Home > Consumer Reviews > Sony Walkman NWZ-E436FR 4GB Drag & Drop MP4 Video Player with FM Tuner - Red

I bought this for my eight year old daughter as her first MP3 player. Using WMP to update it I found that I preferred it to my iPod! Great sound, simple software for her to use and its a great size for her hands. I would recommend this to anyone and do frequently. I shall be buying one to replace my aging iPod. Much better value for money.

On a technical level, this is an excellent little mp3 player. The sound is good, the screen is good, the radio's pretty useless (but who cares?), battery life is excellent (but see below), capacity is enough for me, it's easy to add files and work with playlists. So far so good - until you use it out and about.

Then, it falls prey to some practical flaws which undermine its successes:
The major one is the lack of anywhere to attach a lanyard - something so simple and cheap I can't believe it's been omitted. This means the player has to be kept in a pocket, which as well as often being inconvenient and increasing the likelihood of scratches etc, exposes the second significant design flaw...
The second flaw is that even when switched off, the unit is always "ready to go" if any button gets touched. So if you keep it in a pocket and it gets even slightly pressed against anything else, it's suddenly on, and that excellent battery life starts draining away. You can prevent this in turn by sliding the "hold" button but...
The third flaw is that the "hold" button is too easy to slide back into the non-hold position, especially if you wrap the headphone lead round the player and place it in your pocket, which brings us back to fault number one.

Other quibbles would be that after charging (a) the device takes quite a long time to start up and rebuild its playlist (even if the contents of the player haven't changed), and (b) you lose your place. The second one may not be that important if you're just listening to your music collection, but if you listen to a lot of podcasts and audiobooks, as I do, it's a pain.

I really really like it, it's a little jewel of a device - I just wish it had been better thought out for real-world use.

when i first bought this mp4 player it worked fine and had an incredible long battery life. after about 3 months of using this product it went blank and refused to turn on. it will not connect to the computer and will not turn on. i went to the sony assistance branch on kensington high street and they were anything but helpful.
this product is good only for a few months and then all its faults show up. not worth the bother

This is the most easiest, simplest MP4 there is. There's no need to even look at the instruction manual, because there isn't one in the box anyway! The sound is superb, the screen in crystal clear and the buttons are easy to operate. Its lightweight and the size of a credit card so you can conceal anywhere on your person. Value for money is excellent for a 4GB, under £60 system.

I spent quite some time on choosing this as my first
MP3 player. Agonising over capacity I am happy with 4Gb
as I do not want it to take over my life. It does everything
I expected it to do and at the price the value is exceptional.

Naturally these things are not all plain sailing to an older
beginner. Having loaded Media Player 11 as required it would not
recognise the attached walkman and came up with a notice to run
Activesync. This did nothing but in practice the Walkman was
connected and working anyway!

Next glitch was that BBC iPlayer would not download in Internet
Explorer 7. Contrary to BBCs FAQs it worked fine with Firefox.
Once downloaded you may have to run the file in MP11 for just a few seconds to sort out the Digital Rights. I really don't like Media
Player but that is not a Sony problem. IPlayer video is excellent.

Would I buy it again? An unequivocal yes! Next purchase will be
a gizmo to feed it directly into the hifi system (not a dock) and
to the car radio.

PS I think it is taking over my life anyway.....!