Home > Consumer Reviews > Sony NW-E003 1 GB Flash Digital Music Player (Silver)

The "player" only works with Sony Sonic Stage. The player is not bad, but what good is it if you struggle to load music. Let me begin, Sonic stage 4.0 kept crashing my dell pentium 4 running XP Pro. Upgraded to 4.3. 4.3 sonic stage will not run. Called sony support, did what they said, still will not run. I am now stripping my computer down and resetting it up. Will it run? I have now vowed not to buy anything made by sony.

the sony walkman looks nice and has alot of nice features but the software that you are forced to use to convert mp3's to atrac is very fustrating. I sent the following to sony:

I have recently received a Sony walkman nw-e003. I liked everything about it except for the fact that I am forced into a license agreement to use software that I do not want to install on my pc and the fact I can not play mp3's but have to convert then using lame software. What were you thinking!? furthermore it is very frustrating to use this software and arrange my music files. It should be drag and drop! That simple. You took a great product and totally foobared it by forcing people to convert their mp3's. Time is money and you have already cost me more money than what your product is worth so I am returning it to get a real mp3 player. By the way, what good is to have the ability to hold so many music files when managing them is a complete nightmare?

The player seems to work only through Sony's SonicStage music management software, but even that failed to recognize the player. In short: the gizmo looked good, it was even kind of cute, but since I wasn't able to make it work, it is going back to the store.

It was supposed to replace my 20BG iPod, which has a nasty tendency to freeze up during workouts. At least Apple's "pride" can be unlocked with a bit of trying and I can add music through iTunes - which after trying out SonicStage seems like a breath of fresh air...

There must be some better mp3 players out there. Does ANY manufacturer produce an mp3 player (flash, or HD) that lasts and doesn't lockup? Any suggestions?

I purchased this player for my 13 year old for Christmas 2006. She nor I had previous experience with MP3 players. I read many reviews on this product, both on Amazon and other websites. A nice sale and rebate sold me on this versus an iPod. I was anxious because some reviews I've read made it seem Sony had some license restrictions on their mp3 players that limited the type of music that could be ripped. Christmas morning we had this player up and running in about 15 minutes. It was a breeze. There were 5 free downloads included, so we downloaded a few songs and I placed the earphones on my daughters ears...her first response was "Mom, this thing sounds great!". She was right. It has a clear, big sound. There are some sweet features for the price: an equalizer and FM radio, for example. The display is bright and easily read, even for these middle aged eyes of mine. So far, we have downloaded or transferred about 150 songs, and I want to stress that we have had no problem. We have downloaded from the internet, imported songs from our Media Player library and from cd's all with ease. No restrictions. The software (SonicStage)is not fancy or pretty, but it is straight forward. Sony's online store (Connect) is cumbersome, with a weird layout, and hard to browse at times, which is why I gave 4 stars. I like this player so much that I must have one, but I'll go for the 2 GB version. Overall, this player has been a great introduction to mp3 players, and is a fixed attachment to my daughter. I am sure at some point I will purchase an iPod for me or a family member, but for now I am lovin this Sony.

The design of this Sony is very sleek and stylish. The FM tuner works great and is a nice feature to have. Once you get the music on the player it works very well and has a long battery life. Therein lies the problem. You can only use the proprietary Sony software to load the music, so if you are already used to using windows media player or Real Networks player you are out of luck. The Sony player isn't too bad per se, but it's something new you must learn how to use and the interface is a little clunky. I set this up for my father-in-law and there is no way he is going to be able to load songs himself. I just wish all of these different companies would allow you to transfer music files using any of the available software. I give the device 5 stars for design and function, but 1 star for the software.