Home > Consumer Reviews > Sony Walkman NW-A1200 8GB MP3 Player - Black

When I set out to buy an MP3 player the range and choice was a little difficult to comprehend, but after some considered thought I narrowed it down between a Creative and Sony.

A couple of things that played to Sony's advantage was the battery life. One solid charge has it playing back 20 hours of music - especially handy for a 24-hour coach journey! Creative have a very good reputation but one or two features let their MicroPhoto range down (like the absence of an actual charger in the pack, and the slightly disappointing screen for the photos, which appeared to be more of a gimmick than an actual feature that you would use).

I like to read the reviews of all things before I go out and buy, but with Creative and Sony almost side by side I opted for the Sony - the one thing that held me back from getting Sony immediately was the fact that the software seemed to be causing a large amount of customers some problems.

However, Sony has had time to sort out the problems with their Connect 1.0 programme and have in fact taken it out altogether and instead issued this model with SonigStage 4.0, which is a far superior programme. No instances of computer crashings or anything like that - just a simple programme that lets you transfer your CD collection onto your MP3 player.

The quality of the actual player is fantastic, the sound is great and it looks especially sleek in black. The 8Gb memory is more than enough for my 50-album collection (along with a few singles) with plenty more than half the capacity spare.

The menu is easy to use and the starter manual that comes in the box is short and sweet, telling you how to transfer music and how to work the player. I'm glad to say I definitely made the right choice. This MP3 player is spot on!

Best feature: The design.
Worst feature: Speed. Of software and hardware.

Advantages: Sleek design, great sound quality and good headphones.
It's easy enough to use in itself, and so is the downloading Software, SonicStage. A fair few features I haven't tried yet, including the artist link (tried it once and it failed, but probably something to do with my media data, rather than the player) and intelligent shuffle.
The relatively low volume is fine for me, but if you need higher, new (better) headphones should sort it out, I doubt it's a problem with the player, since my sister's (an older, larger model) can go pretty high.

Disadvantages: First off, it's SLOW. I have a huge amount of songs, with nearly 2000 on the player, and scrolling the menus takes a ridiculously long time. Nobody else seems to have had a problem with this, so I'm tempted to ask the shop about it, but it could be that no-one's really noticed.
The speed is a particular problem because the only way to get it to play through all your music is to select something from the 'All Songs' list. So say, if you want to listen to 'Move Along', you'd have to spend ages scrolling through all your songs (especially if you have loads like me) to get to it, just so that it'll go onto another song after that.

Also, the software, SonicStage, although seemingly better than the old CONNECT software, is still very annoying. It is, again, ridiculously slow, and the fact that it's case-sensitive (and lists All American Rejects, all american rejects, All-American rejects, etc. as different bands) is a bit irritating. I spent a good ten hours messing around with this software, and still didn't manage to get it the way I wanted (though I mostly blame the sheer amount of music I have (~14.7GB).

My computer found the program very hard to handle, and I had to transfer the songs in batches of about 50.
Converting the files to ATRAC takes far, far longer and doesn't seem to do much to the file size. I don't recommend it, because for a few songs you don't need it, and for a lot, the amount of time it takes negates the usefulness; it's not worth the hastle.

Finally, I'm really annoyed they no longer do a 20GB version. But 8GB should be enough for most people (almost 2000 songs).


Overall, the only reason I might be tempted to return it is the slowness of scrolling through the tracks, which I could probably learn to live with. It's beautiful to look at, a good size and has great sound quality. Plus, I trust the opposition even less.

I thought long & hard before buying this due to the reported software problems.
As identified by others if you use the older software package this machine becomes a delight.
I find that the sound quality,capacity, battery life & useability is as good if not better than the Ipod. Factor in the price and this should be a winner.
As with most machines upgrade the earphones but that aside consider this machine as a contender in the MP3 market.

When i got the walkman through the post, in good time too, i was amazed by the gorgeous looks of the player; the sleek design and the not very obvious contours of the screen contributing to my opinion. The screen graphics are basic black and white but are very clear and its really easy to navigate yourself around the whole thing. The buttons on the front are simple but if you have sausage fingers i wouldnt be surprised if you find it difficult to press the buttons, otherwise they are comfortable to use.


From reading the other reviews i can see quite a few people are complaining about the software. Since those reviews sony has replaced the CONNECT software with a easy to use and simple layout software called Sonicstage. Yes it did run slow, but i have a seriously slow computer so i would expect with computer settings of 2 ghz and 250 RAM that the software would run smoothly; broadband would help too. When it came to getting the music on to the walkman i was annoyed to find you could only place each album one by one onto the player instead of one bulk. But there is the option of automatic transfer which transfers everything and anything in the library onto the players memory if it isnt on already, pretty handy if you really inpatient.


The sound quality of the player is reasonably good with the provided headphones, but with some expensive headphones this could easily be better. Mind you the sony headphones are very comfortable to wear.The battery life of the battery is said to be 20 hours long, and was i satisfied! It not only lasted 20 hours but mabye even 25 hours so very useful for long distance travellers.

For protecting the walkman i would reccomend buying the soft case which is seriously good and fits perfectly into your pocket. Just search 'Sony CKSNWA1000B.E Soft Case for NWA1000 MP3 Players ' and its there.

Summary:
Good -
- Brilliant Battery Life
- Sleek Looks
- good sound quality
- easy to use
- massive amounts of space

Bad -
- Slow software (easily fixed)
- surprisingly heavy
- umm...thats about it

The Sony Walkman is a joy to look at. Its simple design and what looks to be a lack of a screen scream ingenuity, and when the screen appears from with the surface of the player itself it's obvious that a lot of thought went into Sony's remastered walkman. The interface is simple to use, and it even has an interesting "artist link" feature to reccommend similar artists to the one you're listening to.

However, the screen is difficult to see in bright sunlight, it takes a long time to turn on (about 6-7 seconds, as opposed to the iPod's 2-3) and the hold button is ill placed.

But what really takes the biscuit is the supplied software. Sony's CONNECT software (the only way to put music on the Walkman) is the worst piece of software I've had the misfortune to use. It's unpleasant to look at and hideously unstable. The automatic updates take forever, and the track listings it supplies are often wrong.

If you can get past the software failures, you can't go wrong with a Sony Walkman, although in this case, the original is definitely not the best.