Sony NW-A1000 Walkman

 

In designing the NW-A1000 Walkman, Sony's latest digital music player, it seems as though the engineers' primary objective was to create something that would stand apart from the pack.

The device's polished, seamless face appears to be nothing more than a mirror until it is switched on, at which point ghostly white pictograms and characters appear under the reflective surface. At the same time, a button on the top left of the unit lights up, revealing an alien-like squiggly line pattern basked in an orange glow while the edges of the navigational buttons on the lower front of the player are surrounded by a gentle white light.

Indeed, the NW-A1000 is nothing if not cool, and, from a design perspective, might even be worthy competition to the trend-setting Apple iPod. But is it a good music player?

First off, note the words 'music player' as opposed to 'media player'. Unlike the color LCDs used by many of its competitors, the NW-A1000's white OLED precludes the playback of video or pictures. It's also worth observing that the NW-A1000 doesn't pick up radio, provide voice recording functionality, or deliver any other value-added, non-music related features. It just plays music. Fair enough. Certainly there are many consumers who have no need for all of the bells and whistles accompanying players made by other manufacturers.

And the music playing functionality is solid, if not groundbreaking. Like most MP3 players, the NW-A1000 allows users to sort their music by artist, album, and song title. We can also grade our tracks and sort by rating, conduct searches by entering strings of text, or simply set it to one of a few different shuffle modes, such as top 100 songs played, or Time Machine, which chooses songs based on the date they were originally published.

But the most innovative song selection feature built into the NW-A1000 has to do with that mysterious orange glowing button mentioned earlier. It's called the Artist Link button, and pressing it shifts the player into a mode that calls up a hodgepodge of artists similar in nature to the one you happen to be listening to. The results are fairly reliable; if you're listening to electronic music you can rest assured you'll be presented with a list of artists along a similar vein—assuming analogous music is stored on the device. While in link mode you can also listen to short previews of tracks by each artist returned in the link list. It's a handy feature, particularly if you happen to be making full use of the unit's 6GB microdrive capacity.

Another little extra that's unique to the NW-A1000 is its play history feature, which catalogues songs played on a daily basis. It provides an additional means of searching your library or, in the case of a multi-user environment, allows people to spy on other users to see what music they may have been listening to.

The NW-A1000's sound quality is on par with most other first-tier MP3 players on the market. The slightly gaudy silver plastic earbuds packaged with the unit clash with the chic design of the player, but deliver fairly clean audio. You can play around with a six band equalizer, though the presets for genres such as jazz and pop ought to do most users just fine.

The NW-A1000 ships with CONNECT player software, which looks and functions like a cross between Windows Media Player and iTunes. Transferring playlists is a simple two step process: just drag a playlist to the import window and click import. CONNECT can also automatically interface with Sony's online music store. Unfortunately, the store isn't open to Canadian customers at the moment, and there's no word on when it will be.

In my trials, battery life typically clocked in at around 15 hours under normal listening conditions. That's roughly equal to the battery life of the iPod Nano. Like the Nano, the NW-A1000 can be charged via USB cable while connected to a computer. Users can also opt to jack into a wall outlet.

If you're searching for a music player and nothing more, the $250 NW-A1000 is worth a look-see. Fashionistas will certainly be hard pressed to find a piece of personal gadgetry that will turn more heads. However, consumers looking for a more full-featured player supporting digital media other than music will need to continue their hunt.

Details
Reviewed: May. 25, 2006
Type: Digital Audio, PersonalTech
From: Sony Electronics


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