A great and cheaper alternative to the iPod (Sony Net MD Walkman MZ-N510/L)

Member Name: coolboy182

Product:	Sony Net MD Walkman MZ-N510/L
Date:	09/10/04 (675 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: cheaper than an iPod, as many songs as you want, Net MD facilities

Disadvantages: sometimes disks become faulty, can't store songs on it like an iPod, faulty headphones

I purchased this player about a year ago and have been using it on an almost daily basis since, really enjoying it's brilliant sound quality and satisfying length song-wise. Though maybe not quite an iPod, this is a great portable player, quite small in size and weight, and can store up to 7 albums on each disk depending on the albums lengths and chosen recording quality.

I would reccomend this item to you for the following reasons - it is attractive, easy to use (once you've read the manual) and is quite cheap - can be pick up for around £110 in some shops, it will never become full as you can buy as many disks as you want for it, the single AA battery required lasts for hours on end, and also it has advantages over other mini disk players as its a net MD so can record faster from the computer.

Though buying an iPod crossed my mind, I didn't see that its advantages over what I already have were worth the £300... though it is irritating how long it takes for the songs to be transferred onto the disk at times unless you have a net MD player like this one where you can plug in into your PC via a USP cable and transfer the songs much quicker. Also, how many songs do you need?! I don't personally see the point, or have the need for that matter, to have 40G worth of songs with me at any one time, and I probably don't have any way near that amount in my CD collection all together. I don't even listen to some of my minidisks I've made so end up deleting them and starting it, so for those like me who only need a limited number of songs, a portable mini disk player is the thing for you.

It has clear advantages over a CD player too, because as well as being no way near as chunky, it never jumps and can have so many more songs. I think mini disk players are a lot better than mp3 players as well because they do not have a limit on the amount of songs you are allowed - you can just keep filling disk after disk, which, when you buy a box of official Sony ones for around £10, come with a handy portable box to store them all in.
Also, with this particular player you can plug it in to the mains which plays it without using up the battery and can charge it when not in use. This model is also available in 2 different colours - silver and light blue, both of which look very nice.


The only bad points about this mini disk player are that the headphones that it comes with are faulty - they work properly for a short time then begin to stop working in one ear (a number of my friends have had the same problem) but this can be fixed easily by buying a new set from just £10 in most electronic goods shops, and also sometimes the disks can have problems if over-played and begin to stop working.


So overall, I would give this player 4/5 because, though it isn't perfect, I would say it's getting there and is well worth the money.
Thanks for reading my review.

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