Sony NWZB143B 4GB USB Walkman – Black
Product Description
Ultra compact 4GB (1000 songs) Walkman® MP3 player with Bass Boost ZAPPINâ„¢ song search and direct USB connection. With 3 minute quick charge and 18 hours battery life 3 minute quick charge When you need instant music on the go you don’t want to wait hours for the battery to charge. Plug your WALKMAN® mp3 player directly into your USB port for quick charge and get 90 minutes playback time in just 3 minutes! Perfect for busy lifestyles and daily commutes. Quick charge for music on the move As well as outstanding battery life to keep you listening for longer you can charge up and go in just three minutes! Plug in your WALKMAN® for only 180 seconds and get up to three hours continuous playback – perfect for when you’re in a hurry or simply don’t want to sit around and wait! Drag-and-drop your favourite content Transferring video and music to your WALKMAN® is so easy with drag-and-drop you’ll have your whole library at your fingertips in seconds. Using Windows Media Player 11® iTunes® or Windows Explorer managing your playlists and moving files over is hassle-free. Just drag drop relax and enjoy. Connect charge upload and go! Charging up and getting content onto your WALKMAN® is even easier with USB. Connect to your PC or laptop via USB port then sit back and let it soak up some power. Or upload new music and movies by simple drag and drop from Windows Media Player 11® iTunes® or Windows Explorer.
- Enjoy powerful bass with the one touch Bass Boost: Experience thumping low-end sounds and full natural tones even at low volumes
- Bring out the best sound from your music collection: Built-in equaliser function (5 presets and 1 custom setting) precisely adjusts low mid and high frequencies according to music genre
- One touch ‘ZAP’ button for quick hands-free song searching. ZAPPINâ„¢ technology scans your entire music library while you’re on the move busy jogging or driving. Go short or long: Playback either 4 seconds or 15 seconds of the chorus
- Quick Charge function – plug in your Walkman® for 3 minutes and get 90 minutes playback. A full charge gives you up to 18 hours listening time
- Super compact – perfect for even the smallest pocket weighing a tiny 26 grams and just 8.5cm long
Bought this mp3 as a gift for someone and it’s everything I thought it would be. It is recognised as an ordinary mass storage device when plugged into a PC, allowing you to ‘drag and drop’ music files the easy way. You can also use Windows Media Player 11, but I couldn’t be done with that. I found that it is also compatible with our USB hi-fi system (plugged into the USB port, again treated as a generic memory stick).
Using the tiny screen, you can navigate through the music either by the hierarchy of files/folders or by the devices recognition of the metadata (e.g. ID3 tags with genre, album, artist, title, track) held within the individual music files. The screen is the size of a postage stamp, but does very well showing three lines of text and turns it self off after a short time to save power. The sound quality is fine as far as my ears can tell. The unit seems about twice as bulky as plain thumb drive and I reckon that the cap that covers the USB plug could be very easily lost if you’re not careful. The player has a light plasticky feel to it, but it’s absolutely great for the price.
Rating: 5 / 5
I’m a a big fan of Apple gear, so when I was looking to buy a mini MP3 player, iPod shuffles were naturally the first thing I looked at. But…
This was a present for a friend, who I knew would be moving around a lot, with no computer of their own, so I wanted something which could simply be connected to any PC or Mac to manage the MP3s, without having to use special software (iTunes/Media Player etc), and without ‘locking’ the device to any particular computer. This MP3 player from Sony does the job nicely. Sony seem to have have ditched their ridiculous (Windows only!!) management software of a few years ago, and you can now treat this MP3 player as a flash drive, and put any MP3 files you please onto it from Windows or Mac file managers. Indeed, you can also use it as a flash drive to transport any files. Let me make this clear: You don’t need to install any special software to use this MP3 player (assuming your computer is a Mac or PC made within about the 10 years or so!).
There are a few other ways in which this product won over the iPod shuffle for me:
- It has a display (ok, it’s pretty small, but still it has one).
- It is a bit cheaper than an equivalent iPod shuffle (not really a big deal, but true nonetheless).
- Its controls are on the body of the device, NOT on the headphone cable, thus allowing you to use any headphones of your choice and not lose functionality.
On the other hand, it doesn’t look as nice as an iPod shuffle, but Apple are pretty much always going to win aesthetic design battles, so that’s no surprise!
Rating: 4 / 5
I wanted a small MP3 player and came across this, the Sansa clip (8Gb) and the latest Apple shuffle. The shuffle was immediately ignored as its full functionality relied on the supplied headphones(rubbish quality).
The Sansa clip was a good contender due to its size and storage. I chose the Sony because I own a Sony NW-HD3(still going strong) and have been very happy with it.
The player itself is compact and easy to use. Sound quality is excellent. ZAPPIN is something I haven’t used yet as I know what I want to listen to. No on-the-go playlist but that never really bothered me: you can create playlists in WMP11. Transferring music was simple using WMP11.
Excellent Sony product once again and I definitely recommend this to anyone after a compact MP3 player.
Rating: 5 / 5
I bought this particular player as some other reviewer(s) had pointed out that it presented itself to your PC as a standard USB mass storage device. As a Linux user, this was important to me as it was pretty unlikely that it would be usable otherwise!
I’ve been using the player daily for the last week or so, and am generally happy with it. I would rather have paid a bit more for greater storage, but that wasn’t an option when I purchased. I’m also slightly dubious about how long the USB cap will last being pulled on/off, as it doesn’t have any locking mechanism (the slider underneath marked ‘hold’ does something different).
Big pros, though, are ease of use, good sound quality for such a cheap device, decent battery life, and size/weight. I’d happily recommend to a friend.
Rating: 4 / 5
Having never used a USB Walkman before – I had my doubts (previous to this I was using an antique cassette walkman!!). However, this is a genious, compact & powerful item. Simple to use, easy to sync tracks onto as well as remove them just by by plugging the USB straight into the computer. No tricky programs to use, it’s dead straightforward! The most impressive feature is the 4GB memory – I’ve not even taken mine to full capacity yet, but have more music to choose from than I’ll ever really need.
Rating: 5 / 5