Sony NWZ-A818 8GB

Author's product rating:   

Video Quality	Excellent
Sound Quality	Excellent
Range of Features	Diverse
Ease of Use	Very Easy
Value for Money	Good

Advantages:	sound quality, small, sleek, battery life
Disadvantages:	small screen for videos, no mains charger provided

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

I loved the iPODs when they first came out but I had also then read a lot of reviews on Sony products and decided to go for them instead. I'm very glad now that I did.

The player is of an average size for an 8GB player, being small and sleek. The menus are very straight forward as the layout is like the one of a mobile phone. There is no click wheel but the navigation is very easy and practical as the scrolling is based on search through the alphabetical order. This great gadget works straight out the box and I never even bothered with the manual. It's simply so easy to navigate through and work out the buttons that you'll be enjoying your favourite tunes in no time.

This player supports CD cover art and any music can be dragged and dropped in. Do not confuse this model (A818) with earlier models as those models DO NOT have a drag and drop feature. This is the newer model which (unlike an iPOD where you have to install iTunes which I never partucularly liked) supports music, pictures or videos or even normal data files to be dragged and dropped through "My Computer" on Windows.

The player itself has a rather small screen for watching videos as after a while I found myself having to look away because of the strain, however this is a very small point and it may be that I have bad eye sight in the first place.

To the bad points now and notice that they are only very small things which is what makes this player so perfect! First of all, there is no case or screen protector with the player which I found unusual as most come with a case at least. Although having said that, the iPODs don't either. Another thing was the absense of a mains charger, but again this charger can be bought off eBay or Amazon for £4 or less (without P&P).

This player supports Windows Media Player 10 and comes with the installation CD if you haven't already got it. From the very first moment of synchonizing it with WMP, you notice how well the 2 were designed for each other and work beautifully together with no time delays, error messages or random deletion of all your tracks (*cough*iTunes*cough*)!

The sound quality is incredible and from the headphones provided (they are in-ear headphones which are worth a good £20), the sound quality is even better. I honestly cannot take the full volume on this player because it is far too loud, although I have tried it and the sound is crisp and clear without any distortion even at full volume. There is a great feature called the AVLS which limits the volume the player can be turned up to. There is also a great feature which is custom EQ which I always loved about mp3 players.

The player comes with a USB charger and once it's out of the box, it's simply a plug 'n' play job.

To summarise then, the player: is very easy to use, is slim, sleek, has incredible surround sound characteristics, very good quality videos, can be just as easily synchronized with the PS3, has a very good 8GB storage capacity, does not have a built in radio, no built in voice recorder and no expansion for the memory, no case/armband, no mains adapter, but has all the fantastic features of the perfect mp3/4 player! The pros as you can see are far higher and completely outweigh the cons as the cons are only small picky things.

Overall a highly recommended item!