Home > Consumer Reviews > Sony NWS706 - 4GB Walkman MP3 Player - With Noise Canceling Headphones - Black

I spent a long time trying to decide what MP3 player I had. I had already bought my wife the IPod Apple Nano 4 GB player. To compare the two:

1) The Apple Ipod is what most people buy. If it's important that you fit in with other tastes, buy the Apple. (This is not a criticism - it's just a fact that most people won't give you respect or even recognise the Sony player).

2) There are far more accessories for the Apple than there ever will be for the Sony. If you want a Bose speaker system to go with your mp3 player, buy the Apple.

3) The sound quality on the Sony is (in my opinion) much better than on the Apple. The bass really comes through with the Sony and, unlike the Apple, you don't need to buy another set of headphones (as the Apple headphones are poor).

4) If you travel a lot (which I do), the sound reduction ability of the Sony is, frankly, amazing. I sat on a plane next to a couple with a baby and I didn't even notice the baby crying for most of the flight.

5) The functionality of the Sony is better (FM tuner, countdown ability, recording etc)

6) The battery life is very impressive. I haven't timed it but it easily lasted two plane journeys to and from India (~20 hours) + use in India for the week (~15 hours) and still had battery life left.

7) I am not clear what the problem with Sound Stage is as mentioned on other reviews. I found it perfectly intuitive to use. Okay it doesn't have drop and drag but so what? It works differently to ITunes but that's not a sin. To answer a previous reviewer, I could view a playlist by artist.

What could be improved? Well, it would be nice if it came with a mains charger and a clip/neck band but hardly any piece of electronic equipment seems to come with accessories anymore.

It would also be nice if there was an off button. I have found a workaround to this (stop playing track and then put hold button on) but it would be better if it was explicit.

I wanted a player that played the best possible sound and, for me, the Sony is much better than the Apple for this.

I am annoyed. I want to give this little machine a low rating for the way it had frustrated me so much in the first few days, but I can't. The agony of software and operating issues is more than redeemed with the excellent sound quality, battery life, compact size and aesthetics.

First off, Sony's SonicStage software. It is almost painful to use at first. If you have lots of music and podcasts already on Windows Media Player on your computer, you can't just transfer them onto the mp3 player. Oh no, you have to go through the agony of transferring them from Windows MP through Sony's proprietary software - which doesn't seem to do anything more than remind you that you're not connected to the internet, you don't have a picture of the album cover, and that you forgot to switch off the copy protection when you burnt your CD as .wma. The music stays in the same music format as before as the actual player (which I will tell you about in a second) plays most music formats. My dot wma's and my dot mp3's - all there, on the little lighter-sized machine.

I've been using this for a month now, and I've only just gotten to grips with it. There are still frustrations like why, rather than letting me choose from the playlists I've created, it insists on playing them one after the other - so to get to my second playlist I have to scroll through all songs in the first. In its infinite wisdom however, SonicStage creates an auto-playlist entitled 'least listened to' tracks. At a stretch I can just about see the point of this, but if I had to rank the useful features I'd want to have on my mp3 player, I would say that listening to all of the rubbish songs would be pretty low down on the list. There are ways around this however; you can create new labels (as a 'genre') in SonicStage and the player will happily play all songs from that genre - it's a way of tricking the player.

I'm nit-picking now. The fact that I'm telling you about the most minor issues is testament to the overall qualities of this machine. You can customise the built-in graphic equaliser to your own taste and save two different pre-sets, which you can then select quickly with a dedicated button - handy if you listen sometimes with headphones, and sometimes through your hi-fi or in the car.

The 'noise-cancelling' headphones work by creating 'anti-noise' to cancel out the ambient background noise picked up from little microphones on each ear-piece. You don't realise the effect that much since the snugness of the in-ear headphones does a pretty good job of cancelling background noise already. However, where there is general static background noise (e.g. planes, trains and walking down a busy high street) the noise-cancelling does noticeably reduce background noise. This means that you don't have to turn up the volume to over-ride the noise, and I guess probably saves your eardrums in the longer term; it also worked well to cancel out the crying baby on a recent flight, and the businessmen chatting across from me on the train.

Battery life is so far excellent (claimed 50 hours with the display turned off), and it charges itself up when you connect it up to upload and download music and podcasts. 3 minutes connected to a USB (via the provided walkman-USB cable) supplies enough juice to top-up for 3 hours playback. Even when driving the bigger (sweat resistant!) headphones I wear down the gym, there was still plenty of charge left.

In summary, this is a great player although a little frustrating to start off with. Persevere, and you will be rewarded with excellent sound reproduction, amazing battery life and a great-looking and compact little machine.

5 stars for the player; about 2 or 3 stars for the SonciStage software.

I'm going to keep this very simple;

1) SonicStage software, its not great, its bearable but lets be honest, you're not here because you are thinking of buying an MP3 player based on the software are you...

2) The Sony NWS706 - 4GB, this little player had reignited my passion for music. It is amazing. The size, the shape, the controls, all very easy to use and fits snuggly in your poket. However its the sound that truely sets this apart from anything I have ever used before. Every note of every song is delivered so richly, so perfectly that you'll notice new beats and notes in songs that you have listened to a 100 times.

Sony really knows how to make an MP3 player that does exactly what its meant to...bring music to life, make you feel every note, make your ears dance if you will.

If you want an MP3 player that sounds amazing, looks great and will send shivers down your spine when your favourite song comes on then get this.

If you want an MP3 player that has great software that sits on your PC and organising your music for you then buy an Ipod.

I buy music to listen to, not to catalog, The Sony is for me.

I bought this just before a holiday to Borneo. Having used the Bose headphones on aircraft before (upgrade to business class on American Airlines!), I wanted the same results, but in a more travel-friendly package. This player uniquely has built-in noise cancelling, and a very long battery life (but ignore the claims of 50 hours, 40 is more reasonable).

Sound quality is truly excellent. ATRAC 3+ is vastly superior to MP3 (which is well past it's sell by date) and about the same as AAC/MP4 (i.e. ipod). The noise cancelling works fantastically well almost completely shutting out background noise on a plane, ferry, etc. You can hear every note even at low volumes, so saving your hearing. Be warned that in an office, the noise cancelling is *too* effective and can cause irritation among co-workers when you don't answer the phone!

The only ways the player could be improved are to:
- change the "shuttle switch" so you can twist it all the way round, then you could rotate it at whatever speed you like (like ipod).
- have the option of using the player in "pass through" mode so you can watch a movie on the plane with noise cancelling.
- rewrite SonicStage. Version 4.2 was rushed out to fix the worst bugs from 4.1 which came with the player. It would be better if they gave up and extended Media Player 11 with Walkman drivers and ATRAC codecs instead. It does work, but the UI is really poor, and multi-threading is not well implemented (so you can rip, match tracks, and encode all at the same time). In 4.1 it managed to corrupt the database as well.

Don't forget to buy a mains USB charger if you plan to travel without regular access to a PC (I bought the Sony one for £[...]).

Overall, I'd highly recommend this player, especially at the new lower price. I paid the full price when it had only just been released, and I've no regrets.

A lot of people on the web are denigrating this model because it only has half the capacity of the 8gb ipod nano. I duly went to the local apple store in Manchester and tried the new Nano 8gb with Sennheiser 'phones (£35 extra). The sound was OK but nothing special - a bit muffled and wooden.
So I ended up with this. I haven't had any trouble with SonicStage - in fact I quite like it - it certainly gets the album titles right (unlike Microsoft Media Player 11) and found the default 64kbs data rate perfectly acceptable (which of course gives twice the capacity of the standard 128 kbs).
The player is quite beautiful ergonomically - the colour display shows (albeit tiny) album art and teases you with little flashes of light while playing.
Surely though, the raison d'etre of a music player is sound quality - and I am fussy on that score - but once run in the Sony has a superlative level of detail (yes even at 64kbs) and a refinement equal to a 'proper' hifi - with a natural deep bass and a silky treble.
The noise cancelling function does what it says and is well worth foregoing the Nano's extra capacity but it's the sound that clinches it.