Sony NW-HD3 Review

Overall Rating

Sleek and simple design, and tiny (like a deck of cards)
Awesome colors (pink, red, black, silver, blue)
Wonderful battery life - lasts for days
Easy navigation
Cute, cute, cute!
Great sound (what tinny noise?)
Durable (I've dropped it a few times)
Holds a large amount of songs - YAY!

No screen color like the iPod, but you don't need that to listen to music! You don't stare at the screen all the time, now do you?
Annoying beep - turn it off
You can't go from a different screen to the current playlist immediately. You have to wait a few seconds and it will automatically go back for you
Two USB cords to hook up to the computer rather than one
Not many accessories for it

I've had the pink Sony NW-HD3 for a few months now, and I love it. I bought it for $195 off eBay, brand new - a great deal!

At first I was hesitant to buy it because of the complaints about its Sonicstage software, but it really isn't that bad. Some people have said that Sonicstage is hard to use - I disagree. It's actually quite straightforward, and if you do need help, the manual will tell you all you need to know. The only gripes I have about the software is that it has a slow start-up time, unlike iTunes; that it doesn't alphabetize your music for you; and that it doesn't recognize CD information (like song titles, singer, etc.) for older or foreign CD's, so you have to enter them yourself sometimes. Also, Sony Connect (the music store) has a less extensive collection than iTunes, but I don't use it anyway. So if you have a large CD collection already, this is good for you!

What I like the most about the NW-HD3 is the long battery life. I listen to music every day for about 3 - 4 hours, and it usually lasts me 4+ days without charging (with the backlight on too). If you want the battery life to be even longer, turn off the backlight.

I also adore the look of the NW-HD3 better than the iPod. Sure, the iPod is pretty nice looking, but the Sony one looks more sophisticated... Although I do find that the scroll wheel on the iPod is faster. But hey, not a problem.

There are a lot of playback modes besides the standard shuffle and normal modes, as well as contrast, sound, and backlight options. There is that annoying beep every time you press a button, but that can be turned off.

Just a tip: You don't have to turn the off switch on the side in order to actually turn the player off. Just press the stop button and leave it, the player will turn off by itself (screen and all) and your mode settings won't be reset to default (like the beeping noise). To turn it on again, just hit play. This doesn't seem to affect the battery life either. :-)

The sound quality is good, although you can tell a difference between MP3 songs and ATRAC songs volume-wise. For some reason, an MP3 song will sound louder than an ATRAC one.

I just wish there were more accessories for this thing. Besides headphones, there's not much to choose from. You might spend some time looking for a sound dock and whatnot.

One more thing I want to address is the slow loading time from one screen to another. Say you want to go from the Current Playlist screen to the Artist screen. It will take about 3 seconds to load it up. I don't know if this is the same for the iPod, and whether it should be almost instantaneous or not... It's not a big deal anyway.

Despite the minor setbacks (software, lack of accessories, and USB cords), if you're looking for a visually pleasing, durable and reliable 20GB MP3 player, I highly recommend the Sony NW-HD3.