Price range: £179.99
What is it: Slim, portable MP3 and video player with 8GB of flash memory
What we think: Better than Apple's iPod nano in many respects, but it's not cheap
Average user rating
8.5
excellent
Average user rating from 10 users
Agree? Disagree? Write your own review of the Sony NW-A808
Sony NW-A808 user reviews
June 21, 2007
Posted by: Mike Weston
"Cooler than a polar bear in a refrigerator"
What I like:
Awesome sound quality - and the bundled buds are almost the equal of my Etymotics
What I don't like:
SoundStage and it's lack of support for DRM WMA files
Review:
Sony and Apple have, for me, much in common. They both make outstanding products which they then hobble with their insistence on their own proprietory formats. Why-oh-why should I be limited to using Sony Connect (or iTunes in the case of Apple) to buy my digital downloads?
This is a surmountable obstacle, and at last I have an excellent reason to surmount it. The Sony NW-A808 is my fourth mp3 player and by some distance the best, despite the quibble above.
The two key factors are sound quality - punchy, detailed, flexible and simply awesome; and usability. The SoundStage software may be rubbish, but on the device itself the usability is the best I've seen: logical, easy structures and the best implementation yet of album art to select playback choices.
Better on-the-go playlist building would have been a bonus, but this player (a birthday gift I didn't choose myself) delights me every day.
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