My MZ-RH10. Random thoughts/notes and pictures

[Petter156]

Well after considering it for a long time I finally went ahead and got a new Walkman, the RH10 which I´m sure you´re all familiar with by now. I thought I would post some thoughts on the unit anyway.

My previous MD player, the MZ-E60, was working just fine (and it´s been a great companion throughout the years), but the RH10 just seemed so cool.

First of I´d like to thank Mr. Jun Ibaraki (Ebay´s 'buyfromjapan') for offering stellar customer service and for shipping my unit a lot faster than I had expected (shipped Sunday, arrived Tuesday afternoon), I can warmly recomend him if you are interested in buying electronics or other stuff from Japan. Thanks also go out to you guys for recomending him as a seller. And the discussions on the MZ-RH10 I´ve been reading on this the forum was what inspired me to get this unit (and Ishiyoshi´s pictorial didn´t hurt either), so thanks.

Notes on usage (after a few weeks):

• I got the blue japanese version of the unit, comes with more accessories than the European model (decent remote, charging stand) and isn´t feature-crippled.

• The blue/dark-purple color is a lot darker than I was expecting after looking at Ishiyoshi´s pictorial. It´s a very dark blue in my opinion - but still looks great.

• The RH10 is quite user-friendly. Using only the scroll-button to find a track is simple and serching through a larger number of tracks is also pretty convenient using the search fucntion. Maybe not on par with some HDD-players but still easy enough to keep me happy.

• Right-hand usage takes a bit of getting used to but works pretty well. I still slide the unit in to my left pocket though by habbit.

• This is my first HiMD unit and PC connectivity is so much easier than recording real-time with my boombox (I had to move it from my room to the PC and hook it up and then move it back, major hassle). This is a major change and I´m glad I can finally easily take music from my PC with me on the move. PC->MD rransfers are faster than I was expecting, a nice surprise.

• I recently went on a trip to Stockholm and Tallinn and I loaded up a few 80min minidiscs with music. In HiLP I was able to get ~80 songs per disc – perfect for a few days journey.

• I´m a bit worried about strain put on the battery. The battery gets charged every time the unit is

  connected to the PC through USB, yet the battery is an NiMH battery instead of an lithium-ion (or -polymer) battery which you might expect from modern electronics (my brothers Zen Micro has a polymer battery).

• Navigating through the menu could have been improved. Currently you have to re-enter the menu after each change in setting. I don´t change the settings that often, so it´s not a major nuisance.

• A separate line-out would have been nice, but this is just a small request. Volume set to full is near line-level, but I would prefer not having to adjust the volume each time I connect it to the stereo in my room.

• Recording is quick and easy and since I haven´t owned a portable recorder before this is actually a new experience for me. Haven´t done that much recording yet – but I did record a few hours of BBC World in preparation for my english exam.

• Setting stuff like repeat and shuffle is trickier than on my previous unit, though I guess this is only natural since the unit overall is of a more complex design with a lot more features.

• It´s amazing how fast the disc starts playing after pushing play, though I just recently realized that was due to the “Quick mode” feature being turned on. I´m not sure how good of an idea it is to keep this on. If anyone has any idea on how much this affects batterylife and the battery´s lifecycle please inform me. Comments about this?

• No skipping yet. My MZ-E60 would occasionally skip even when just walking with it in my pocket. This was apparently due to the limited anti-skip memory of 20s (I think I´ve even seen somone claiming 10s of anti-shock buffer).

• The remote is nicer to use than the old RM-MZ2N that came with my MZ-E60, though it is a bit bulkier. I especially like the push/slide PLAY/FF/RW button.

• I´m not sure I´m really qualified to make sound quality comparisons, so I´ll leave that to others. HiLP sounds just fine to me (at least when on the move), even though I can tell that sound isn´t quite as 'perfect' as HiSP or SP. One thing I noted though is that it was easier getting a good 'on-the-move-in-noisy-places'-sound from my MZ-E60 – just setting MegaBass to step 1 or 2. The Bass isn´t is as pushy as before (lack of a dedicated bass boost probably) so I´ve switched the silicon buds on my EX71´s to the bulkier medium sized ones instead of the slightly more comfortable size small. An equlaizer is a nice feature to have though, I´m not really complaining.

• The MP3 issue is a sad mishap I wish Sony will correct in future MD Walkmen. Using a custom equalizer setting to level out the high-frequency cut does help to the point that the music is “listenable”, but the same music in HiLP still sounds noticeably better. I wouldn´t mind using only ATRAC files on my discs (though it´s obvious that the bug should be fixed) if only SonicStage would make this part of the transfer process easy. I would like the option to force conversion to ATRAC (HiLP mostly) before the transfer happens. Currently SS automatically favours the files with higher bitrate instead of letting the user select which file should be transfered and I have to go through a process of importing, converting, deleting and re-importing stuff. I would never use SonicStage as my primary music playback software but I would like to be able to select the music I want to transfer within SS itself.

• Even though the face of the recorder is plastic the overall construction feels solid and is on par with the quality I´ve come to expect from Sony. My MZ-E60 had an aluminum cover and of course there is a difference. But overall the RH10 feels like a sturdy unit and I´m hoping it will last me as long as the E60 did. The surface does get scratches pretty easily but I don´t think it´s not as bad as some people are making it out to be. I´m fully expecting to have the face of the unit covered in scratches in a few years and if scratches are something that really get to you I would be extra careful with handling the unit, or just settle for another recorder. I did protect the screen however, as this is the one part that I don´t want to be ruined. I useda small piece of book covering plastic. It makes the display slightly harder to read in bright sunlight but in lower-light conditions I can´t really tell the screen has an aditional layer of plastic.

  Currently there are only minor scratches present and they´re not even obvious – this is after a few weeks of sticking the unit into the pocket of my jeans every morning.

I can´t really make comparisons to previous HiMD or even NetMD equipment since, up until now, I have only used old-school Md equipment. I can however say that I´m very happy with the MZ-RH10. It´s with me nearly wherever I go. Now I just hope it will last me as long as the E60 did, and that Sony doesn´t drop minidisc in favor of (not as cool) MP3/HDD players.

Pictures:

[Sparky191]

Nice review, great to hear a balanced review from an existing MD user, and one that talks about the good and the bad. Great photos, the unit looks fantastic in blue. Thanks for posting Petter156.