Sony NW-A1000 vs. Apple iPod Nano

[Dinko]

Well... it's neither flash player discussion (the NW-A1000 is hard drive based), nor hard drive based discussion (the Nano is flash memory based). Besides, it's not really about Sony devices, it's about Sony devices & Apple stuff.

About two weeks ago I bought a Sony NW-A1000 player. After a dissappointing 5-day experience, I returned it. Some time later, I went back and got an Apple iPod Nano.

Here's a personal rant regarding both players and how they compare based on the features which I find important.

This rant is divided in three parts:

- A1000 < Nano

- A1000 > Nano

- A1000 = Nano

Part 1: Nano Better than A1000

- Size / Weight

Can't help but marvel at the size of the Nano. Where Sony made the new players bigger, Apple shrunk the Nano to almost nothing. The screen is vibrant enough to make up for its small size.

- Clickwheel / User interface / Ease of Use

I had never really played with an iPod. I always thought they were overrated when it came to menu browsing. I just couldn't see how something would that much easier to browse than the RCA Lyra RD2584 or the Sony NW-HD1. Now, while it took me some time to get used to the A1000's controls (left/right/back/option/volume/etc), successful interaction with the Nano was almost immediate. The click wheel does an excellent job, although I find it highly sensitive. Some very nice touches in the menu. Possibility to browse/play by composer for example, in addition to artist, album, playlist or song. I don't know how handy that is in pop music, but since I listen mostly to film scores and classical, that's a very handy function. It eliminates the conflict with respect to artist. Is the artist the composer, or the performer? Browsing by composer, as long as the tags are properly maintained simplifies the dilemma.

Nano = very easy to use.

- Features

clock-stopwatch-world clock; games; text; calendar; picture viewing / album cover art

The Nano has them, the NW-A1000 does not. They can be considered either as crap that raises the asking price and does not belong on an audio player, or potentially useful options which may come in handy. I don't need games, and the mini-screen while decent, can't really be used to display pictures in a proper way. Text and clock functions can be useful though.

- Independence from Manufacturer's Software

For better, though mostly for worse, we're stuck with proprietary Sony software to run the A1000. One of the applications is not fully compatible with the player, the other is a pain in the a** for some of us. The Nano however is compatible with RealPlayer and some other applications, such that users are not emprisonned in iTunes. As useful software, iTunes itself still sucks as much as it ever did. That said it does have some significant advantages over Sony software: iTunes is fast, doesn't crash as often, and it's also very fast... ooops - repetition. Importing tracks, and general functions of the software are incomparably fast relative to CONNECT or SonicStage. Conversion of WMA files to AAC is much faster than SonicStage conversion of the same WMA files to ATRAC3.

- Sound Output

Sony still can't provide enough juice in its players to power large headphones or a home stereo. The microscopic Nano has enough power to send a clear signal to large Philips over-the-head headphones. What that does to the battery is a different issue. The point is, that if you want giant headphones that Sony players can't provide enough power to, the Nano does the job quite decently.

- More formats

How many years did it take for Sony's Walkman division to add mp3? We're still waiting for that announced WMA direct playback upgrade. In any case, the Nano comes enabled with various playback formats (mp3, aac, wav, aiff... pick and choose). WMA playback on the Sony players will be fantastic once available, and Protected WMA would make the Sony players truly competitive with just about everything else, and far more interesting choices than the iPod. After a long while, iTunes can finally import unprotected WMA files, transcode them to AAC and transfer them to the player.

- Comes with carrying pouch

Most likely due to that lawsuit that's going on about how easily it scratches, the Nano now ships with a small soft envelope-like pouch. Who cares? Given that Sony often included one, I would have liked to have one. I have an old pouch from an older NetMD recorder and that could fit. I find it hard to believe that a carrying pouch was that much more expensive that Sony couldn't include one.

- Playlists

Yes, the A1000 has them. And no, I couldn't create playlists on the player itself. Using RealPlayer, I hooked up the Nano, created a playlist directly on it, and moved tracks from one playlist to the other playlist. Couldn't just create playlists on the A1000. The playlists necessarily had to be created on the PC first, then transferred/sync'ed with the player.

Part 2: A1000 Better than Nano

- Build Quality, Fingerprints & Scratches

Both are unremovable from the Nano. After two hours of ownership, the Nano already had microscratches... and some not so micro ones. The shiny back of the Nano is best not even looked at, desecrated as it is by a layer of fingerprints which seems to thicken every few hours.

The A1000... now there's something that everyone (especially the anti-Sony crowd) kept predicting would scratch very easily and would attract fingerprints. That it does the latter is no question. But:

(1) Fingerprints stuck on the A1000 are fairly easy to clean, and a well-cleaned A1000 won't show any trace of them

(2) Fingerprint attraction levels on the A1000 are nowhere near the ridiculous level of the Nano.

Sure, I have very beautiful fingerprints, but I'm not sure I want to look at them every single second I look at the player.

The Sony A1000 feels solid. The Nano feels "good enough". I'm not under the impression that the Nano will break or is particularly fragile, but holding the Sony makes the A1000 feel very solid, and almost unbreakable.

- Sound

"Good sound" does not equal "loud sound". An advantage of the Nano is that it can output enough power to make big headphones sound good. But when it comes to small earbuds, it's... flat. In the Nano's case, quality of sound is inversely proportional to its size. Incredibly small player = Incredibly unremarkable sound. It's not that's it's bad, although some EQ settings are very poor. It's just that it's... bland. Depending on the earphones you use, you'll have to tweak the settings.

The Sony A1000 on the other hand, while it cannot power larger headphones, it does have enough juice to overpower the average human eardrums using the supplied earbuds. Crisp & clear highs; good-enough bass line; and neither at the expense of middle frequencies. "The Sony Sound" maintains the recording's depth and clarity. The sound on the Nano either flattens or otherwise distorts the recording's balance. It's not unbearable. In fact, it's pretty average, but it is by far inferior to what the Sony A1000 does.

Once again, pop & rock music don't show that as much as other types. I don't know anyone who tests their audiophile system by playing the latest Britney Spears CD. But when playing orchestral music, all the sonic superiority of the Sony players comes to the front.

I'm sorry for all the folks who keep saying that the new iPods (Shuffle, Nano and Video versions) have much better sound than their predecessors. I can only imagine how poorly previous iPods sounded!

Now, I'm quite sure that someone will come in and say "well, yeah but you're comparing different files and formats".

So?

The Sony was optimized to play ATRAC files. It does a pretty good job at playing mp3s too. The Nano was optimized to play AAC files. It's not *that* successful at it. I used each with the format it was primarily intended for. End score:

Sony NW-A1000: 10 (first rate)

Apple iPod Nano: 5 (does its job, and nothing more)

Changing the earbuds doesn't change the ultimate reality: the Sony NW-A1000 sounds much better than the Nano. The Nano's (in-)famous white Apple earbuds are pathetic. The sound is hollow, artificial, lacking high frequencies and featuring some aritifical sounding lows and a distorted sonic picture of the music which is playing. The overall sound of the supplied earbuds is poor, at best.

Where the Nano redeems itself is with larger headphones, or louder volume settings using non-Apple earbuds. In find some Sony players become acid and shrill if you push the volume too high. The A1000 is follows the same patterns. The Nano does pretty well at higher volumes (with a decent sent of headphones of course). In fact, I would say it sound best when played loud. Which would certainly explain the concerns that iPod usage is leading to hearing loss. To make it sound good, you need to blast your eardrums. Not a very good idea.

- Grouped alphabetical browsing

The A1000's grouping of tracks in alphabetical subgroups (A-G, H-M or whatever the exact groups were), is pretty cool. Alphabetical search as well. I'm not sure how useful that is on a small capacity player, but on a 20 Gigger, it should be pretty nice.

- ATRAC

The primary reason I was stuck to Sony players was that much of my music collection is in Atrac3 at 132 kbps. Regardless of what questionnable studies on the digital formats have to say about ATRAC, I trust my ears more than a study. ATRAC@132kbps sounds much better than any other format at a similar bit/compression rate. Not to mention how much more energy efficient ATRAC is.

- Gapless

Here again... gapless for pop or rock CDs doesn't matter as much as it does for classical, film music, live recordings, long dance mixes, or just about any other form of music which requires the music to flow from one track to the next. Once more, the iPod has one hell of a disadvantage relative to other players. Toshiba & Samsung players for example don't have true gapless, but at least there are no loud clicks and pops between tracks. The iPod is like and old vynil record: when the reading head hits the record right before the first song starts, there's a "pop". RCA managed to create some near-gapless gadgets.

But the king of gapless has always been Sony. The A1000 was true to form.

On a related note, the Sony players are among the very few, if not the only ones, in which you can rewind or fast forward your way through to the next track, or back to the last one. Neither the Nano, nor most mp3 players can do that. For example, on Sony players holding the REWIND button takes you to the beginning of the track playing, then if you don't release it, the player will rewind the previous track too. Other players take you to the beginning of the track you're playing, then stop there and start playback.

- Software

Buggy as it is, SonicStage has my favourite layout among music management applications. Plus, track editing is easy. The colour scheme and button positioning makes it very easy to use. iTunes sucks. I'll keep at that to remain civil.

Part 3: Where they both stink

- Alphabetical playlists vs. Group Structure

Older Sony players could play in "Group" structure. We've been over this before, but the new players, either iPod or A1000 can only play by alphabetical order. Sure, you can create a smart playlist that automatically adds new tracks to it. But say you buy four CDs. All the tracks from all four CDs will be added to the playlist. Now, how do you move to the next album? On older Sony players, if the album was transferred as a group, you just click the "GROUP" button, then the "skip" button, or on some remotes, you just hit the "Group Skip" button. Very useful.

- Playback Stops

Both players are inherently flawed: they play one album, then stop. They play one playlist, then stop. They play one artists' tracks then stop. That, is lame. Constantly having to take the player out of a pocket or a school bag to browse on to the next album because the player just stopped playback is ridiculous when you just want the music to keep on playing. I might as well be dragging minidiscs with me and change them everytime one of them ends. Part of the purpose of a multi-gigabyte music collection is to keep the music flowing. If it doesn't, we're no better off than during the old days.

Samsung, RCA and Toshiba can implement seamless transition between albums. So did the old Sony. I find it moronic that the #1 company in the industry can't figure it out and implement it in its iPods, while the inventor of the Walkman, instead of moving forward, took a step backward.

- Features

Other manufacturers implemented various useful features which neither player has:

FM radio; FM recording; voice recording; line-in recording; screensavers & wallpapers; playback speed changes; display customizations; on-the-go editing (delete track, move around - no need for computer software); programmable buttons and God knows what else.

- Weird cables

Proprietary is evil. The Nano is too thin, but the Sony is fat enough to host a regular mini-USB connection like older Sony players did. The Toshiba Gigabeat has it's proprietary dock plug. But it also has a regular mini-USB connector. "One Cable to Rule Them All" I say.

Then there's other things. The Sony cable was excessively short. The Apple cable is hard to unplug. The Sony came with a giant AC adapter which you plug the USB cable into to recharge it. The Nano doesn't even have an AC adapter.

The End of a Rant

The A1000 was a huge dissappointment. Of course, disappointment is always relative and directly related to expectations. While my expectations were high for the A1000, given how all the iPod nuts rave about iPods, expectations about the Nano were even higher. The A1000 didn't quite live up to lower expectations (lower relative to the iPod that is). The Nano mostly did live up to the higher expectations (higher relative to expectations about the A1000).

I won't be returning the Nano as I did the A1000. Sound quality once tweaked is quite acceptable on the Nano. The size and ease of use of the player, as well as the software make up for it's ugly looks, Easy-Scratch™ surface, and lack of gapless playback. The rest of its annoying features are similar to those of the A1000. That said, iPods are seriously overrated. They offer few major improvements relative to other players in the market, and contain an equal amount of annoyances to make them inferior to part of the competition.

Here's a couple of muddy pictures.

Edited December 9, 2005 by Dinko

[Guest Stuge]

Excellent Work..

Enjoy Music on your "I-pod Nano"..

****Thanks for giving us such an

Excellect comparision****

Easy-Scratch™ surface

I-pods Trademark.Funny!!!

[plickfu]

Just to correct: by your description (small size, small sound quality), sound is actually directly proportional to size, not inversely. But anyway. I recently ditched my Vaio Pocket for a 5G Ipod. I am really surprized by Ipod sound quality after what I had heard. But I have my music encoded in lossless, which is the main reason I went to Ipod anyway. Then again, I am using Sony MDR-EX71 headphones. Overall, I actually peceive the songs on my Ipod (in lossless) to sound better than the CD. Some of the EQ settings really sound great to me. But it depends what you're listening to, I suppose. Enjoy your Nano.

Steve

[willykyu]

Excellent ! very instructive!!!

I don't quite understand about the big earphones juice though... What I find extremely cool on Sony's devices is the Line-out option. Do Ipods have it? So I don't get why the SONY's devices can't handle big earphones... I 'll test that when I have the occasion. Interesting.

I own an A-3000 and I fond of it. It's so gorgeous in real, I'm amazed by its beauty everyday (I have it since November 19) and its great sound quality, really (as usual in fact). I'm so sick and tired of Ipod design...

About the use of it I must say, it's very good. I used Ipods too, and I found it very cool too. Nothing in my opinion can be compared to the Ipods wheels wich are excellent. But there's a huge improvement on the A series. So easy to find what you want, very well thoufgt.

I hope that with future updates the options will be improved, as the disk access; and why not a clock etc.

But thanx for this, it was great to read!!!

[Beethovenian]

Very nice comments. And to think the HD1 is not so much bigger than the Nano... Why did Sony decided to make a much bigger player now is beyond comprehension.

I agree Apple has an advantage for classical music in browsing by composers, and don't understand why Sony doesn't do it as well. But how is the hierarchy? Composer > Album, as before? It really should be Composer > Artist (by the way, DAP makers should adopt the diferentiation between Album Artist and Song Artist) > Album. And the iPod should display the composer name on the Now Playing screen.

[mercury_in_flames]

Exellent comparison dude

I don't quite understand about the big earphones juice though... What I find extremely cool on Sony's devices is the Line-out option. Do Ipods have it? So I don't get why the SONY's devices can't  handle big earphones... I 'll test that when I have the occasion. Interesting.

←

I have an hd5, and when I connect my audio technica ATH-A900'S to it, the output of the hd5 is not powerful enough as the music goes very quiet when you pump the music up to volume number 25, almost as if they are chewing the life out of the player haha. My MZ-R909 minidisc on the other hand, is able to play music up to volume 25 at a very normal standard, not as good as listening through a hifi system, but the music is listenable as the headphone has *just* enough power to run my cans, the hd5 doesnt.

[kamil]

Seeing how creative has gotten their patented interface system, apple will now have a hard time keeping its interface, since its a blatant ripoff from creative. This means, creative will either ask for compensation and royalties, or deny apple the use of THEIR patent. Good for creative. And not only good for apple for finally being shut down (deservingly) but this makes it harder for other companys to get "creative" and "innovative" and when i say innovative, i dont mean being like apple and stealing ideas/adding one new feature each time an ipod is released.