How good is the Sony MZ-R70? (Sony MD Walkman MZ-R70)

Member Name: The Duke

Product:	Sony MD Walkman MZ-R70
Date:	15/08/00 (383 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Good sound quality, good battery life

Disadvantages: Not enough noise!

I was originally looking for the MZ-R55 because I knew a few people who had them, and they were a good piece of kit, but arriving in the shop, I spotted the MZ-R70. It was only a few quid more than I was expecting to spend, and was a lot more compact to boot.

A few questions to the salesperson then confirmed what I had thought - that the MZ-R55 was an older model, and had been replaced.

I took a closer look at the MZ-R70, and found it to be a fairly sturdy MD recorder. It's compact, and runs on 1 AA battery (a rechargeable one is supplied, along with adapter for charging or recharging)

So I bought it. It comes with a mains adapter for charging/playing from mains, the obvious recorder and headphones (which come with a remote control unit). Also included with mine was a “soft” carrying pouch, a “hard” small case thing for carrying a spare battery and a square to jack optical cable, for recording from digital sources. This was useless to me as I needed a jack to jack optical cable, and an email to Sony asking for an exchange (my lead was still in it’s sealed bag) was rejected as “not policy”.

The length of time that the battery lasts is excellent - I usually get about 4 hours out of the included fully charged re-chargeable AA battery on about 75% volume, and because it only takes 1 battery, you can carry around a spare without too much difficulty. A “proper” battery will give you a lot more playing time, although recording on battery power will seriously dent your batteries’ life span.

The sound quality, while obviously depending on the source, is excellent, and the Mega Bass gives it a nice reassuring beefiness. The sound format that Sony uses to code the sound means that anything you record to mini-disc will sound a lot quieter than the original source. While that is not necessarily a disadvantage in a personal device, on a hi-fi sound system might give out
poorer quality sound, and somewhat defeats the use to the AVLS function.

As with other mini-disc recorders, it comes with a load of features like track and disc naming, the ability to order tracks after recording, and the ability to delete individual tracks from the middle of an “album”.

It was £200 when I bought it (about a year ago), but I'm sure shopping around, you could probably knock 20% at least off that.

Summary: