Sony Network Walkman NW-E95 512 MB

I bought this last year when my mum was in hospital for three months and I had an hour bus journey each way every evening, and I wanted more variety than just a CD in my walkman. At the time this cost me about £159, and I thought it was wonderful, but now I wish I had held out a bit longer and I would have got much more storage space for probably little more cost.

It is a great piece of kit, about the size of a small matchbox, with ...
...need to read the instructions.

Battery life is great, I find one lasts me a few weeks to a month, and I use it almost every day to and from work and at night too, so I think their estimate of 70 hours is very fair - and I would definitely think twice about buying an mp3 player with some of the short battery lives that you see around - what use is 8 to 10 hours to anyone?

I generally fit about 22 albums onto the player, ... more

I bought this last year when my mum was in hospital for three months and I had an hour bus journey each way every evening, and I wanted more variety than just a CD in my walkman. At the time this cost me about £159, and I thought it was wonderful, but now I wish I had held out a bit longer and I would have got much more storage space for probably little more cost.

It is a great piece of kit, about the size of a small matchbox, with very simple controls that are so intuitive you don't even need to read the instructions.

Battery life is great, I find one lasts me a few weeks to a month, and I use it almost every day to and from work and at night too, so I think their estimate of 70 hours is very fair - and I would definitely think twice about buying an mp3 player with some of the short battery lives that you see around - what use is 8 to 10 hours to anyone?

I generally fit about 22 albums onto the player, which at first was more than enough, I couldn't imagine how anyone could want more than that, but the more I have used it the more greedy I have become and now I find it a real struggle to decide which ones to put on and which to leave out, and I am looking to upgrade to a higher capacity model.

One particularly good thing is that this is a very robust little thing, much more so than the HDD models, which I am not sure would survive being thrown around in my bag and my pocket!

The USB connection is great, and the headphones are perfect, and include an extension cord so you can either have them short to use when you wear the player around your neck on the neck strap provided. I don't wear it like that as I think it is just asking for someone to come along and whip it off you! So I use the extender and keep the player safely tucked in my pocket.

My only gripe is the software, I really don't get on too well with Sonic - it is ok, I can live with it, but I have seen a lot better, I just find it not particularly user friendly. Also converting to ATRAC so that you can fit more on the player is a bit of a pain, particularly as I can't play the ATRAC conversions via other media players, so I have now started to have two versions of albums on my PC, one for use in other players, and one for my mp3 player.

Downloading is a doddle, if not instantaneous (but then I am impatient!), and once you have the files ATRAC'd onto your PC, it is simplicity itself to download to the player - it is just the converting to ATRAC using Sonic that I find a bit of a pain - simple but still a pain. You can choose not to convert, and to just use mp3 format, but you get a lot less on the player in mp3 format so it is worth the effort to squeeze them into ATRAC.

All in all a really nice little mp3 player, I can't fault it at all and I have certainly got my use out of it, and would not have done without it, but if you are thinking of buying one, think carefully about whether it really has enough storage capacity for you, and consider paying a bit more for something bigger that you won't outgrow, particularly if this is your first mp3 player as it is amazing how quickly you get used to the luxury of having so much music at your fingertips and even more so, how greedy you get when you find that it isn't enough, you want more! 

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