An MP3 Player that ONLY plays MP3's???? (Sony Walkman NW-A1200 8 GB)

Name: lozzy_princess

Hello doyoo user, You have to be logged in to use these functions... Login or register Close window

Send message to member

Product:	Sony Walkman NW-A1200 8 GB
Date:	12/08/08 (55 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Brilliant, simple, reliable, affordable, me-proof!

Disadvantages: Not so available anymore.

The Sony NW-A1200 is by now an ancient mp3 player style. It does not play videos, hold your photos or solve world peace as many of the mp3's on the market do today, it does not have many capabilites past playing music, however, weirdly enough this is the only capability I really need from my personal portable music player.

In the past few months I have become completely bamboozled by the current trend of mp3 players that can basically be mini laptops, worse are the mp3 players that are also phones, or the phones that are also mp3 players, it is difficult to tell which way round they are going for lately. At the end of the day, when I am shopping for an mp3 player what I am looking for is a device that can allow me to, oh I don't know, listen to music, maybe in mp3 form, whilst on the go. I do not shop for a toaster and expect it to double up as a kettle, I have a kettle for that. Considering this fact I cannot fault the NW-A1200, it does exactly what it says on the tin.

Clearly I may be old fashioned in my ideals, and I will possibly be the only person in the world in tears when they finally go the whole hog and invent a portable device that can do absolutely anything you can think of all whilst showing a flashy show of lights, fireworks and twirling constantly, however many of my friends have lately began to agree with me.

My point is this. The Sony NW-A1200 works. It plays my songs. The system to put the songs onto the player is pretty simple to use, after a few minutes you can easily figure it out. The player does also have some extra settings, it can tell you you're top 100 songs that you play in order, and from this play them in order or shuffle them. You can create playlists, and listen to songs via filtering through album, artist or even years and genres. I have had this player for over two years now and it still does all of these things without fault! The battery life is brilliant too, admittedly the battery level indicator lies to me, forever pessimistically thinking the battery is low when I still have a few hours left, however this is a minor annoyance and pretty acceptable considering the age of the player, and the amount of times I manage to drop it.

Sadly, from what I can gather this player is no longer available, which is what has sparked me to write this review. I decided I may embark on a new player, just for a change really, however have been utterly disappointed with the options. All are either hideously over priced due to the super powers of the players, or cheap and even more basic than this player (i.e no screen, limited options.) This player could easily be marketed, it is a fantastic product, it was a brilliant price if I recall correctly, and I would happily buy it again, maybe simply with more memory capacity.

The Sony NW-A1200 is a fantastic product that I cannot recommend enough, sadly all the recomending in the world will not bring it back to our stores. I do wonder sometimes if a catchier name wouldn't have helped save this from it's demise, I am no marketing executive myself, however the NW-A1200 is not exactly the most memorable name, and also worryingly makes this sound slightly more like a new breed of terminator than a music device, but considering the newest standard a terminator playor is probably only a week away at any rate!

Summary: Retro Mp3ing at it's best, if two years old can count as retro.

Processing/Quality:
Reliability:
Ease of use:
Features:
Sound quality:
Download speed: