Sony Vaio Pocket VGF-AP1 Review

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Sony Vaio Pocket VGF-AP1
4 stars
Average rating for this product is: 4 out of 5

From 6 ratings and 6 reviews

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jcow's Review of Sony Vaio Pocket VGF-AP1 MP3 Player

3rd Jul 2005

Overall Rating

4 stars
  • Value for money
    4 stars
  • Sound Quality
    5 stars
  • Features
    4.5 stars
  • Time MP3 Player Owned
    Between 1 - 4 Weeks
  • Battery Life
    3.5 stars
  • Memory
    40gb
Good Points

-decent colour screen
-20 or 40gb
-solidly built
-picture viewer


Bad Points

-a bit large
-battery life not great


General Comments

I recently bought a Sony VGF-AP1L (the 'L' part indicates 40gb version) for £199 from Dixons. My first impressions were that it was rather large, and it had a wierd touchpad device. The touchpad has 25 buttons, you move the cursor by moving your finger across it. To select an option the button is pressed. This idea is good, and it is faster to use than a iPod or Zen ect. This takes a little getting used to but it is good once you have mastered it. Sony make your life difficult by not allowing you to upload MP3s directly. You have to install Sonicstage, this converts your MP3s to Sony's own 'ATRAC3' format. I have my songs on 256kbps, which is the highest bitrate option (with the latest version, transfer speeds are very fast). The sound quality is excellent and it can be adjusted by the equaliser option. I currently have 1568 songs, and this has taken 8.1gb.

Being a picture viewing device, you can connect a digital camera directly to the player via the small docking station. I managed to upload pictures from a Fuji camera, and I have uploaded files and MP3's from a variety of other MP3 players.
Pictures can be attached to individual tracks, so when a track plays the picture is shown. The screen is 2.5'' and a decent resolution. The battery lasts about 5 hours from a full charge.

Overall the player is quite well priced at £200, you can store your whole music collection with 40gb space. This would be ideal to store digital camera pictures when travelling, without the need of dozens of memory cards.

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Members' Comments onjcow's Review

  • jimmycakes on 15th Aug 2005

    this is not so much a review as a question is any body else having problems with the vgf-ap1l not being detected by their computer,if yes can you advise me on a solution it is driving me crazy.

  • Disco77 Rank: Corporal on 8th Sep 2005

    had the same problem on mine, you need to update the players firmware. You can do this easily by following the instructions on the Sony Viao website. Also update your Sonic Stage (delete old first). You will be glad to know that conversion to ATRAC is no longer required, you can drag MP3's directly in!

    Regards Andy