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Review: Just got this little beast a few days ago, and I have to say it's the best portable I've ever come across. Its dead easy to use, has a decent battery life (around 13 hours playback on a 1hr charge), and has more features than you would expect for something so small! And with that shiny metal casing, it's not a shoddy, cheap looking plastic thing like most portables nowadays. First, the bad news, much of which is more due to dodgy advertising than flaws in the product itself: Sony say you can get over 10 CDs onto a single standard 74 or 80 minute MiniDisc, but this is at 64kbps, which doesn't sound all that great (comparable to 96kbps MP3). Another gripe is that the MD SimpleBurner software will only copy CDs directly to a Hi-MD formatted disc in either 64kbps or 256kbps, and nothing between. It is possible to use a 132kbps setting, which will let you fit 4-5 cds onto a 74 minute MD at decent quality (which is more than enough for me, having used MiniDisc since it first came out), but you will need to copy the files onto your computer's hard disk first (although this is easy enough). However, these are the only negative points I can think of, and they are very minor. It'll take about 3-5 minutes to copy from CD to MD, (maybe longer if you have an old PC). A complaint many people have is about the software. I have a word of advice. SonicStage 2.0, which is bundled with the unit, is naff, but you can download version 3.1 for free (check www.download.com). I must say that this software is perfectly stable on WinXP (I had it on for over 3 hours in one sitting copying my fave CDs to MD and it never crashed once). Its dead easy to use, very stable (although it can be a little bit slow at times) and it looks just as good, if not better than iTunes.
Another thing people have complained about is the fact that the charging station is not a docking station. And this is not a bad thing. The charger looks great, but isn't something you want to carry around with you, its pretty bulky. If you're using the MD in place of a flash drive, it really does help that the USB connection is independent of the docking station. And when connected, the MD will power itself through the USB. The remote on this unit is easily the best I've used. You can control just about every feature of the device from it, and it has a 3 line backlit display. The headphones are useless, but then again, I've never seen a Sony portable that has come with decent headphones. I agree totally with everyone that has said that this is NOT an MP3 player. If you want a fashion accessory, or to keep your whole music collection on a player at fairly low quality, go buy an iPod. If you want a solidly built, versatile little player with excellent sound quality (thanks to a digital amplifier and the excellent ATRAC3 compression) that is easy and fun to use, this is the one for you. I'd quite happily pay the full price for this player (£200), but at £110, it's almost stealing. And when it comes to sound quality, I'm one of those fussy types with an absurdly expensive stereo system... I'd never thought I'd hear myself say this (I work for Panasonic), but well done Sony! This is a brilliant player, and at such a great price from Amazon, I'd recommend this Sony MZ-NH1 Silver Hi-MiniDisc Walkman to anyone looking for a portable. |
Audio HiFi
