By MDDraco
on 21st Sep 2005
MDDraco's Ratings| Time MP3 Player Owned | 1 - 6 Months |
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| Sound Quality | 10/10 |
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| Battery Life | 10/10 |
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| Features | 8/10 |
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| Memory | 20GB |
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| Value for money | 10/10 |
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| Overall value | 8/10 |
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 MDDraco's recommendation |
Good Points
Robust.
Excellent quality.
As a man: it comes in RED... none of this pink rubbish! lol
Smaller than an iPod
Long battery life (up to 40 hours).
Bad Points
The software is awful, Sonic Stage is one of the worst bits of software I've ever had the misfortune to use, I can't fault the player, but the software converts everything to OMG files, meaning you can't use your player as backup media after all the hard work of backing up your CD's into MP3 format for your computer :(
General Comments
On the whole, as I say above, I can't fault the Sony NW-HD5 MP3 player at all. It's simple to use, small (smaller than a ZEN or an iPod, which are the two main competitors at this time), easy to use, however, I find that on occasion, the player has problems with fast forwarding rapidly, to the point where it will freeze for about 5 seconds, which is most annoying, and as for the software well, I don't understand why Sony have to use such an awful bit of software, it really is terrible, oooh, and I found a nasty little bug in it... if you're trying to transfer all of your music at once (in my case: my entire CD collection of about 4000 tracks) then don't... you WILL crash Sonic Stage in the effort!!! Transfer 734 songs at a time, that's the most that it will manage, and even then, it can get a little shaky.
It's not that I personally hate Sonic Stage, actually, I have thought previously that it has the potential to be very good, as it's very user friendly, although in keeping with the Sony style, there are about 10 million options for you, but if you're looking for a good player with no frills sound (which is one of the best quality sounds I've heard from a portable MP3 player), then you'll go for this. Just make sure all your ID3 tags are up to date on your MP3 files, as this is how they get described in the player menu.
I have to say that despite my problems with the software side of things, now that I've figured out what was causing Sonic Stage to crash (transferring too many songs as mentioned above), I have been very happy to date with the player being left on random repeat mode, it now takes pride of place in my car with a tape converter, which has been working out just fine.
The only reason the overall rating is an 8 is because of the problems with the software, and the same with the features, as technically the software is a feature, however: the player itself is immense, with basic options admittedly, but everything that you'll ever want to use is there.
