Sony NW-E99 1 GB Network Walkman Digital Music Player

Rating:
Summary: Strange yet amazing device.
Review: I would have to say this player is like an old fashioned audio electronics. It is shaped like a old recorder, it has the strange toggles and such, its quite an interesting player to look at. The performance is also amazing.

If you have ever used a minidisc player by sony, you will know how to use this device, it has a very similar interface. The menu options, the group options, and they have color coded backlighting too (green for group and blue for other). There are two EQ custom 'profiles' that you can set - or + treble or bass, there are a ton of unique options such as their AVLS (automatic volume limiter system) and their preset volume settings (low, med, hi presets for easy volume changing instead of hitting the + or - buttons continually), 3 display modes (show track number and time, show track name and album, show track information), a ton of repeat options (repeat group, repeat group shuffled, shuffle all albums, play A-B repeat, play sentance repeat) and even setting how many times they repeat with a count option. The audio quality beats 9 other mp3 players that I have tested this past month and the usability is easy enough that I can stick my hand in my pocket and change volume, album, track, the eq (none, 1 profile, or 2 profile), and some simpler options without looking at the player. This is also one of the only players that will show you the time and date. There is a resume feature that works incredibly quick.. you interrupt the song by hitting pause, and the player will shut off in seconds, but low and behold - as soon as you press the play button a half a second or less later the music will resume from where you left off.

Now for the problems! Sonicstage isn't a super friendly piece of software but since I have a huge cd collection, its easy for me to convert songs to their ATRAC3PLUS (64kbps) and they sound great. You can also install mp3 software (installs onto the flash memory thats strangely devided into two drives) and place mp3s with drag+drop but some mp3s arn't good enough for the program to recognize and it wont allow them to be added. I also found the mp3 software annoying to create groups, its not a 'edit group name, make new group name' sorta easy software, it just makes the groups as 'group 1' etc and their sonicstage audio files are priority so you have to search for the mp3s. For huge mp3 collectors or purchasers from online stores like itunes, this would be annoying. I dont have these problems because I buy music in cd form. Good for me, yeah. No FM radio, no recorder, no encoding like the creative muvo, but its how mp3 players should have been a few years ago, and it is great. Its too bad the new players are all turning into feature friendly circus freaks, these old simple types are rare.

Highly recommended for people who like a simple interface, good sound, and who dont mind having a 2.5 oz player in their pocket the size of a keyholder.

Rating:
Summary: Better than ipod shuffle in my oppinion
Review: Pros:
1. Incredible battery life(and you don't need to pay $100 for battery replacement in the future).
2. excellent sound quality,
3. ATRAC3+ format
The sound quality of ATRAC3+ 64K is as good as WMA 128K and better than MP3 128K in my personal opinion. A smaller file size in the same sound quality means you can double you songs in compare to other 1G mp3 players.
*However, if you are not using Sony for your next MP3 player, you have to convert all ATRAC3+ files into other format. Saving all songs in *.mp3 is the safest way. But I really don't like to sound quality of Mp3 at 128K.

Cons:
1. Software SonicStage sucks. (unstable, easily crash, and slow).
2. No rating for each songs. (or maybe I haven't find it).
3. No arm band.
4. Not very convenient to use it as a USB drive because you need to have a mini USB cord which is not available in every computer.
5. Can't play WMA directly. (Have to convert to ATRAC3+ or other format)
6. Mirror-like surface. Easily get finger prints on it.
7. Divided into to 2*512M disc.

*user interface better than ipod shuffle but still can't compete to ipod or ipod mini. However,you don't need to look at the bottons and you can control them because the shape of the bottons can be easily recognized by fingers.

Though I listed so many disvantages of this MP3 player, I still gave it 4 stars and recommend it.