Which Mp3 player?
Right you have around £180 to spend on a MP3 player but which one do you get? The main contenders are the Creative Zen Micro Photo, Apple Ipod Nano or the Sony NWA1000. (6GB version of the Sony NWA3000)
Ok so on paper the Sony looks the best buy which really it is, because if you want an Ipod you’ve already made your mind up that you want an Ipod. But if you’re like us and you are more interested in value for money, you’ll more than likely go for the Sony NWA1000. If you have a look around you will find the NWA1000’s bigger 20GB brother, the NWA3000, for around £199 which is the same price as the Creative Zen Micro. Ok so you’d lose out on the colour screen that the Zen has but at the end of the day you’re playing MP3’s not viewing holiday snaps!
See this table below so that you can easily compare the general differences.
| Creative Zen Micro Photo | Apple Ipod Nano | Sony NWA1000 | |
| Storage type/size | Hard Disk 8GB | Flash memory 4GB | Hard Disk 6GB |
| Screen | OLED 1.5" | 1.5" LCD | OLED 1.5" |
| Battery Life | 15 Hours | 14 Hours | 20 Hours |
| Files types | WMA, MP3, JANUS, WAV | ACC, MP3, WAV, AIFF | MP3, WMA, WAV |
| Weight | 115 Grams | 42 Grams | 109 Grams |
| Price | £199 | £179 | £145 |
November 18th, 2005 at 6:30 am
The sony is the better buy, the nano scratches too easily and there are problems with them, since people have been reporting them on ipod forums. sound quality will be the best in the sony hands down, but there are issues, the new Connect player is a letdown sadly. but sonicstage works with the new HDD players.
November 18th, 2005 at 6:20 pm
After reading the reports on the Nano I think people are crazy to waste their money on something that is only a fashion accessory. It won’t look very trendy after a few months when the screen is all scratched. I like the ZEN for the size of the HDD.
November 19th, 2005 at 2:56 pm
yeah the zen is great but you can get the 20GB sony for around £170 ish nowadays
November 21st, 2005 at 6:33 pm
It’s great to see that other manufacturers are able to produce quality players that are appreciated, rather than Apple just taking over the market. To be honest the Sony ceratinly looks better than the ipod and reading about it I thinks it’s much better
November 23rd, 2005 at 6:30 pm
Definately the Sony Walkman for me…. it wins hands down
November 30th, 2005 at 11:44 am
Having purchased a Zen and a Sony NWA1000, I can safely say that the Sony is a winner.
My landlord has a nano. While they look amazing (he keeps it in his wallet) I never liked itunes which is a requirement of the apple player. Nor did I like the feel of apples products anyway. MAC OSX is so hard to get on with, and I am a user of Linux and Windows.
Also, as stated here by others, the screens on the nanos are easily scratched, and even smashed in some cases. The black version looks far better than the white version.
The Zen has some good features, the software for example is very easy to use. In my oppinion, it has a better touchpad than the nano. Somthing which the sony lacks. While the sony has buttons, they are still well laid out and do their job efficiently. I cannot fault the functions of either of the three players, it just takes time to get used to the sensitivity of the nano/Zen, and of course to learn where all the functions and which menu/submenu the functions are located in.
The screens on all three are very good. If you want colour, then obviously go for the nano… however, the OLED screen on the sony player is perfectly fine and the bluish tint to the display compliments the player. (I have the Violet version) The Zen has a simple LED type screen. While it does the job, it looks nowhere near as impressive as the nano.
The only let down I have found with the sony so far is the software. it is absolutely dire. You MUST use the connect software to rip your CD’s or transfer mp3/wav to the device. Simply dragging and dropping the music to the device will not cut it. The player stores it as data and will not pick up the fact that theres music in there should the files actually be mp3 or wav files.
The Zen however, has no problem with this. It will play any mp3/wav dragged over to a specific directory on the player.
Hope this helps someone. remeber, I bought these two products so you didnt have to!
If only someone sent me all the latest electronics, Id do these reports for free
December 2nd, 2005 at 4:38 pm
thank you SOOOOOOOOOOO much paul!
December 2nd, 2005 at 5:23 pm
So Charlie, have you decided which on to go for now?
Techlounge
December 5th, 2005 at 2:50 pm
Ascarris - do you know why the ATRAClife colloquiem website is unavailable on its server at the moment?
Is this just a temporary problem?
cheers
Steve
December 5th, 2005 at 6:24 pm
Hi im thinking of buying the new Sony NWA1000 6GB Walkman MP3, but i am extremely concerned about the issues raised about the Connect software. Does it not work at all? If not how are you able to transfer songs to the drive? Is this one of the dreadful softwares that require you to buy the songs off the internet and wont allow you to transfer your existing songs (not from cds!)? Are song actually planning to fix this bug in the software at any time soon? The obvious solution would be to find an alernative mp3 player but ive had problems with Creative mp3 players in the past and do not want an iPod! Thankyou
December 5th, 2005 at 7:46 pm
hey techlounge! i think i’m going to go for the sony still… i’d been looking at a zen but since the sony does most of the stuff it does and looks like a million times sleeker, i’m going to go for that… still slightly worried about the software issue though… wondering if i but it now, do you think i’ll have to pay for the newer software when that comes out or will we be able to download it free or something… anyway… will ponder a little longer… and save up…
by the way heather, you can use sonic stage (the slightly older version) and it’ll load it up but i think it means that the intelligent shuffle function. if you go to the most commented section on the right hand side of this page, there’s a really long blog about the NWA1000 and 3000… you might find some of the answers your looking for there! hope this helped!
December 11th, 2005 at 3:46 am
does anyone know if there is software for mac users for the sony nw-a1000?? i got one for my birthday but i use mac!
December 11th, 2005 at 1:47 pm
rhys > sorry to say that but I really am afraid the sony software is only compatible with Windows systems. You could hope for some apple developers to release a software that would do that on macs but I really doubt that will ever happen.
You can try usign a windows system of one of your friends in this case. Or buy a cheap windows system - it’s possible to get one really cheap.
December 21st, 2005 at 8:12 pm
zen
December 21st, 2005 at 11:20 pm
Paul you mentioned issues with simply dropping and dragging music into the sony without using connect. Ive just bought an NW-A1000 for an OSX users. Will I have problems?
Any replies much appreciated
December 22nd, 2005 at 4:11 pm
I just bought an NW-A1000, I asked the guy in the Sony store if the software was available for the Mac. He said ‘the disk that comes in the box does is not compatible, but if you go to the sony website you can download it there’. Damned if I can find it. Looks like I might be returning it….. shame ‘cos I like it!
December 23rd, 2005 at 4:19 pm
Charlie
No problem.
You can contact me further on this email add, (remove SPAM) paul@SPAMtruevector.co.uk if you want to discuss this quality little player any further.
jkil
I dont know the answer to your question fully, however I can tell you the software is for Windows only.
Due to the way the mp3/wma is stored on the sony, (see previous post) Im afraid you are likely to run into problems. Simply dragging and dropping ANYTHING via a file explorer (on any platform I assume?) the player thinks the file is data and its used as a flash/memory drive.
December 25th, 2005 at 4:18 pm
Hi there,
Just wondering if anyone can tell me how to transfer files from CD directly to the device without ripping them temp to the hard drive. It sucks that i can’t seem to find a way to do this.
Thanks,
Nathan
lucas_wallis at hotmail etc….
January 3rd, 2006 at 3:49 pm
hey nathan? just read ur post… which is ist? william, nathan or lucas? my god boy how many names you got!
January 5th, 2006 at 10:00 am
I got my wife one of the sony ones for Xmas, and I am surprised at all the bad feedback for the connect direct software. I installed it and the installation asked me to check the web for updates, which I clicked yes and it downloaded some files. The transfer are quite fast, I had mp3 files on my HDD and I asked the software to scan the folder for MP3 and it did and transfered them accross to the player, no hassel. I would recommend the player.
January 5th, 2006 at 5:44 pm
I love my Sony MP3 the only problem I have is that I use it while running and the carrier case they provide is pretty naff. Can anyone offer some advice?
Thanks
January 6th, 2006 at 2:29 pm
I brought the Sony NW-A3000 Walkman for my son’s Christmas present. Although the hardware is really good, the Connect Player software is absolutely aweful. It is buggy and uses masses of PC memory / resources. It causes my PC to freeze and seize up (Pentium 4 2.7Ghz 512mb ram) If you check the internet, you will find that dozens of users have major problems with this software. I would not buy this until Sony resolves the software issues
January 7th, 2006 at 12:37 pm
thanx for the advice gary… for now ill save myself the trouble!
January 9th, 2006 at 5:56 pm
I have just bought the sony nwa3000 and a warning to anyone who likes to listen to music loud, DO NOT BUY THIS as per all previous sony products teh volume is not loud enough EVEN WITH THE HACK it is still not loud enough.
January 12th, 2006 at 2:33 pm
I got nwa-1000 as christmas and after many frustrating hours finally got it to transfer and play tracks….but it is way too quiet(you can still have a normal conversation at full volume) have tried hack for 3000 but seems to be slightly different menu and does not work. Any ideas?
January 12th, 2006 at 2:42 pm
finally got hack to work…aahh thats more like it
January 13th, 2006 at 6:29 pm
I’ve got a 60GB Toshiba Gigabeat which I really like. It is incredibly small considering its capacity, has a colour screen so you are able to upload album covers onto it, which is cool, and is easy to use. My only complaints with it are the random function and the software. I like to have my whole music collection playing on random, but the Gigabeat seems to hardly play tracks by an artist I have loads of music for for a long time, then play many tracks by that artist in a row - very annoying! The software (like much Mp3 software it seems) is rather temperamental and slow, for example at first I tried to upload all of my music in one go and the software crashed mid transfer. Overall I think it’s a good player though.
January 19th, 2006 at 5:09 pm
just out of curiosity… what do people think of the new ipods and at what price can i expect to get one?
April 21st, 2006 at 8:58 pm
I just bought myself the nwa3000 , and i use to have the nwa1000 but the connect player was so…uhm…interesting…i returned it.
but i kinda missed it : P so i got the 3000 and downloaded sonic stage off the official sony site and it works so well ! wooo . basicly uh… buy the sony , then download the sonicstage software , dont bother with the connect player , and u have a perfect mp3. Plus the connect cd that comes with it makes a handy coaster. You dont see that coming with ipods ect . now do ya?
July 11th, 2006 at 4:49 am
I really like the nwa 1000 mp3 player. I was apprehensive to buy it at first due to complaints about connect player , and rumors the volume was too quiet. Niether has been a problem for me, though it seems this puts me in the minority. Plus I find the sound quality top notch, and most importantly, it’s SOO PRETTY. I would say it is a worthy rival to the Ipod. Especailly since mine broke so easily.
July 13th, 2006 at 8:06 pm
as a 50 yr old i havent got a clue about anything to do with mp3 players.the one thing i do know is that i need one.today i saw the sony nwa1000 at argos for £109.99 and am considering buying it.all i want to do is to be able to put some of my cds on it and hopefully listen to the mighty pearl jam at high volume.am i doing the right thing?
July 14th, 2006 at 9:07 am
Hey Martin
i’d shop around on the net as i am sure the NWA-3000 is now available for 20 quid more try ebuyer.co.uk
July 14th, 2006 at 12:45 pm
thanx for that rory.when i was looking at the nwa1000 the salesman said its not as easy as the ipod for putting cds on to it.how much more difficult can it be?is the nwa3000 worth bothering with just to listen to music?