Home > Consumer Reviews > Sony 4 GB Walkman Video MP3 Player with FM Tuner (Silver)

I've been using this player for a month and just love it so far. I've gotten numerous compliments on the player at work and it's always funny when I tell people it's a Walkman since most remember the old cassette tape players and didn't realize there was a mp3 player version. I work in a warehouse handling boxes so I also bought the armband to go with the player and couldn't be any happier thus far.

The Good:

Sound quality: As mentioned before I work in a warehouse that is also very loud and the sound quality is amazing. Even more impressive is that I only use 1 of the earphones since I need one ear free to hear fellow employees.

Features: I primarily use the "shuffle all" option of the mp3 player at work but it also comes with a time machine shuffle, a radio that you can preset your favorite radio stations, picture viewer, and video player. The video player is something I've used a couple times when viewing videos from YouTube. There are numerous programs that can convert the .flv YouTube files to mpeg4 but I use a free one called Any Video Converter that works just fine.

Battery Life: No issues here. I'll add songs here and there to the player and by the time I'm done messing around the player is fully charged.

Song Information: While a song is playing you can see the song title, album art, artist, album name, genre, and year ... assuming you have that information tagged to the file. For if some reason you don't have album art or song information tagged you can use a free program like mp3tag that will allow you to add whatever you need. Pictures of most album covers can be found on wikipedia or amazon.


The Bad:
Honestly there isn't really anything to put here except two things:

Drag and Drop functionality: The easiest way to get mp3 files on the player is to drag the file from where it is saved on the computer and drop it in the music folder of the Walkman which works just fine, however, for whatever reason the year for the song will say "unknown" if done this way. This can be corrected by using a program like Media Jukebox that will sync your files to the Walkman and is actually pretty easy to do. You can even use Windows Media Player 11 to sync but I found Media Jukebox to be the easiest.

Button size: The main pause/play button is a good size but the navigation buttons around it are a bit small ... or maybe I just have enormous hands. :D

Hope this review helps someone.

Bought this mp3 player for both my husband & my stepmother for christmas! It is EASY to use even for us "old" folks! I had to get my MUCH younger siblings to help me with nanos & other brand mp3 players, but no help necessary for this one!

Bought these for my daughters and niece for Christmas. Incredibly easy to get up and running. Unload from box, charge via USB port, then copy songs. You can drag and drop, copy, or sync with Media Player. Menus are intuitive and easy to use. Sound quality is fine, however, I wouldn't classify myself as an expect in this area.

I purchased this for my wife as a Christmas present. The first time I connected to the computer, I used the "synchronize" function, which was a mistake, because it loaded 7GB of pictures onto the Walkman.
My wife now has many of her favorite albums on the device, plus ALL of the New Testament (available from LDS.org), and still has plenty of room left over.
Although there were lower prices from associated merchants, when you added in shipping and taxes, they were the SAME (or more) as Amazon.com, but I only trust Amazon's warranty.

WOW! I can't say enough good things about this mp3 player! I've had probably 30 mp3 players in my lifetime and this one is 10 times as good as the next closest contender! I've had every Ipod available, just about every Creative mp3 player, Irivers, Rios, Sandisks, etc, over the years. None of then compare with this mp3 player! It has probably 10 times as good as sound as then next best (Ipods) but doesnt need the nasty Itunes program to load songs, and the battery lasts 33 hours compared to maybe 10 for mmost Ipods. But besides the far better sound (the stereo separation and bass sound are unbelievable!), and the 3 times longer battery life, the part I like the best is the menu system! This is the menu system I've been looking for for years! It has a folder system, where you can store songs like you would on your hard drive. You drag and drop certain songs in a folder, and play the songs in that folder. Simple, and perfect! On my other mp3 players you have to search through hundreds and hundreds of songs, make one playlist, and then play the songs.

I just bought the 8gb brother of this Sony and I'm selling all my other mp3 players! Two Sonys should do it, although I'm keeping my Ipod Touch, basically for the internet connectivity feature of it.