An interesting NW-E50# series review..

[Christopher]

MacDailyNews picked a "cream of the crop" review of the NW-E50# series to feature on their home page today by Paul Thurrott of Connected Home Media.

The review is here.

A gem from the review to help you undestand it's wholesome quality :

Those are the major problems, but let's pick some nits. Whereas the iPod shuffle features a wonderful lanyard, the Sony comes with a clip-on plastic clip that appears to be just waiting for the first chance to unclip and deprive you of your $200 investment forever. It does, however, come with a velvety bag, which is good for ... what? That’s unclear. Even the Sony packaging is lousy. The device comes in an impossible-to-open blisterpack that's sure to slice open your fingers.

[Rumz]

LOL. Yes... the LANYARD. That's the whole reason I ever wanted a flash player. That's it, no wonderful lanyard, no E507 for me.

[Christopher]

Watch out for that blister pack..it could kill you, Mikie.

[Rumz]

Oh the blister packaging... lethal weapons for sure! (just about killed myself opening a cordless phone once... why, WHY?)

I mean, sure these little things can enhance the overall experience of *opening* your new toy, but come on... do we really care once we've got it and we're playing with it? Blister what? I mean, I've always been told nothing worth having was easy to get at

[Fami]

LOL.  Yes... the LANYARD.  That's the whole reason I ever wanted a flash player.  That's it, no wonderful lanyard, no E507 for me.

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Sony should've really included a lanyard though. I have the 507, and it even has a hole for it to go through. Why must you torment us so Sony? And the clip is really horrible. I could've designed something better. You'd think a large corporation like Sony could do better with something as simple as a clip. The included baggie is cool though. You could wipe fingerprints and other nasty stuff off the player's screen

There are only two complaints I have with the player. First is the slow transfer speeds, I don't think it is USB 2.0. Sony its 2005, great you finally figured out that consumers want to have a player that is able to natively play back mp3, now give us a faster way to connect the device.

The other complaint is that with one handed operation of the device the screen is sideways. Though the player looks great because the engineers designed it the way they did, it doesn't have the ease of operation that the Apple ipods have.

[Christopher]

Welcome to the forum, Fami - it's nice to have you here. Thanks for the thoughts on NW-E507, as well. Just for the record, the E507 does indeed have USB1.1 only.

[Rumz]

Sony should've really included a lanyard though. I have the 507, and it even has a hole for it to go through. Why must you torment us so Sony? And the clip is really horrible. I could've designed something better. You'd think a large corporation like Sony could do better with something as simple as a clip. The included baggie is cool though. You could wipe fingerprints and other nasty stuff off the player's screen

There are only two complaints I have with the player. First is the slow transfer speeds, I don't think it is USB 2.0. Sony its 2005, great you finally figured out that consumers want to have a player that is able to natively play back mp3, now give us a faster way to connect the device.

The other complaint is that with one handed operation of the device the screen is sideways. Though the player looks great because the engineers designed it the way they did, it doesn't have the ease of operation that the Apple ipods have.

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I didn't mean to dismiss the absence of a lanyard... the point is that the reviewer writes as if it were a deal breaker that there's no lanyard.

It's also interesting that you can get the 1GB shuffle cheaper than any of Sony's current 1GB players, even if all Sony's players have better battery life and a screen-- originally Sony's basic 1GB player (the E107) was priced to compete with the Shuffle.

I agree about the transfer speeds-- it's painfully slow to transfer songs to my E107 compared to transferring to the Vaio Pocket. Fortunately there's not as much space to fill

[atrain]

once a mac zealot always a mac zealot imo, there's a tinge of paranoid-brand-defensive-conspiracy-theorist to that review

[Damage]

Hmmm, everything but the most important detail: Sound Quality.

I think my head asplode.

[sxc_]

once a mac zealot always a mac zealot imo, there's a tinge of paranoid-brand-defensive-conspiracy-theorist to that review

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Ironically, Paul Thurrott is actually a Microsoft evangelist. Check out www.winsupersite.com

[Leon]

Then he's probably squirming because Sony (like Apple) ignores the Plays For Sure thing and everything else Microsoft wants to do

Blister pack.. let's just say I've had to open lots of those from manufacturers all over.

Why do we need so many columnists anyway? Some of them can't get their facts straight and others go on wondering about obvious things like they just discovered the new world. I went through a lot of tech podcasts this week and all I could think was, what did I get myself into?!

My take on the lanyard/bag provision (or the lack (there)of) would be geographical.

[veezhun]

the sony beats the shuffle in battery life, screen, options, looks, sound quality and he talks about a blister pack and a lanyard!! is that even a word??

[Rumz]

At Ishi's request I snapped a couple of (poor camera phone) pics of the E507 packaging at Circuit City (so this would be the U.S. packaging). (No Ishi didn't request a camera phone be used to take the picture-- I just didn't happen to have my regular digicam with me).

It doesn't look like the blister-pack from hell if you ask me (by which I mean those products that are only packaged in plastic with perhaps a thin colored piece of cardboard inserted for packaging information/logo/etc... a memory card, for example).

Although the product is also locked inside a plastic security box, you can make out that most of it is a box with a plastic front... I imagine it's one of the less painful ones to open. Maybe I'll have to buy one just to find out... anyone want to buy an E107 used? =P

Edited August 4, 2005 by Rumz

[Ishiyoshi]

Thanks Rumz!

[Delete this account]

*first Post*

no offence to the reveiwer ...

what kind of dimwited reveiw is this ?

I mean a Reveiw of a Portable Audio player should say

-Build quality

-Sound Quality

ect. ect.

THE NAME WTF ?!?! since when has a product been rated by its name / packaging...

and who are you to say

"They’re too small for large American hands"

sorry Paul Thurrott but not everyone has fat hands ...

this is one of the worst reveiws iv read in ... ever

[pata2001]

Meh, nothing new. Just read CNET. LOL. At CNET, they practically subtract points for every non-apple DAPs that cannot play WMA, cannot play secure WMA, and don't have FM. Look at the iPod, and voila, perfect score.

I have yet to see a review done by "professional" reviewers that touch basic music playback like gapless. Most of them go round and round doing comparisons with one of the iPod products, and/or listing the iPods' features, instead of doing an actual review of the intended product.

[Christopher]

Davidrobe, that's the point of the thread. I don't think anyone here agrees with this dolt; it's so suprising though, as Mr. Thurott has really taken a 180 degree turn in his general opinion about various products. He has been very loud this year and if you run some Google searches you'll see what I mean.

Pata - it's disappointing for sure. The only genuine site I know of that can actually review these devices with some degree of unbiased opinion and credible tech knowledge is DAPReview. It will be difficult for this culture to ascend from comparing everything released to the iPod, as it's topical discussion that brings people in troves to generate more ad revenue.

[ShadowBottle]

I'm pretty happy with mine. If he wanted to take some painful shots at the device though he should have stuck with SonicStage... that is definately in my opinion as the owner of an e507 the weakest spot. I use the mp3manager solely with this thing now and accept that its a one-way device. Music goes in and that's about it. I have begun the habit of making room on it to xfer mp3's directly on to it to xfer to another machine and then launching the mp3manager and throwing them up on a playlist... its a bit inconvenient... but less than launching sonicstage. Personally... the clip is better than nothing... not by much... just -barely- better than nothing. I would like to have gotten a lanyard with it and there should be a US state-side armband solution by now. I'm about to build one out of loose spandex at this point. How long after launch should a customer wait to get the accessories they need?

If I'm wrong here.. please let me know where I can get an armband holster for my NW-E507... PLEASE. Jebsu.. I'm tired of waiting and I've had too many falls using this clip to even -think- about using it at the gym.

Edit: Oh yeah.. the blister pack thingy.. it's -not- one of the easy ones. I wound up taking a knife to it and carefully cutting a window out of it to pull the device out. It has cutout dashes all along the border where the plastic is incredibly thick and difficult to cut. But I mean.. it's a one time thing... you do it once and you've got your device. ::shrug::

Edited August 19, 2005 by ShadowBottle

[Beethovenian]

Reading only the comments, not the actual review, I can have a pretty good idea of what it says. Pata resumes well what I think about these things. They always go along with Apple's marketing (imagine if Sony had launched a player without screen before and the Shuffle would probably never exist just because of the complaints the lack of screen would have generated). In general, I think there's a pretty strong bias against Sony here in the US, at least among tech forum posters and reviewers. Most of the complaints are originated in Sony's stance against piracy and restrictions from years ago, and Sony indeed created some clumsy ways of protecting copyright material. Yet, as much as a burden as that was, it always seemed to me fair that they wanted to create obstacles to piracy. But among the lots of people who complain about these things, nobody ever offers alternatives.