Customer Reviews:
 Very nice MP3 player for the price! November 4, 2008
The Sony 8 GB Walkman Video MP3 Player is great. The headphone sound quality is better than the ipods in my opinion, plus the battery last much longer. I've got over 500 mp3's loaded out of my collection and I'm only down to about 3 gig left. I can play that for several days at about 5-6 hours per day without having to recharge. The video quality is also excellent. For the screen size (and I wear glasses), you can't beat the color and resolution. I can load a few movies and play them on a long flight, much better than what is usually offered. I would recommend this mp3 player to anyone looking to spend this amount of money and get a good return.
 Best player on the market (October 2008) October 31, 2008
The Good: Amazing sound quality, well built, good finger pad, dedicated volume buttons, screen quality, drag and drop file transfer, flash memory, decent headphones.
The Bad: Software interface is lacking compared to a Creative, proprietary USB connection, built in battery (I know most players have this know, but that doesn't make it OK), expensive, no microphone, no radio.
Overall the player is amazing. I give it 4 stars (would give it 4.5 if I could) because of the above mentioned 'Bad' qualities, but IMO it still beats everything else on the market, even considering it's high cost. I had some one of the old Creative players and enjoyed the f.m. radio, built in microphone, removable battery, and amazing user interface. However Creative has gone down hill big time. I bought the Creative Zen, and sent it back after 1 week.
The Sony is amazing. One problem I am having with it is that the sound quality is almost too good for some of the stereo's I plug in through auxiliary. With the EQ set to custom, and some of the other audio enhancers, I get some weird volume swells when listening to data rich stuff (heavy metal with lots of drums and distorted guitars etc.), but that could just be cheap speakers, because it's not on every stereo. It's easily fixed by flat-lining the EQ, and this still gives better sound than most anything else out there.
Definitely worth the money if you have it.
Highly recommended!!!! October 30, 2008
The sound quality of this player is amazing. The player is very user friendly. The battery is very long lasting. I work 12 hour shifts and I barely use any battery at the end of a shift. The video can be rotated which is a ptetty cool feature. The price is right for this mp3.
 Dissapointed with Sony October 24, 2008
2 out of 5 found this review helpful
Sony 8 GB Walkman Video MP3 Player (Black)
If you've read other reviews out there then you'll know that the good and the bad are all true, from sound quality, video quality, easiness in usage, useless software provided in the package, etc. What you guys might not know, and I haven't seen the review for this yet here on Amazon, is that the earphones, while great at first, has short cables and weak wires that tended to get busted pretty fast even with careful usage.
Another thing that I am very disappointed at is with the warranty of this product. I bought the item on August 7, 2008 and I am the type of person who is always very careful with their stuff. I even bought the silicone case, screen protector and the $40 adapter! Here's why: Today, I called the customer service to ask about the warranty on the earphones, I found out that the wires inside is broken and they told me I have to buy a new pair because it's not covered under the limited warranty (90 days or 1 year). Okay fine, I can't do anything about that but then what about the busted battery? I call it busted because after almost 3 months of use, I have to re-charge it daily even after only 5 hours of usage, video and audio combined, which is a ridiculously short amount of time because this player is being marketed as having "up to 36 hours of audio playback and up to 9.5 hours of video playback" I guess, it's only true for the first one month.
The rep then tried to look for the warranty and he informed me that it's already expired. Then he found out 5 minutes later that their internal database is screwed up and that's why even though my product is valid and bought under 90 days, both the 90 days and 1 year warranty are not showing, so I had to call back with a reference number tomorrow when their call center is open.
Just a note: When I ask how much it will cost to repair the battery, he quoted me at around $130, shipping not included. I then informed him that Amazon now sold it at $135.98. You'll be better off buying a new one instead of sending it for a repair and ended up with refurbished part.
Before buying this MP3 player, I had read and scrutiny every other reviews, bad and good, and I decided to still buy it because this is a Sony product after all. I have been a loyal costumer with Sony since I was a kid, but I guess over the years, their Quality Control has been slipping. Their customer service quality has yet to be proven, I guess I'll found out more tomorrow.
EDIT: October 27, 2008
Sony Customer Relation called and they said my warranty is working now and they gave me the work order #. The only cost on my end would be the Shipping cost to Sony, they'd take care the rest. Should take about 10 - 14 business days. Sony give another 90 days warranty after they fixed the item so that's good. I will update again when I receive my working player. And another thing, they agreed to replace my broken earphones!
EDIT: November 19, 2008
Sony said there was nothing wrong with my player and will charge me $51 for new earphones. The earphones has no fault on the OUTSIDE, but the inside wires were broken and so they wanted me to pay for a replacement. I said thanks but no thanks. I got a new white Sony earphones from BJ's instead. A week later, the player returned and I checked for its condition, and when previously it was a smooth sleek little player, it is now mark with scratches and dent on its body. Looks like Sony Repair Center people took really great care of it by slamming and sliding around across the tables.
DO NOT EVER SEND IN YOUR PLAYER INTO SONY UNLESS IT'S COMPLETELY BROKEN! AND YOU WANT IT TO TURN OUT LIKE MINE. F*** YOU SONY S.O.B!!!
Excellent sound and linux compatible (w/ some tweaking) October 18, 2008
I bought this player on a whim. I already own an iRiver iHP-110 (which I love), an ipod Nano (which I don't), and a Creative Zen M (which is my workhorse). I was looking for a small MP3 player with adequate memory and great sound; video playback was not necessary but is considered a bonus.
When I bought this player, I was confident the audio fidelity would be excellent - and it is indeed. Sony's default headphones, IMHO, are always better than the competition's. (I use Sony's for all the players listed above just in case there was doubt as to comparisons.) The NWZ-A728 contains equalizer options as do all players but best of all let's you customize one of the settings for your own tastes.
The UI is very, very intuitive and best of all, it has HARD VOLUME BUTTONS!!! Why don't more manufacturers do this? I don't want to have to do multiple soft button presses to get to the volume - I just want to go UP and DOWN. Thank you Sony!
Video playback is very clear and the horizontal view is great eye candy. I wish it supported more formats like XVid but hey, I'm not going to rate it down for that. Battery life is very, very good as compared to my other players (with the exception of the iRiver).
I can't comment on the included software because I use Linux - Xubuntu 8.04 to be exact - and use freeware tools to manage my music and convert videos. At first blush, Xubuntu didn't see the player (and I suspect that's the case for any Ubuntu or Debian flavor). I ended up going over to the Kubuntu forums (kubuntuforums.net - look for a post by Jankushka) and you can follow his steps) to resolve the problem. (Note: Ubuntu 8.10 (intrepid) ships with libmtp 0.3.0 natively so this workaround won't be necessary once the release is stable.)
This player will end up replacing my Zen as my default device and the Nano is being retired permanently. If it had Ogg xupport and dynamic (custom) playlists like the Zen, I'd be in heaven but all-in-all, it is quite excellent. Highly recommend.
|
