Home > Consumer Reviews > Sony MZ-N710 Silver Net MiniDisc Walkman

I've had the minidisc player for about a week and i'm well impressed with it. I had a good look around everywhere and this was the best deal i found. I was pleasantly surprised with the delivery (i got within 6 days of ordering - and that was over Easter Weekend!!!).

The player looks brilliant and is well built, and cos its a sony, it'll never go wrong. Controls are logically laid out and you can figure out most of them without refering to the manual. There are some group function buttons on the main unit if you want to manually edit groups, but its quicker to do it using the computer. Similarly, changing track information with the main unit controls is cumbersome and timewasting. The control has well layed out buttons, and shows track/group/CD inforation. However, A back lit remote would have been nice at this price.

Transferring music using the USB cable provided with the sonic stage software is easy and quick. At LP2, it takes around 8-10 minutes to transfer around 3 cds of music on a single mindisc.AND you can record over them too! Sound quality is superb. Software-wise, Sonic stage is one of the best i've seen. Have to hand it to SONY, the software is simple to use even without the manual, and it looks slick.

If i have to name one bad thing - its the headphones. The only way they will stay in ur ear is if you glue them to your ear lobe. They are suppremely rubbish and sound lame, and should be binned staright away! I bought and would recommend the Sony MDR-EX70LP Fontopia Headphones.

Cos amazon have a lame list of what u actually get --> you get - the mZn710 unit, Control, Headphones (useless), MD link, USB cable, Carry pouch, Charging Cradle, AC adapter, Dry battery cell adapter, Lithium rechargable battery, Battery holder, and the Sonic Stage software.

Overall - a Great buy from SONY and amazon. Ditch the headphones and you should be fine.

What can I say I am very impressed with this product. It is my first MD purchase ever. The features that most appealed to me most where the ability to connect it to the PC and the faster than real time transfers.

At first I was very dissapointed at how long it took to fill a 80Min MD, i was expecting something in the region of 2-3mins (32x faster than 80mins), in actual fact it took about 30mins for 17 average length songs. The mode I was using for transfer was SP! I then tried using standard mode which transfers the music files at LP2 or LP4 depending on the bitrate. I put a CD in the drive CDDB2 named all the files for me and within 3mins all the files had been copied to the MD. This was the performance I was expecting!!! At first i was a bit sceptical about the quality of the song on LP2 however having listened to both a SP and LP2 MD I can hear no great difference on the supplied headphones.

Highly recommend for anyone looking for something to listen to music on the move. (Far more robust than an MP3 player aswell)

I recently bought this minidisc player - and it's gotta be said it's a good machine. I bought it firstly because it did all the things i wanted it to and it was at a good price. It wasn't top of the range but it does practically everything that the best Net MD does.

--THE GOOD POINTS -
-----Well for starters it's a nice size - probably the same as the others - but it also looks better than a lot of the others as well!
-----Next it's got the net function meaning that you can plug it into the back of your computer and simply open the program and transer the songs onto the minidisc - this takes about 30 secs per song - much faster than real time. The software does seem to be a little 'rough around the edges' for example it loads slowly due to (probably) the amount of images it uses - also it seems to be a little hard to get the songs onto the software straight away - but apart from one or two SMALL bugs there's nothing wrong with this aspect of the player.
-----The player and the remote allow you to see the song being played (much like all the others on the market) - but it's got the remote - which can make a difference.
-----Supplied with a leather case which i don't think it says on the site. (with belt clip!!!)
-----Sound quality's great (and there's 320 mins you can fit on)
-----Rechargeable battery and stand (easier than the others that use normal aa batteries.
-----Varying sound profiles - myou can make the volume much, much louder if you have the urge with this function - it also has surround sound!! But this doesn't really serve mcuh purpose unless you especially love the sound of it.
-----The earphones you get with it aren't bad - they aren't the best on the market (they're the standard sony ones) - but they were better than the old panasonic ones that i had.
-----Others as well - but as i write this i can't remember the others (those were the most important)

--THE BAD POINTS -
-----It doesn't come with the standard optical wire that you would expect (the phones (out) socket on the CD player - to the line in on the recorder) - however with the use of the computer it made no difference to me - however for some people this may hinder the use of the recorder.
-----THe rechargeable battery doesn;t seem to last that long - but it makes up for it with the detachable thing for an aa battery.

--I think that's it - this minidisc player/recorder has to be one of the best around at the moment - especially due to the price - if you want a decent player that looks good and does most of the things people want from a minidisc player this is the one that you want! It's not quite as small as the better ones - but isn't miniscule the difference

I highly recommend this player to anybody who is keen on portable music- the sound quality is superb and the unit is considerably smaller than my first MD unit which I bought 4 years ago. Firstly, don't be fooled by the small stated volume output- the player is plenty load enough, and I suggest that if it isn't then you need you ears testing (or buy some decent headphones; the ones that are supplied are rather weedy).

I was initially scepticle about the NetMD function as I never download MP3s of the internet and have had no problems with copying CDs via an optical cable. However, upon purchasing this unit I was rewarded with the knowledge that the NetMD function can be used to copy CDs as well, by copying them to your computer hard disk and then downloading them to the MD unit.

While copying from CD to hard drive is relatively slow, about 10 minutes for 1hr worth of decent quality music, it is far quicker than copying in real time and the quality is very impressive. The sonic stage software is also simple to use and very useful- don't look at it as a simple product promo its really rather good.

I only have one slight niggle; the lack of a backlight for the display, which makes searching for tracks in the dark... interesting! it would be useful to have a backlight on the in-line remote control (sony only seem to offer it on the top-end units).

That aside, this is a quality unit; well made, it includes a USB and optical cable (and headphones), the instructions are clear, the battery lasts ages (with an additional AA battery), the sound is great and the NetMD function is very impressive. Oh and it comes with a wicked little carry pouch. Why spend your money on anything more expensive?

Well, it's now been a year since I purchased the MZ-N710 and I've got no complaints. That's right, no complaints. If I had to search for a negative it'd relate to the MD format itself, but as far as size, battery life, performance, reliability and sheer cool are concerned, this baby is slicker than your average piece of kit.