Home > Consumer Reviews > Sony MZ-N510 Blue Net MiniDisc Walkman

The Blue N510 is great - its small, has long battery life, and holds loads of tracks.

One gripe, however - I bought this product because I'm sure I read somewhere that it transfers tracks from computer to MD at up to 32X speed. I have USB2 on my machine, so was expecting great things!

However, the 32X speed is a bit misleading. The software has to convert your WAV or MP3 to ATRAC3 format prior to uploading to the Net MD. This process takes acres of time - much longer than transmission, and therefore you need to go and make a cup of tea or something while it gets on with it.

This was not what I bargained for!

Although the MD does the job, and is small, has a long-life, and is pretty reliable, I wouldn't have bought it had I realised about the transfer rate sooner.

Unless you like sitting around for ages waiting, I'd buy an MP3 player.

This is a great minidisc - even better with Sony in-ear phones. However, the big catch is the Sony software provided for song transfer - Sonic Stage. This crashed my computer (new and running XP) and then needed to be connected to the Internet, then uninstalled and then reinstalled again. This lost all the songs that had been transferred and now I cannot erase the minidiscs to record them again.

This minidisc is really good. The sound quality is excellant. The software that accompanys it is fool proof. The buttons are not too small. It only takes seconds to download the music from the computer. It also looks great and really colourful.

I've had my Sony MZ-N510 Blue portable Mini-Disc player/recorder for 5 years and it's still works perfectly since the day I bought it. The sound quality is how you would expect from a well-known brand like Sony, clear and precise. The display is clear and is useful for telling you how much life there is left on the battery that you're using. The sound settings are a nice touch, for adjusting the treble or bass to suit your taste to get the sound that is perfect for you!

There are four different recording modes for songs on the Mini-Discs like Stereo, Mono, LP2 & LP4, however for clear sound quality on all recordings I use stereo when I want to fit more songs on one disc I use LP2 because 1. The sound is stereo and 2.I can double the recording time on a disc whether it's 74 minutes long or 80 minutes long. LP4 is useful too but the sound is half-mono and half-stereo, but I prefer recording at LP2 speed.

This walkman was worth every penny and was one of the best things I ever bought at the time for listening to music on. Although, I have lost some of the extras it came with it like the battery carry-case, the original pair of earphones and there is certain wear & tear like the clip on the back of the remote has broken off, plus the name "Sony" on the front of the remote has nearly faded. I still have the carrying-case for the walkman which protects it to a degree!