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Shopping > Electronics > Portable Media > MP3 Players > Sony > Sony NW-HD1 20 GB MP3 Player > Reviews

Sony NW-HD1 20 GB MP3 Player

User Reviews: Sony NW-HD1 20 GB MP3 Player

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3.8 out of 5stars 78 Ratings (17 Reviews)

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    Get the facts first

    By Renee  Aug 18, 2004 | 65 out of 73 found this Sony NW-HD1 20 GB MP3 Player review helpful

    Pros: Small size, good sound

    Cons: Built in battery

    I did not purchase the IPod because it has a built-in battery. This means that you must mail the unit to Apple to have the battery replaced. An IPod battery has an expected lifespan of one and a half to two years. The replacement cost is $99.00 pl...us shipping and an approximate 2 weeks without your unit.Sony has it new product the NW HD-1 it too has a built in battery. I called Sony to obtain the cost of the battery and the expected lifespan. They were unable to provide answers to my questions. The product has the same flaw as the IPod and it Read more Less

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    This thing is COOOOLLLLLLL!!!!!!

    By kuldip  Nov 2, 2004 | 17 out of 20 found this Sony NW-HD1 20 GB MP3 Player review helpful

    Pros: Size...Looks, extra's, easy to use, nearly 27 HOUR playback on a single charge..and err SIZE

    Cons: Sonic Stage software is a bit basic... no playlists.. thats its really.. wheres the remote you get in Japan?? ;0(

    This thing make the iPod look like a brick, its SMALL, stylish and very easy to use. By weight its only .2 gr over the ipod mini but at 20 gig its ALOT better value. The only qualm you'll generally hear relates to the fact the machine does not curren...tly offer native support for the so-old-it-need-a-zimmer-f
    rame Mp3 format, all files must be converted to Sony's ATRAC3 format. For me thats not an issue, as i've been using it on my Sony CLIE for a while, so i know its a good audio format. Sonic Stage (the sony software for your PC), will automatically convert it for you (I just left my MP3 collection overnight... hey presto 7 gig of ATRAC the next morning), whilst all new CD's i rip straight to ATRAC. Sonic Stage is no iTunes but then i think iTunes is a masterstoke of software design (pity the ipod itself is so poor), SS is functional with the occasional nice touch, but there are no playlists per se etc, lets hope the software improves with time or some one comes up with something better when sony offer native Mp3 support for the HD1 shortly.B4 anyone starts to complain about this audio issue remember both Apple and Microsoft use propriatary formats on their machines as well(WMA and AAC) and also remember that MP3 is now in its teens, age wise and is therfore near archaic in tech terms. A 64 ATRAC sounds as good as a 128 MP3 and is noly half the size.After that its all honey... Did i mention it was small :0)... nice 7 line LCD on the unit, easy to use 5 way navigator, come with a rather cool docking station (which even locks the device in place, until its release, so you cannot knock it over), it has a built-in shock protection in-case you drop it or decide to go for a jog and in my own tests the battery lasted 26 hours and 47 min... yes thats right nearly 27 HOURS on a single charge. The body is metal with the name engraved on the case..nice!!. Given the size and weight they even have a lanyard fitting so you can were it around your neck.The best bit for me was that after the BIG dissapointment of not getting the Japan only remote control (are we not worthy SONY :0( ), i decided to see what would happen when i plugged in my remote from a 6 yeart old sony minidisc player (RM MZR55)... the thing WORKS... well kinda. The LCD on the remote will not show track info, but almost all other functions work perfectly, eg playmode, vol, frw & rev, stop, etc.Overall, i have to say this is no question ALOT better than ANYTHING else on the market, it offers a brilliant music player in a fantastic package. If you can't get over the ATRAC thing stick with the second rate iPods (i've owned one....very poor value for the money) and such like. If you want the best get the Sony HD1     Read more Less

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    What a Pain

    By Daniel  Oct 20, 2004 | 9 out of 13 found this Sony NW-HD1 20 GB MP3 Player review helpful

    Pros: Small Compact, Can act as a hard drive

    Cons: Need the cradel for everything, Sonic Stage Crashes almost every time.

    I am not going to bash the unit. What I am going to do is bash the air biscuit of an application that comes with it. I am typing this as I have had to restart the SonicStage application for the 6th time because it keeps crashing.It takes FOREVER i am... talking about 6 - 8 hours to get any ammount of good files on there (if the app doesn't crash) Transfering the files to the sony propietary format stinks. If Sony took the sonicstage platform out and allowed direct mp3 transfer and did not require you to format it to atrac format it would be fine.The playtime is at around 30 hours. The only thing is that you have to have the cradle for everything you do. Charging the batteries, Transfering songs, Changing albums and content. Creating playlists. ETC ETC. All this is done through Sonic Stage. ... Oh yeah if you can tell me what Error 23 means that would be great. That is the error I get when the unit goes offline in the middle of transfering. People are getting sick of hearing the bells of USB device coming up and going down.I will just say this keep your money and buy either the iPod or the Creative Zen jukebox. Read more Less

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    A Great Pure Music Player

    By Lawrence  Aug 16, 2004 | 6 out of 6 found this Sony NW-HD1 20 GB MP3 Player review helpful

    Pros: Size, build quality, sound quality, easy to use GUI, long battery life, functions as Mass Storage Device

    Cons: Non-ATRAC files need to be transcoded, SonicStage software can be a bit tough to use and slow, weak playlist support

    This smallest 20GB DAP to date (pictures just don't do it justice) is solidly built, remarkably light, with a sharp, though admittedly somewhat small display, and an interface that is a breeze to decipher and navigate with one hand. You won't need mo...re than 10 minutes to use the player like a pro without reading a manual. And the sliding menu paradigm, similar to that on the iPod, is very smooth as is the whisper-quiet hard drive. What's more, you can wrap around a list when navigating from the top and the bottom, something the iPod can't do. After hearing about this player, most people seem to focus on the fact that you cannot play MP3 files without first transcoding them to ATRAC3 or ATRAC3 Plus format. Overall that may appear to be a negative, but the conversion is needed just once and the software does it for you so what's the big deal? And even with the conversion, ATRAC files sound very good and as long as you trancode using Atrac3 105 Kbps or greater, you will find very little to complain about soundwise. Besides, unlike the iPod, there is a 6 band EQ system which actually works and it works great.The sonic stage software may take some getting used to and the initial conversion of tracks may slow things down a bit, but once converted, transfer of tracks to the player takes 7 - 10 seconds per album. And unlike the iPod, you can share your music with up to 3 PCs via synchronization as long as you use SonicStage on those PCs (This is not clear from the owner's manual but an addendum is packaged with the player telling you how to authorize 3 PCs for use with the player). You do need the USB cradle to charge the unit and connect to a PC. But while you need to take it with you if you plan to connect elsewhere, this cradle is small and so ridiculously light in its own right that the inconvenience is minimal at best. And speaking of being on the go, this unit has a 25 minute buffer, nearly that of the iPod, so it can take its fair share of jostling without missing a beat. Admittedly the player is weak when it comes to playlists. You can add bookmarks to tracks while playing them, up to 100 tracks in all, and then, via the the Others Mode, you can play just those bookmarked tracks as a playlist. There is no reordering the list, however, and you need to be playing each track you want to remove from the list to delete its bookmark. But there are still a number of nifty things to note that aid in ease of use and navigation. The player remembers your place in the menu structure when you begin to play a song and you can return directly to that point, or simply to the very top of the specific menu, depending on the length of time you hold down the Mode button. Another feature conserves the overall battery life and thus practical use of the battery. The underside of the player contains a switch to turn off the connection to the Li-Ion battery so that during long periods of disuse, extensive discharging of the battery is avoided and the battery will last longer accordingly (The owner's manual also shows one how to remove the internal battery under the guise of disposing of the unit so battery replacement should be a breeze even if not specifically intended by Sony). All in all, with some warts easily outweighed by all the advantages, this is one fine player and definitely something you should consider if stability, size, sound, and cutting edge good looks are important to you. Yes it is on the pricey side, but in my experience, Sony quality is worth it. Read more Less

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    Im loving it!!!!

    By Peter  Aug 27, 2004 | 4 out of 9 found this Sony NW-HD1 20 GB MP3 Player review helpful

    Pros: Small, Sony, u can use as a harddrive

    Cons: sonic stage software, price

    i got mines when it first came out in the US. I didnt get the ipod is because everyone i noe have it so i wat some thing different. if your low on buget dont get it. it is very small and the it is very easy to navagate the menu. if your a DJ u can ha...ve the cosmize the sound setting. and u can store files on the mp3 player. for backup. the software they give u is sonicstage. if u have a good computer than it will run very well. slow computer just sux. And it is the WORLD Smallest 20 Gb MP3 Player Read more Less

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    i love it

    By Robbie  Jan 3, 2005 | 3 out of 5 found this Sony NW-HD1 20 GB MP3 Player review helpful

    Pros: size, look, music quality, ease of use

    Cons: atrac is a bit slow

    i love this little thing. it is every thing that i expected. it is very high quality.(what else would you expect from sony?) it is so small, the pictures do not justify the size of this thing. the disign is brilliant, the only thing about the des...ign i did not like was the size of the wheel. it works fine for me, however my hands are not that big. the are about average. for sombody with big hands this could become a problem though. everything works just fine. the sound quality at 64kbs is amazing. you can fully customize the sound of the player. you can make it sound like anything you want. the only thing that i dident like but was expecting was the speed of atrac. for me a cd takes about 5 min. each to convert to atrac. i dont mind though, the sound quality is amazing. for everybody making a big deal about atrac, it is not that big of a deal. this thing kills the ipod. buy sony. Read more Less

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    This Sony ain't worth it!

    By daniel  Sep 3, 2004 | 3 out of 11 found this Sony NW-HD1 20 GB MP3 Player review helpful

    Pros: Small size

    Cons: Doesn't work well

    Just doesn't do the job.

    Crashes alot and quality is questionable.

    Decent features, but too unreliable.

    Buy the iRiver.

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    Quality!!!

    By Yahoo! Shopping User  Dec 2, 2004 | 1 out of 2 found this Sony NW-HD1 20 GB MP3 Player review helpful

    Pros: Size, Weight, Controls

    Cons: Price, Docking Station...Kind of

    OK then, you have here a top notch HDD player, packed with features such as the long 30 hour battery, the 6 channel equalizer (with several presets) ease of use menu system and the quality of a Sony machine.Come on, just look at this thing, it's damn... sexy, with it's aluminium shell and black screen, and just to give you an idea of the size of this thing, take out your credit card, and imagine your holding this puppy, coz it's not much bigger than your credit card. I've read the reviews on this page before I bought this and the one thing I had concerns about was the sonic stage software as I had a Net-MD before and hated this software, for conversions and slow transfers, but I can't even fault this, the conversions seemed a lot quicker, and the transfers were lightning fast with the USB2.0 cable. As for the software crashing I think this happens on Windows XP SP2, but I understand there's a patch for this from Sony. As with many HDD players the NW-HD1 doubles up as a portable HDD, the only thing with this is that you need to take your USB cradle with you to download your files onto another computer, as there is no USB port on the NW-HD1, but this is not a major issue, just a niggling one.Yeh the price is a bit steep, compared to the Creative Zen and 20Gb iPod and many others, but if like me you get lucky, I found it on Sale for Read more Less

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    Very Good MP3 Player

    By Hanze  Jun 30, 2006

    Pros: Good battery, good sound quality

    Cons: Only can reverse when play Sony Attract codec.

    Very good quality, sexy design, slim but rock. Sound quality is very good, battery last more than 18hrs. However the codec is stupid, only reverse when play Sony's attract codec; with MP3 there is no way to reverse.

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    Worst Software & Worst Support -- Stay away!

    By Yahoo! Shopping User  Jun 27, 2006

    Pros: size

    Cons: Software horrible, docking bay is huge, SonicStage authentication, useless file format.

    Stay away from this device. The Sonic Stage software is not user friendly. It is a huge pain to use! It sorts and arranges songs in some type of cryptic list. The player is hard to scroll through your songs; it arranges Artist where Album name shoul...d be. It's so time consuming to re-arrange manually. Occasionally the sound goes. Song is still playing; you can see the timer still counting, but no sound. Worst thing about this is SonicStage. It converts your songs to useless format. So if you want to play your songs anywhere else, like a CD, you need to keep your MP3s and the SonicStage format. I had a huge problem when my old computer crashed. You have to authenticate your computer & Sony device. I installed the SonicStage software on a new computer, but then the system could not transfer music from the new computer to the player because the tracks on the player were from (the old) another computer. The only way to fix this is to format the hard drive on the player. That would erase everything. That is not acceptable! I have contacted Sony Customer Service and Tech Support. Both say that the only way to fix this is to format the hard drive. I insisted that it is a waste of my time to upload 15 Gigs again. I asked for a refund and they did not comply. Don't buy this headache! Read more Less

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