Sony NWZ A810 4gb 8gb review

Sony have so far produced several models of inconsistent virtue. Some of them have been absolutely great. Some of them, not so good. Which camp is this lot in?

In terms of features and styling this players big rival, the iPod nano 2nd generation, is a little behind. These players have more features, longer batter life etc. Here are some of the highlights:

The Screen:

The Screen is a full 2 inches along the hypotenuse. The screen size is a 320 x 240 - the fairly standard size for small online videos. This means that you can download things form the internet without them getting squashed or stretched when they're being played on your video walkman - there is no need to resize them. This is also good news for other videos that share the same (standard) ratios.

You would think that this would be a no-brainer, but it is only catching on among portable video dukebox makers now. Clearly more of them need to read our reviews!

Erm ... what else. Oh yes. Sony were the first to offer "orientation swapping" on their earlier NW HD models - i.e. you can make the screen switch orientation from "portrait" to "landscape" - depending on which suits you/ what you're watching best. It is actually a lot cooler than it sounds and it will probably be a feature that every video/ m3 player/ recorder dukebox will have one day. It is one of those features that you never realised you needed until you had it. But once you had it, living without it seems stupid.

Style

The shiny metal casings are in fact matte, which means that they are less shiny than the iPod nanos. The colours are significantly less lurid too, but we're not sure that's a good thing for everyone. The NWA80x are similar to the earlier Sony A1200.

Sonicstage - it has improved from older incarnations (which could be summed up in one word: awful). Now it is sometimes nice to use. It is hard to say at this stage if someone that had never used the older software would find fault with the newer version. The older version has left us scarred, but we have heard reports that new users find the sonicstage software fine to use, so we cannot in all conscience say that there is anything wrong with it.

If the below paragraphs are gibberish to you, don't worry

Music files in Sony's native ATRAC are still the best compression ratio for your money, but just in case you use one of the crazy standards like MP3, AAC (non DRM only) or WMA (DRM/ non DRM) you can play those too. That may come as a bit of surprise for anyone that knows what Sony have been like for the last few years.

DviX or WMV videos have to be transferred using Image Converter 3. It gives you a choice of converting to "high" quality or "low" quality. Presumably someone at Sony decided that these 2 choices should be enough for everyone. It seems a bit clumsy if we're being honest. Here's why:

Your video walkman will playback movies absolutely fine, but only once they're in the AVC H.264 or MPEG4 formats. "High" quality setting is for a bit rate of 768Kbits per sec. If you have a perfectly good AVC H.264 video, but it is not at the required bit rate, you will still need to convert it before it will play on this dukebox.

Nice touches

Full search including search by artist, album, etc. Also search by first initial of song, artist - the works. it may seem like a blindingly obvious feature to have in a dukebox, but searches only appeared on Apple iPods a while ago.

Time machine shuffle - plays random tunes, all from the same year.

Battery news

Sony have been at the forefront of battery life/ playback for years and these video / mp3 players are no exception. The 8GB and 4GB models will playback music continuously for approximately 33 hours or videos for 8 hours. That is impressive.

In conclusion: the Sony A810 range is very cool. Anyone that has one will be a happy bunny. They belt-out music and video in a way that can only be described as extremely satisfying. To order a specific model click below:

Black 4GB Sony NWZA816B | Pink 4GB Sony NWZA816P | White 4GB Sony NWZA816W | Black 8GB Sony NWZA818B | Pink 8GB Sony NWZA818P | White 8GB Sony NWZA818W |