NW-A80x vs NW-A81x series

[zVp]

What's the difference between the NW-A80x and the NW-A81x series?

The only thing I can figure out is that the new NW-A81x series can handle drag and drop capabilities but that's all I could figure out.

[Edit]

Oh, and the apparent price difference (a drastic drop actually, in Canada at least where the NW-A806 retails for $229.99 CAN while the NW-A818 retails for only $199.99)

And of course, I forgot to mention being able to handle ATRAC files... which is apparently obsolete in the NW-A81x series.

Edited September 11, 2007 by zVp

[riceb0i87]

I say expect a price drop for the new A810 series in Canada (they just brought down the A810 prices in America to match the Nanos).

I guess another difference would be not having the 'Ratings' in the new one (someone correct me if I'm wrong), and from pictures I've seen, the main menu icons look bigger and have some blue gradient background at the bottom. Oh yeah, you can use the A810 series on Mac and Linux. Check out aznbro85's review here.

Basically it's the same player, just with WMP11/drag and drop, and no more ATRAC/Sonicstage. Sony's planning on releasing a compatibility update for the older A800s to support WMP11/drag and drop, so who knows. I spent $300CDN for my A808, so I wonder how low the price is going to go before they sell them all. (No word yet as to whether there will be a 8GB A810 player in Canada)

[zVp]

Yeah, that's what I was afraid of, I couldn't find any article, link, information, or whatever on an 8 gb version of the new 81x series. I might just wait for the new ones to come out and hope Sony drops the price on the 8 gb version of the 80x series cause it's basically the same thing

Thanks for the info

[sharklover]

I live in the US and I just bought 2 NW-A808's. The reason was for the ATRAC support. ATRAC 64 sounds great so it basically makes the A808 the equivlent of a 16GB player. I have all my music in ATRAC and did not want o rerecod everything. Other differences are ranking the songs and being able to delete songs on the A808 that cannot be done on the A818 as far as I know.

[zVp]

I live in the US and I just bought 2 NW-A808's. The reason was for the ATRAC support. ATRAC 64 sounds great so it basically makes the A808 the equivlent of a 16GB player. I have all my music in ATRAC and did not want o rerecod everything. Other differences are ranking the songs and being able to delete songs on the A808 that cannot be done on the A818 as far as I know.

wait what? you can't delete the song off the player using the player itself? but rather you gotta go to your computer and do it?

[riceb0i87]

Ouch, I completely forgot about that. According to the A810 manual it states:

"To delete songs from the player, use the software you used to transfer the songs, or Windows Explorer."

With the A800 series, you just delete the songs into the Trash Bin, and when you load up Sonicstage it deletes the songs from the player first, before you can do anything else. Sadly I can't use the Trash Bin because I turned off the 'Intelligent Features' in Sonicstage. But it can't be that difficult to go into Explorer and deleting the songs from there right?

@sharklover: Really? ATRAC 64kbps? I got tired of waiting to convert all the time, and since I now have 8GB of capacity, I don't need to do that anymore

[Akai Kenshi]

I live in the US and I just bought 2 NW-A808's. The reason was for the ATRAC support. ATRAC 64 sounds great so it basically makes the A808 the equivlent of a 16GB player. I have all my music in ATRAC and did not want o rerecod everything. Other differences are ranking the songs and being able to delete songs on the A808 that cannot be done on the A818 as far as I know.

No, it really doesn't. I'm probably in a minority opinion on this board, but I always thought that ATRAC 64 sounded like garbage.

[Shinji Ikeda]

What's the difference between the NW-A80x and the NW-A81x series?

The only thing I can figure out is that the new NW-A81x series can handle drag and drop capabilities but that's all I could figure out.

[Edit]

Oh, and the apparent price difference (a drastic drop actually, in Canada at least where the NW-A806 retails for $229.99 CAN while the NW-A818 retails for only $199.99)

And of course, I forgot to mention being able to handle ATRAC files... which is apparently obsolete in the NW-A81x series.

I think the NWZ-A810 series is what is being referred to. This product is a dramatic move for Sony based on there previous Network Walkmans. The NWZ Walkmans support drag and drop, which is something that most people have been requesting that Sony does. With the NW Walkmans you get different features, and functionality.