Home > Consumer Reviews > Sony D-NE1 Ultra Slim ATRAC3/MP3/CD Walkman

I have been looking at the line of Sony Atrac/mp3 players here on Amazon, and I have noticed a curious thing. A person by the name of evilmicrowizard has posted the same review on all of them stating that they do not play mp3's. The problem is that they do, I have owned a sony atrac/mp3 player for over a month and it certainly does play mp3-cds.

I'm not going to try and guess his motives, but he is being very irresponsible and trying to hurt the sales of Sony cd players by lieing about them.

as for the cd player it is the best cd player I have ever owned. the battery life alone is a great reason to buy it. and unlike the cheap panasonic models it will actually resume from where you stopped, and it has new-fangled features like fast forward, which the panasonic mp3-cd players lack.

I have no complaints about the hardware. My complaint is with the horrible software that comes with it. The Simple Burner is just awful. It's limited- you can't edit tracks like you can with Nero and it crashes. I lost three hours of work when the Simple Burner "encountered an error" and had to close! It's a damned shame because the Atrac3 format is excellent with a wonderful sound and more can be put on a disk than with MP3.

If you're going to sell a product that can compete with MP3, you should have decent software and better support!

Sony D-NE1 is a stylish cd mp3 walkman with the features an average user would want in a product like that (standard play controls, next/prev folder, repeat [folder], shuffle [folder], bass power, mp3 tag display).

The remote control is nice but it could have had a better design: sometimes, when you want to turn volume up or down you accidentally press other buttons (usually "stop" button).

The worst thing about this cd player (and the reason I didn't give it four stars) is its volume power. Be careful with that! Test the volume of this player before you buy it or you will regret it! (unless you can return it to the shop if you are not satisfied). Do this test with any other portable cd player: listen to some song in a quiet place (in your room for example) and remember the volume level you use. Then listen to the same song in a noisy place (underground, train, etc.) and remember the volume level you use there. Finally go to the shop and listen to the same song and compare the volume level of your portable cd player with the D-NE1 volume level you have to use to hear the song at the same voume. You will find you need to use more volume level in the D-NE1, so calculate if the maximum volume level of D-NE1 is enough for you in a noisy place.*

About the durability I can say I also own another Sony cd player (Sony D-EJ915, very similar to D-NE1 but without MP3) and it has lasted only 2 years. I have been very careful with that player, so I think Sony doesn't build its products to last.

I have read many reviews where people say iRiver SlimX iMP-550 is a much better cd mp3 player than D-NE1. I wish I had read those reviews before...

* Maybe I have not explained it well. Feel free to send me a mail at ranma_172@hotmail.com.

I have really enjoyed my new gadget. It sounds good, has enough volume, unless you enjoy hearing loss. Even the squished Atrac compression suprised me. However, some of the basic playback features I found lacking. When playing compressed files, the CD stops spinning after gathering enough info and putting it into memory. This is cool, because the spinning uses the most battery life. However, there is a fairly lengthy gap between each cut. This is not a problem with most music, but if you have a continous mix CD, then you lose the feel of the DJs performance every time a new track is dropped. This is my first device of this sort, so maybe this is not unusual, but it is aggravating. Otherwise it's a great little gadget.

Dr. Anthony Danza

In response to the person below me, this *does* play MP3s. You can, however, only use Sonic Stage to burn ATRAC3 files. You can use Nero or even Windows to copy MP3s onto a CD.