Sony NWZ-A818

Though I've been content with my Sony Ericsson W850i Walkman phone as my mp3 player for some time I've fallen in love with another device, the Sony NWZ-A818 Media Player. Look how small and slender this piece of kit is!

Last year my heart wavered slightly and I considered buying the ever-popular iPod or iTouch but there was one thing which bothered me about them - the fact that you can't control them easily without taking them out of your pocket. Call me fussy, but being able to skip tracks and control the volume through my pocket is one of my main requirements for an mp3 player.

Things were great back in the days of MD players which had those neat remote controls which you plug your earphones into, but for some reason that's gone out of fashion.

Though you can check out the specifications of the Sony NWZ-A818 on the Sony website some of the key features are:

-Transfer media via Windows Media Player or drag & drop
-2.0" QVGA (320x240) screen
-30 fps video playback + JPEG viewer
-8GB capactity
-Plays MP3, AAC, WMP and WMA
-Plays MPEG4 & AVC (H.264) Baseline video
-Battery life of approx. 33hrs music!

The player can play your music from folders on the device - unlike the w850i and I suspect iPods, too. This is great as you have the best of both worlds. If you've got your mp3 tags sorted then you'll have access to your music by artist, genre, year etc., while if you don't you can still simply drag and drop your music onto the player and play it with no problems without all the tracks being listed solely under 'Untitled'.

In short this is a fantastic media player!

Attention to Detail

In terms of the display, it's big enough for a music player and displays album art which is easily added via copy and paste in Windows Media Player. In fact, I was pleasantly surprised by WMP as until now I'd never bothered using it for playing music before. I hadn't realised that it has a built in tag editor which works quite well.

The mens are simple and quick to use making me wonder how I ever put up with my w850i.

The included Spiderman trailer is quite impressive though to be honest, even if I wanted to watch video on the go I wouldn't bother using this media player to do it. The screen is pretty small for video and I'd much rather use my PSP for that (not that I have ever tried). If you purchase the Walkman Media Manager Pro you can re-encode divx files and other common download formats, though I'm not sure about xvid.

Another great feature of this player is that it displays Japanese text, including kanji! You can see kanji in on the display in the picture above - one of Utada Hikaru's songs. I never thought I'd be able to buy a media player in England which would be able to display Japanese perfectly.

The sound quality is great, helped by the included 'EX professional grade headphones'. The earphones are perhaps a tad weak when it comes to bass but using the equaliser which includes a custom mode gives decent results. You can also tweak the music via Clear Stereo, Clear Bass and DSEE sound enhancement.

Bottom Line

My only quibble if I had to think of one would be that the memory isn't expandable, but 8GB is plenty in my opinion.

I'd thoroughly recommend you try out the Sony NWZ-A818 before buying a music player - you won't be disappointed. For the current asking price of approx. £100 you can't go wrong. Buy it!