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

this item is well worth the buy it has all the capabilities of a mini disc player you could want and the best of it you dont have to wait hours for music to record. Now you can transfer your music of up to speeds of 32x the normal recording time. Which means you can download 80 minutes of music in about 2 and a half minutes.

This md also features mini disc longplay which means you can store five hours of music in lp4 on a standard 80 minute disc. Also this mini disc is highly compact and easy to use with its great remote control which means you dont have to go digging in your pockets every time you want to change the song your listening to.

This also has a amazingly great 85 hours battery life and comes complete with a recharging cradle. Which means you dont have to waste money buying batterys. Another great thing for this product is its g protection capabiluity you will never have to worry about your md jogging ever again with this.

This item also has avls which can be turned on and off this is usefull because this limits the volume so that the volume doesnt damage your hearing. The sound quality on this product is amazing and only loses its high quality a little when using lp4 but is still very good high quality sound.

There is only one flaw with this item and that is the software given with the item. Because when dragging multiple songs into the playlist the software does seem to crash. But as long as you dont add to many items to the playlist at once it will do the job fine.

I must congratulate sony and every one else whos bought this marvelous bit of kit, and to those who haven't yet you will not be dissapointed. Firstly the Design Of The Mini Disc itself, its sleek and robust, the layout is great the only thing i would have changed is the pause and stop buttons simply because you will have got half way through naming a track when on pressing pause to change to lower case i've pressed stop by accident and canceled the name, apart from that wow its amazing i like the cover for the usb too.

Next the sound, i was suprised at the quality of the sound, i thought the quality of sound would dip after LP4 but its hardly noticable and i can get like 6 or 7 albums on one disk.

I like the easy search features for example the ability to group albums name them and easilly search them.

One of the only problems i had was the recording part simply because the optical cable went into the MD fine but the other side of the cable only fit in to one thing which was my ps2, which is fine i can record from there easily, but i find the usb connection much more simple and faster

Plus i've got a tip for anyone whos got one or whos thinking of buying one: When recording the battery life can be drained so plug the ac adapter in not only does it give a constant power source for recording but also charges your battery at the same time, for example if i record an album from the PS2 which is like 40 mins long i get 40 mins battery charging, even so the charing of an emply battery takes onlt 2.30, which is better then the 10 hours of my walkman cassette player

Anyway, enjoy you will not be dissapointed, you have my word for it

As a standard Minidisc player this model is top rate, very easy to use and very high quality. The design of the player is very pleasing, it is light and it certainly feels very robust. All of the connections are easily located and well marked and the charging cradle is an added bonus.

The product is however let down when you look at the NetMD side of things. One of the biggest problems is that if you want the highest quality of playback and compatibility for your discs on non MDLP players then the amazing 32X speed of transfer is reduced to about 1.5-2X, additionally there is a wait for music to be converted into a compatible format meaning that in practice transfering full stereo music using the NetMD technology is no quicker than simply recording it in real time.

Another problem with the product is that the SonicStage software seems to not like a wide variety of MP3 files, meaning that some of your collection may never be able to be transferred to MD via the NetMD technology. Additionally if you use your MD recorder to record lectures or sound effects the NetMD technology will not allow you to transfer your audio from the MD back to the computer, the only audio you can transfer back is that which originated from your PC.

Lastly Sonic Stage will only allow you to transfer any piece of music or audio to MD three times before u have to "check-in" one of your MD copies again back into the computer. This is a form of copy protection but it very annoying for someone who may be trying to copy audio that they own themselves such as a band who wants to make MDs to send out to promote themselves.

On a brighter note the NetMD technology does make it very simple to name discs and tracks and to perform other functions that are very hard on a portable recorder. To a lot of people this alone will be worth owning a NetMD recorder even if the other functions of NetMD are not all they are cracked up to be.

In conclusion this is a very good product that can do anything you want a Minidisc recorder to do. If you are upgrading from a conventional recorder to a NetMD recorder simply because of the new NetMD functionality be sure you read the fine print of what NetMD actually allows you to do before you part with any cash to be sure that you are getting what you expect.

The MZN-710 is a fantastic bit of kit. I bought mine a few weeks ago and have not been disappointed with any aspect of it. It's beautifully built (puts my old Panasonic MD player to shame) and very ergonomically designed. The buttons have a lovely weight and feel to them which makes you feel like you made the right choice in buying this player, every time you press one.

The battery really does last a very long time and the USB connection is so convenient. The only area where this product falls down is the software that comes with it -- it's not all that intuitive to use and it's a little buggy. I suspect that my PC's low spec has something to do with the occassional crash I've suffered with the software, so am looking forward to trying it on a different, more powerful machine that I have.

The ability to put upto 5 albums on one MD in mp3 format is great. This single feature makes the Sony a winner for me -- all the rest is icing on a huge cake.

I'll start off with the good stuff which i liked about this player:

The unit is pretty small and pretty light, about the same size and weight as the nintendo gameboy advance sp, all the buttons are in the right places and the remote makes moving around the songs a breaze, although it is a little heavy for my sensitive little ears.

The included pouch like-thing is great for keeping the unit clean and free from scratches, meaning you can chucking in your pocket without having to worry about what your keys are going to do with it.

The songs sound decent enough to me although i can understand audio-philes not getting enough base, thankfully the unit has 2 user equalisers so you can ramp it up a bit if you choose to.

The battery life is amazing, you really can get a solid days worth of music outta this little thing

Now for the stuff i don't like:

The software is a joke - sure its pretty - but its slow and cumbersome and you have to convert all your songs to sonys ATRAC-3 format that you can't convert back from and it basically doubles the size of your music collection.

If you rap the wires around the pouch (like it looks like you should because there is no-where else to store them) you're going to pull the wires to one side over time meaning after a while you can only hear from one speaker

The amp inside the unit is pitiful, sure its loud enough if your in a silent room, but with the tube/train/bus in the background and you frequently struggle to hear your music

The LCD screens (both on the remote and the unit itsself) don't have any sort of back light on them meaning you can see precisely naff all in the dark.

My unit has broken after about 6 months, I'm never too rough with it, but sonys build quality is appauling, i've pretty much wasted my money on this unit, so I'm goning to buy a mpio FL100, which looks much nicer and should last longer.