Sony coined the term 'Walkman' in the early 1980s, and has since then, defined the 'gold standard' of personal audio players.
The NW-507S is one of the most recent additions to a long range of high specification devices designed to deliver the ultimate in 'good sounds' to you ears.
At a typical street price of £150, it's quite a bit more expensive that your average run of the mill MP3 player, even with a built in FM radio, but that's more than made up for by the quality of design and components.
The NW-507 is the current 'top end' of the range - it comes in a long thin package, about the size of a lipstick, or refillable lighter. The 'S' denotes silver body - and happens to be the only version of the 507 on sale at Argos.
Beneath the sleek metallic finish lies a big Organic Light Emitting Diode (OLED) array, which serves as the readout panel.
At one end of the device
is a multi-function twist control, a couple of recessed buttons act as volume controls, and besides this, a couple of tiny buttons allow access to the menuing system.
The unit is 'flash memory' based, so it isn't susceptible to knocks and bumps the way hard disk players are, however it isn't as high capacity - rather than slavishly copying your entire CD collection to this, decide what you want to listen to first, and download it as and when you want.
Power is supplied by an internal battery, which is charged via the USB connector - Sony claim 55 hours playing time on a 15 minute charge, although I've not put this to the test.
The earphones supplied are of a pretty respectable standard, and would cost typically £15 to replace, the sound output of the relatively small unit is pretty much all you'd expect for a device costing 50% more than competing products.
The built in FM radio is as good as any I've heard from a similarly sized unit, and features an auto-scan setup facility.
The unit comes with a 'belt clip' and a little velvet bag to store it all in, software, instructions, and a respectable pair of headphones, it doesn't come with a neck-strap (lanyard) so may be inconvenient, but then again, how much is a piece of string?
As well as all the bumph - there's a USB cable.
Providing 1 gigabyte of storage, the unit should provide sufficient space to keep around 20 albums of mp3 music, and/or WMA format, however things are not quite as they seem.
The unit also provides 'flash memory' capabilities, so it's possible to store documents, spreadsheets etc as though the unit was a 'pen drive'
Unlike 'generic' mp3 players, though, loading music onto your walkman doesn't seem as straightforward as dragging and dropping folders onto your 'removable storage' device! (Perhaps I'm missing something)
The NW-507S comes with a copy of Sony's own 'sonic stage' software - as well as providing a means to buy music online, it gives a means of organising your music in playlists - very handy if you want to compile your own list of tunes, listening to tracks in a particular order, or spanning several albums.
Personally - I could quite happily live without this facility.
Call me an old farty - or perhaps it's just because I was brought up on the 'prog-rock' concept album, I happen to think a CD should be listened to in the order it was produced, and take the rough with the smooth - it's a bit like having to eat your greens before moving on to desert!
In summary
Compared with 'generic' MP3 players - this is rather expensive, given the specification offered, however this is more than amply compensated for by the audio quality.
Expect these to come down in price as new models are announced.
Buy with confidence, but be aware that simple 'drag and drop' of MP3 tracks doesn't seem to work.
Pros;
Excellent build quality, rechargeable batteries, and a set of 'phones you wouldn't want to replace instantly, sound is as good (and in many cases, a good deal better) than a lot mp3 players I've listened to.
Cons;
Requires dedicated software, expensive, no lanyard, 'analogue' FM radio
Consider also; Ipod Nanao, or cheaper one gig players
by (13%):
by (13%):
29.08.2006 13:45
I have the 2gb similar one without a radio (just wrote a review about ti!) and think it is great. Nice review there. Dan.
30.12.2005 20:53
very well written with loads of info - Belinda
29.12.2005 11:26
Excellent review well written and easy to understand shame that I got an ipod already otherwise I would like one of these - Pep