ソニー ウォークマン NWZ-A728 買った、でも... (edited 4/2)

The latest beauty from Sony. Haven't seen a Walkman looking this good for a long time.


Here's the package, with BestBuy markings. At this stage, I'm not sure if it's just different packaging or different product, but we'll see later.

This is where everything is made. Very surprising to see that only the USB cable is made in China, usually only the unit isn't made in China (like my Clie), or everything is from China (like all things Apple).

So, let's open the box!
Here's everything that came out of the box, including accessories, CD-ROM, and papers.
Papers include (left to right) a high-volume-causes-hearing-loss sheet, a BestBuy Sony headphones 20% off coupon, warrenty info, BestBuy/Rhapsody Music Store ad, Sony software info, software license info, unit use safety warnings, a Quick Start Guide and a Troubleshooting guide. A printed manual is not included, it's only in the CD-ROM as a pdf file. As far as I know, only the Japanese get printed manuals for Sony Walkmans.

The packaged accessories, including a USB cord, a video watching stand with a string to tie on the unit, a plastic insert for the cradle that you can buy, real good earphones, and different sizes of the in-ear earbud cups.

The included EX-082 earbuds, music players coming with actually usable earbuds are really a rarity, and here is how Sony showed how bundled earbuds can be of good quality.

This is how the included piece of plastic works as a plug-in stand for you to watch videos.

The right side, with volume buttons and the hold slider.

The underside, with a headphone jack and the "WM-port" for USB connection and charging.

A close up. You can already see a finger print around the buttons area. This thing is a fingerprint/perspiration precipitate magnate, just like my Clie TH55's glossy screen cover; yet unlike my Clie, those finger marks are VERY HARD to wipe off.

疊疊樂！A size comparison with 2 of my previous devices that I depend on for music. As seen in the photo, I have a CD Walkman D-EJ885 and a Clie TH55, a heritage of Sonys, as I like sony designs, logical user interface (UI) and great sound quality. Americans like to say how Apple's UI are easy to use, well, it's easy and dumb. Sure you can control everything easily the first time you pick it up, with out reading the manual. Yet with this kind of "dumbed down UI" it takes too much steps to do just about anything (although already much better then Microsoft in this regard). I feel Sony UI do have a little learning curve, yet only after 30 minutes of exploring around the menus, you get the logic and can start blazing through the menus with minimal steps to get the functions you want.

Modern technology, this new Walkman sure is thinner then my Clie PDA or CD Walkman. But then again, my Clie is developed back in 2004 considered thin back then, and now it's thicker then the 2008 announced MacBook Air.

Well, done with the exterior, next to charge it and turn it on. And this is where the disappointment comes from. Turns out that this is a "BestBuy" customized model, and thus there is a "Real player/Rhapsody" icon on the home menu. I'm OK with that, as it's just one icon that I don't like. But, the menu language option is not there! I'm not sure if this is just the "BestBuy" version or are all US versions like that. I called Sony customer service, the dude, with an Indian accent, told me that all US versions has no language options, yet as he had a hard time understanding the model number of my Walkman and was looking up some "database" on his system, I am not sure if I could trust him or not. Anyway, if the non-BestBuy version has language settings, I'll be doing a return and re-buy. If the guy at the call center in India was right, I sure am returning, and not even re-buying. Maybe I'll stick with my Clie again, try to get the Japanese version or see if a "Worldwide version" shows up in Taiwan.

Another problem is with the music album art support. Unlike PSP's or iPod, the Walkman doesn't support jpg files embedded in MP3 ID3 tags. You are forced to either use the Media Manager software, which rips out the pictures from the MP3s and put them in a separate folder. Or you need to use Windows Media Player 11. If it's that hard, giving up drag n' drop support and going with Sonic Stage seems easier, which is not all that bad as said on the web. I also get lossless support, on-the-go playlists, gapless playback, line-in recording and noise canceling with the Sonicstage-tied Japanese version. Something to consider after I return this thing...

Added Note from Apr 2nd:

After some use, there are some stuff I'd like to say.

First of all, Windows Media Player is a pain. It insists to sync all the music and photos on your computer to the Walkman. I only wanted the songs in one playlist to transfer over, so I canceled the syncing of all the other songs (it makes a default sync playlist called "all new songs"). Well, WMP never remembers your settings, and the playlists you just canceled last time gets synced again everytime you connect the player to the computer. Also, WMP never checks wither one song is already on the player, so I get several duplicates of one song on the player, thanks to WMP's dumb syncing.

The joy begins once you disconnect the Walkman from the computer. Navigating the menus is very easy, with several ways to find your songs, by artist, song name, album, genre, year, or even folder. The superb screen makes the album art looks so clear that it's like it's printed there. You can access a clock or the "now playing" screen from anywhere with the option button. And best of all, sound quality is so nice and clear that you can clearly hear every detail at extremely low volumes. If you like, you can set the Equalizer your self to whatever you like, and the bass is very nice and powerful if you crank it up. There is also a "DSEE" sound enhancer you can turn on to make the software fill in the missing parts of sound wave data that were lost as a result of MP3 compression. In other words, the Walkman does calculations to make up for lossy compression, making them less choppy. Of course, this "sound patching" can never make it up as good as original high quality files, but it kind of brings 128kbps MP3s up to the quality of 160kbps, better then nothing.

Most surprising of all, from a fully charged battery, I can leave it playing music from 10AM all the way to 7PM, and only see one missing space on the 4-block battery meter. Seems ridiculous! That's about 4 full days per charge, or 9 hours per 1/4 of battery life. Multiply that to an estimate of 36hours, and the battery life is way more amazing then the advertised 30 hours. This is the first music device that I don't need to even consider power conservation, as the device does it for me.

If it wasn't for the lack of multilingual menu support, I would be loving this device...