Original, sleek and in no way to be compared! (Sony Walkman NW-A3000 20 GB)

Member Name: lozzy_princess

Product:	Sony Walkman NW-A3000 20 GB
Date:	07/10/07 (201 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Sleek design, hard wearing, good battery life.

Disadvantages: Battery metre a bit of a liar, loosely fitted volume slider.

Sadly i feel the Sony NW-A3000 has been hit badly by the typical reacton of "lets compare this to the i-pod", the problem with this reaction being that the Sony loses a lot of marks for its own innovations and quality as an mp3 player in exchange for a lot of "but i pods do this and that". So to begin with I'd like to say I am activly choosing not to do this typical comparison, and instead talk about Sony players advantages and disadvantages in regards to their own merits.

The price is incredibly fair for an mp3 player of such memory capability and quality, often a good few tens of pounds cheaper than other players in its class. This may spark warning sounds for some however i feel the price simply reflects the comparitive simpleness of the player, very little fuss, a sleek simple design, no sparkly over the top extras, it simply does what is says on the tin.

The sound quality is incredibly good, and the player also allows for alterations to the sound components, with such ready made options as rock, jazz and heavy metal as well as allowing for custom settings to suit the individual listener. However, after a year of owning my player, the volume button fell off. Clearly, this was a bit of a problem as now i can only control the sound with headphones with a volume controller in-line. I know quite a few other people with this style of player, and none have had this problem, so it is possible it was a fluke of mine, rather than a particular problem with this make. Still, slightly irritating though.

Battery life i would also like to argue is questionable, or more to the point the battery metre. Where the player appears to last for a good five - eight hours (with little interaction of changing songs, screensavers etc) the battery metre appears incrdibly pessimistic, showing only one bar after an hour, yet working for several more after that. it doesn't cause much of a problem however, other than not being entirly sure when the player ACTUALLY needs charging, until it will not turn on and announces with a minute to go "low battery, please charge". Not always possible when on a bus unsurprisingly.

Other than these problems, id say aesthetically the player is very leasing. It offers a small range of screensavers, that do drain the battery a bit unneccisarily (but can be turned off) do give a nice look to the player during playtime. The screen itself blends in with the cloured casing, giving the impression that the txt on screen is showing directly on the casing itself, very swish i think and often drooled over by friends and the odd stranger sitting next to me on public transport.

The casing appears hard waring, i have owned mine for a year and a half now and it is scratchless, which with me being the owner is quite surprising.

The control aspect i feel is also quite good, easy to learn and quite easy to search and find songs. it allows option of searching for album, artist or song and also offers a top 100 option, a list created automatically judging on what you have played the most. Intelligents shuffle also works in the same sense, playing the songs you love the most.

on top of all this there is space for creating your own playlists, which i find very handy for creating albums to suit your mood, saving scrolling time.

ALL in all I am very impressed with the Sony NW-A3000 and hope the few glitches that exist will be fixed for the next creation in this line, which i will be happy to purchase once this player eventually wears out.

Summary: A useful MP3, no major complaints here!

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