It's Expensive (Sony MD Walkman MZ-N1)

Member Name: Calldean

Product:	Sony MD Walkman MZ-N1
Date:	18/01/05 (269 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Size, Battry Life

Disadvantages: Cost, Software

But it's great!

I bought this mainly due to its TINY size (79.1 x 73.8 x 19.9 mm and 117g with the battery in). It can go into a pocket and you will barely notice it is there.

Each minidisc will hold roughly 165MB of songs. This is using the lowest audio quality setting of which there are three;

66kbps
105kbps
132kbps

As you might have guessed as the numbers get bigger the number of files you can store on the disc falls but the quality of the sound goes up. To be honest I’ve never been too bothered about the quality of the sound so I’ve chosen to store more files, but I think that when you are listening through headphones you loose a lot of quality anyway so the lower sound quality doesn’t really matter.

At the lowest rate it will hold about 3 hours of songs in MP3 format.

The one thing about this the disappointed me is the software used to transfer the music to the player. The supplied Sonic OpenMG is a pain in the backside. It will only transfer in its own file format (Which is considerably larger than MP3, hence less music on one disc), it is very slow and it entails having to copy files from CD to the hard drive and then to disc, i.e. three copies of the one song. This can soon mount up on your hard drive if you want a few discs (You can’t just delete the file after you have copied it to the minidisc).

There are a number of different ways of getting music onto one of these but Sony doesn't tell you about them. The best way is by getting a copy of SonicStage which ships with the lower end players and install that, then get a copy of Real player (www.real.com) and install that. There is then a download within RealPlayer that allows you to copy MP3 files directly to your player. It makes things a lot easier.

Since buying my own this has come down in price; I paid near £300 for it but now due to the proliferation of MP3 players you can pick one up for about £100 often with a few discs.

Many people prefer MP3 players now as they are smaller and you don’t have the hassle of swapping discs but for me this still does its job.

The battery will last for at least two/three discs worth of play and when it starts to run low you can attach a AA battery which will give you a few more hours play, so it’s well worth keeping a few with you if you have somewhere to keep them.

The controls on the player itself are a bit of a pain as they are quite fiddly for my fat fingers, but there is a stick-type remote control on the headphones that lights up that makes life much easier (It’s the only way I ever control it).

One of the nice little features on both the player and the remote is a small Hold button which disabled the buttons, so if you have the player in your pocket you can’t knock a button and skip a track or anything.

The supplier charger seems to charge in about 2/3 hours which is fast enough for me and seems to give a good charge which lasts for a while.

I can highly recommend this if you don’t want to be spending a lot on a new MP3 player. The discs retail for anything from £4.99 to £14.99 for 10 depending on brands and where you buy them.

I think it’s a great little player and well worth the money.

Cheers,

Dean

Summary: