Home > Consumer Reviews > Sony Walkman NWZ-S639FB 16GB Drag & Drop MP4 Video Player with FM Tuner - Black

First lets deal with the bad news.

We all know how bad Sonicstage was (actually it was not that bad for me), but Sonys latest offering "media manager for walkman 1.2" fails to run on any of the 3 PCs in the house. Thank god the player is drag and drop, windows media player 11 compatible.
Displaying cover art is another issue. Whilst the art work is displayed by windows media player, approx 50% is NOT displayed by the player. I have contacted sony re this issue and they say its to do with windows media player embedding. Other than that they are not interested at all ( or the fact that their software fails to run on 3 machines). Having read all the microsoft support pages supplied by sony. I can conclude that media player automatically embeds all art work. So whats the problem (if anyone has the answer, please lets us all know.



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It would appear it is not all sonys fault re the art work, despite all the info sony supplied re embedding images windows media player 11 is very lazy about doing so. However the good news is that using the advanced tag editor in windows media player 11 you can correct it. The advanced tag editor is only available in some views/planes. Highlight album/tracks for updating, right click and select advanced tag editor, goto picture tab, select add, locate artwork, select Cover front option and apply. All my art work now displays

N.B. if you transfer to your player at a different bitrate you will lose artwork (just on the transfer it will remain on pc).

Do not bother with the sony software at all, it is if anything worse than sonicstage. Very slow in all aspects and nothing more than an adapted explorer window. Shame on you sony, have you not learnt your lesson.

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Now for the good news.

Sound quality knocks an ipod for six, head and shoulders above just about everything else i tried. The supplied headphones go along long way to help this. 99% of bass freaks will be more than happy as is. The sound customisation features of the player are numerous and all seem to work well. But as my entire collection of music is ripped at 320kps I find that none of them are necessary/required. Nice display, bright and clear. Good GUI no need for the instruction book to get going.

Five stars for everything but the software.

I always look for a solid alternative to the ipod and all its many guises, mainly because I'm loathe to follow the crowd. Previously this has led to disappointment, such as my short-lived affair with the good looking Philips SA9200, and its restriction to Windows MP10 alone, (I still can't believe that no no firmware upgrades are available - ridiculous!). I saw the spec for the Sony NWZ-S639F and it fulfilled everything I was looking for; 16Gb storage, FM radio, top quality video, and compatibility without having to install shed-loads of additional software. This player is drag and drop happy within Windows explorer, but if you want to include your album's artwork, I would recommend using Windows MP 11, which is still an absolute sinch.
The player itself is beautiful - I went for metallic red, which with the aluminium finish is far more appealing than the similar plastic specced Creative Zen plus. Its bundled headphones match my previous Sennheiser CX300's for quality, and more than exceed them for comfort.
Not forgetting the BBC i-Player compatibility, (although any programs longer tham 1/2 hour tend to strain the eyes on the the small but exceptionally good quality QVGA screen), and the Intelligent Shuffle feature, which analysises and mysteriously shuffles your music according to pre-specified criteria such as Extreme. Electronic, Acoustic, Lounge, Energetic etc, and you have a fantastic MP3 player that will rival anything Apple has done, or will do at this price, for at least a couple of years. Buy it and be different!!

This new walkman is unbelievable.Great sound and video playback quality now with FM radio,so simple to use.

You will not regret purchasing,highly recommended.

After 5 years or so of iPod (2nd Gen, then a Nano 1Gb on loan), I have migrated to a Sony and it was the right decision. iPod served me well, but man has moved on and the wheel has been invented for some years now.

Plus points:-
Sony sounds better- but the supplied phones probably have a lot to do with this. The supplied iPod phones are ok, but no comparison to Sony.
Sony has simple keys and volume control at side. (iPod wheel may look good but it's not as functional in some situations when on a crowded train!)
Sony has an initial letter search facility. (iPod, correct me if I am wrong but searching on the iPod was fiddly and slow?)
Sony has a very intuitive menu system, I haven't needed the user guide- a good test?
Sony has a nicer screen, videos look vibrant / quite detailed- and I didn't even buy it for this feature. Nice to be able to download from BBC iPlayer easily too.
Sony allows you to use your iTunes to dump stuff onto it, via simple bundled s.w. Or you can use standard windows file transfer, drag and drop. I have just installed the iTunes add-on for now. You can also use Windows Media Player, but set it to sync manually or it will take over your life. There's also a Sony music jukebox, but I haven't needed it.

Negative points:-
Sony slower to transfer to player, than iPod from iTunes. Same whichever drag/drop method used. It's quite a lot slower too, or is it something I am doing...
Sony only comes with a USB charger- a lot of iPods similar though.
Sony will play AAC but if you have purchased from iTunes and they're DRM protected you'll need to do a work-around to copy the music to the Sony. (ie make 75min playlists in iTunes, burn to CD (CD format) and copy back and onto Sony) (A lot of fuss for music already paid for, thank god things are getting better with Amazon etc)
The socket on the Sony to connect to USB isn't as smooth as the iPod; sounds fussy but I find it more fiddly / tight fit.
You can't create a playlist of delete on player- have to use PC; but I don't find this a problem.

Sony 1 Apple 0 ? (And I am loyal to neither!)

We do owe Apple for making the others work harder, offer more, I will give them that!

had this for 3 weeks now. I bought it because my ipods have aged batteries.
Pros:
The 1st day I got it I immediately noticed the difference in sound quality from my 1st gen iPod nano and iPod 30GB. The separation in bass mids and trebles is noticeably better than the ipods, the sound stage is also wider, bass is rich and tight yet not excessive. This is concluded using the same sets of earphones (the Ultimate ears Triple Fi 10 Pro and the Sony EX-082 that came with this walkman).
The plain fact is that it sounds just better than the iPods. as I listen to it, I feel more surrounded by the music, the whole atmospheres of the songs are just better described. As some other user suggested-the sound is sensational.
That SenseMe thing is very interesting and it works OK (not always accurate though).If you have the habit of letting the player to decide what you listen to then this walkman is meant for you, the walkman is like an enhanced, intelligent iPod shuffle in this respect.
You can create folder trees to manage your musics, or you can just simply put all the tracks in to the "music" folder. Whichever way you do, the player will still build a database according to the tags of the tracks (ie. genre, artist, album, released year). this is really convenient for people who got used to the music management style of iTunes.
3 Months of free Napster to-go trial is awesome (for windows users only), do try it. And I'd say the Napster software manages this player quite well.
The sony EX082 earphones are very comfortable to wear, the sound quality is very decent. I have listened to the Ultimate ears TF 10 and I'd say I am still happy with these EX082 earphones because they are so much more comfortable than my TF10.

Cons:
I'm a long term iTunes, iPod and Mac user, I'd say the iPods & iTunes work very well together whereas with this S639F you have to try other ways to make it work with iTunes on a Mac.
The walkman tries to connect it to my Mac all the time, basically you just can't "eject" it properly, every time after I ejected it it would re-connect it to the Mac again in half a second, which can be annoying, but you can open up the disc utilities to "dismount" it.
You can select tracks from iTunes then drag them in to the walkman, but if you drag too many at once it won't copy, the reason is unknown.
How it displays the album art ie the CD cover picture is unknown! Only a small portion of the tracks from my iTunes library can have their pictures displayed on this walkman.
No, you can't create a playlist on the fly like what you can do with the ipods.


DO MAKE A FIRMWARE UPDATE WHEN YOU GET IT, the latest firmware is 1.11 which you can find from Sony EU website. if you don't update the firmware it may occasionally freeze and drain the battery.