Sony NW-E407 Review

Overall Rating

Fantastic battery life which exceeds many other flash players from other brands such as iPod. iPod shuffle has only an average of just 14 hours compared to the Sony with 50 hours. The nice feature with the E407 is that is has a 3 minute charge for 3 hours playback. I tried it but ended up charging it for a few minutes more, the battery last almost too long.
The polycarbonate (I think?) screen it very tough and durable. If your the kind of people who like their gadgets in pristine conditon after a few months of use, the E407 is the way to go. I had it for over 6 months and normal day to day abrasion from clothes etc. have not scrathed the screen at all. Obviously there are the very minute nano-line scrathes that you will see if you shine it against the light at an angle and concentrate to look. The back of the player is aluminium and strong.
The play buttons etc are easy to use and getting use to. It is quite easy to use it one handed - but takes time.
You can adjust the treble and bass and can have them preset in 2 modes so you don't have to readjust them again.
The 'Organic EL' display is really bright at night and is much like an LED - bright and economical in energy consumption. It's not very good in the day though, well ig uess any screen won't be that good in the daytime.
Sound quality is very good depending on your choice of earphones etc.
If you ever get used to the Sonicstage software, the Atrac3 Plus and other formats that they convert your music into is actually very good. I haven't noticed any quality lost in the sound. I've managed to fit about 300 songs of various formats, mainly in atrac3 onto my 1GB Sony. Their claim of up to 395 songs is overexaggered and is based on strict length of songs and other rubbish.

Awful software. It takes about an hour to get used to. After that it becomes quite easy to transfer music, but still, very badly designed software. Not user friendly compared to iTunes.
The bog standard earphones are pretty good and are quite durable. Sound quality depends on your personal preference as I find some cheaper earphones are better than £30 in ear ones.
It would have been good it the player had a direct usb connection instead of a cable. The newer Sony players that have come out this year (2006 June) have that feature.

I've heard from other reviews that you cannot put protected songs from WMP onto this Sony NW-E407 player. I think this is true, but I have not encountered this problem. All my song on from WMP are stated 'no' on the protected column (on the far right). If you are someone who downloads songs from Limewire, Kazaa etc. then I should not think you will encounter any problems as I have tried this. Although I don't recommmend downloading songs from Limewire or Kazaa etc as they are most likely bundled with spyware and it may be 'illegal' sharing of songs.
The Sony also comes with a plastic clip which clips on to the player itself. It's fairly strong when connected to the player but very weak and can snap if not. I hardly use it as I find it gets in the way.