Sony Walkman E-Series
Sony’s bygone dominance in the portable media player market was surpassed by Apples iPod technology and despite the affordable price tag has again fallen short with the E-Series. Having said that, there are some redeeming qualities like the impressive battery life and convenient applications for your viewing pleasure.
User Interface
A well organised user interface makes the player straightforward to operate with the “option” key used to bring up the main menu. This is easily navigated with a five-way control pad with the centralised play/pause button used to select your choice. The same keys are also used to browse music and video library’s or skip tracks. Easy to use it may be, but accessibility to the user interface means flicking through several screens before finding the main menu and is not as quick as the iPods Nano or Touch.
Display
As with the A-Series the 2.0 inch display is sufficient for photos and album art and just about makes the grade for watching videos. Thumbnail icons enhance the visual experience and playlists can be sorted into artist, album, genre or year of release. Alternatively scroll through the track library alphabetically.
Sound
Where Sony does get the nod over its Apple competitors is sound quality. Clean, sharp audio playback delivers hefty bass, warm, rich mids and detailed highs that are customary with Sony’s exceptional audio technology. Sound quality can be enhanced with one of the four preset options or manually using the five-band custom equalizer. The bundle earplugs supplied with the device may suffice in terms of audio quality though are not the most comfortable fit.
Music transfer is simple and supported by Windows Media, Rhapsody and iTunes or alternatively, you can use the convenient drop and drag method straight from your PC library using the Sony Content Transfer.
Video
Video playback is smooth, bright and crisp and switching the viewing angle to horizontal may be suitable for films though the screen is susceptible to glare. Another sales feature the E-Series has over Apple’s iPods is direct access to BBC iPlayer which allows up to 400 hours of TV and radio downloads a week and Amazon’s On Demand Video making downloads convenient when on the move. When you’ve had enough visuals switch on the FM radio with 30 preset slots and an auto-scan function.
Memory
- Sony NWZ-E443 4GB – 1000 songs, 15 hours video
- Sony NWZ-E444 8GB – 1800 songs, 30 hours video
- Sony NWZ-E445 16GB – 3800 songs, 30 hours video
- iPod Nano 8GB – 2000 songs, 8 hours video
- iPod Nano 16GB – 4000 songs, 16 hours video
- iPod Touch 8GB – 1750 songs, 10 hours video
- iPod Touch 32GB – 7000 songs, 40 hours video
- iPod Touch 64GB – 14000 songs, 30 hours video
Battery Life
- Sony NWZ-E443 4GB – 30 hours audio, 6 hours video
- Sony NWZ-E444 8GB – 30 hours audio, 6 hours video
- Sony NWZ-E445 16GB – 30 hours audio, 6 hours video
- iPod Nano – 24 hours audio, 5 hours video
- iPod Touch – 30 hours audio, 6 hours video
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