Excellent player continuing on the famous walkman brand (Sony Walkman NWZ-A818 8 GB)

Member Name: sharpey1982

Product:	Sony Walkman NWZ-A818 8 GB
Date:	22/05/09 (9 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Great sound quality, loads of features, good bundled headphones

Disadvantages: Sony support, navigation buttons lacking ingenuity

I bought this tiny player for my girlfriend when it was going for £75 at the time. What an amazing bargain that was. With a full host of features such as video, music, pictures and a massive 8GB of space this player has nearly everything.

The player itself is tiny in size, about half the thickness of my mobile and smaller in both length and width. Great for using in the gym or anywhere for that matter. The sound quality is excellent and probably better than that of an iPod (although perhaps not as good as iRiver players). This is enhanced by the inclusion of some quality headphones which is unusual for MP3 players these days. Having bought iRiver product for myself in the past I have always been disappointed with the bundled headphones. Sony players do not appear to suffer from this problem.

The 8GB storage is plenty enough for most people but those wanted to watch videos may want a bit more. Video playback is impressive although the screen may be a little on the small side for some. Overall the colour screen is vivid and sharp.

The menu setup is intuitive and simple (which was a big consideration when buying this for my girlfriend believe me) and the drag-and-drop file transfer is a blessing. It's great to be able to transfer files how you like without the need for programs such as iTunes. This player even allows you to synchronize with Windows Media Player if you want.

We only had one problem with this player, and it was a big one. For some reason, one day, we could not get the screen to switch on. We could get it to come on to say that it was charging etc. but the actual player interface would not boot up. Having sent the player back to Sony we received a letter many weeks after saying that it has sustained water damage and was irreparable. They said we could either pay £35 (or something like that) to have the player returned or they could scrap it for free. This was very disappointing given that the screen did not appear to be damaged (the pixels appeared to display fine when showing charging). We could also not think of how the unit could have become water damaged. So we had to choose to have it scrapped and for all we know Sony have probably refurbished it and sold it on.

In summary this is a great player with stacks of features and oozing Sony quality. Heaven forbid, however, that anything goes wrong with it.

Summary: A great little player for the price but beware Sony support if anything goes wrong

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