be rotated between Horizontal and Vertical mode, which is nice if you get sick of holding your player in that awkward sideways position.

Alarm feature: The alarm Feature is really nice especially with the external speakers, but it got a bit annoying because you can't have the alarm set and on while the player is still in use, so you have to turn the alarm on before you turn the player on. Other than that it is a nice and nifty feature especially since you can have it use your own music instead of a default noise.

FM Radio: Does the job, not the best receiver, is sometimes a bit fussy to movement, but this mainly depends on the how strong of a signal you get by wear you live. But with me I find that it doesn't do as well as some other players. But like I said, gets the job done.

Voice Recorder: The voice recorder was nothing really special, it picks up sound that is relatively close. And what it picks up sounds pretty good.

Media Conversion: Probably one of my favorite things is the media converter that comes with the Sony S series. It is extremely easy to use especially if you are not really tech savvy. It doesn't come on a disk, it is stored right on the player. So all you do is plug in your player, drag the converter over to your computer, install it, and there you go, your all set. To convert files, you just plug in your player and open the converter. Then drag the media you want over the converter window, and bam your files will be converted and moved to you player. You can also see what is on your player and delete files using the converter. Over all probably one of the easier converters I have seen on a player. No complicated settings needed. Just drag and drop.

Summary: Over all I believe that this is a great player put out by Sony. It isn't expensive, and makes a great starter player for anyone. Although some of the features could have been developed a little bit better i.e. the placement of the external speakers, raised buttons, some software features, etc. But other than that, the S series is a well developed inexpensive player that is loaded with cool and convenient features.

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