HD3 vs A1200

[beakster]

I've just purchased a NW3 second hand from amazon, for £50 it seemed like a lot of GB for my money. I was after a hd5 really but the prices are still quite high.

I already own a A1200 and was never impressed with the battery life, nor the disc access speeds which make it painfully slow just looking through the song list! The 1200 now lives in my car where it performs great coupled to the sony stereo with walknan control. Day to day duties are now performed by the 808, which is faultless in every respect, except that it is full!!

Enter the HD3, an extra 10ish GB to play with, WOW! I wasn't expecting the speed which this accesses tracks, its almost the same speed as flash drives. I'm also equally impressed with the build quality. It feels like its built from solid billet. OK the search functions are not as good, no ratings, time machine etc, but it's still a fantastic player, the speed it scrolls through the song lists mean you can find any track in the library in seconds.

After copying my entire library to it, and it had fully charged I started it playing at mid volume, all songs ripped at 132 atracplus, and started the stopwatch..................26hrs!! A similar experiment on the A1200 gave just 13. I know it isn't real life usage but it gave me an idea of the condition of the battery.

All in all I am very impressed with the HD3. Why couldn't sony have continued this line of players instead of stepping backwards(IMO) with the A series (hdd). I'll still be on the lookout for a 30 gig hd5, now that I'm hooked.

[Heman]

It may be unfair because NW-A1xxx/A3xxx series operating system is more complicated than NW-HDx series, say, Windows NT and Windows 2000.

Edited March 2, 2008 by Heman

[beakster]

It may be unfair because NW-A1xxx/A3xxx series operating system is more complicated than NW-HDx series, say, Windows NT and Windows 2000.

I agree with you in that respect, whilst the software was evolving in a good way, the hardware seemed to be backwards (cheaper?), making smaller ard drives, with what appears to be smaller memory buffers. Imagine what could have been living alongside the a818 etc. By the same level of progression what could the nw-hd7 or 9 been? 160gb HDD, 50 hr batteries, smaller all metal (magnesium again??) bodies. Don't get me wrong, I like the look and feel of the a1200,I bought one! I just think it could have been so much better.

[suso]

first I purchased a new A1200 for about $160, and 7 months after (on feb this year) a great-condition used hd3 for about $120 (and sold the 1200 for $100)

the hd3 is way better. more storage capacity, way more battery life (the battery on my 1200 lasted about 7 hours), and it is amazingly faster to

navigate between the folders than the 1200 (which sometimes got a little stuck)

what can I say, the only thing I miss from the 1200 is the size and the fact that the remote I use (rm-mc38el) displayed the song titles in that one, but does not on the hd3 (i will fix that soon buying another one).

maybe the 1200 has a more attractive design, but to be honest, I don't care too much about that...

[pandaman]

i own both and also got the 1200 first because i love the oled screen. it is pretty annoying to use because of how friggin slow it is but the sound quality is outstanding and i don't need a lot of space on the go. i use the hd3 for when i'm going to be stationary, say hooked upto a speaker at work or at a party and such... i like the looks of the hd3 more, esp with its metal case instead of the glossy plastic but the 1200 size is more comfortable. i think the a1200 sounds a little more crisp, but i definately prefer the older hd3 in overall usage so i'll probably end up selling the a1200 or trade for an hd1 to keep in the car.

[dura_]

I used to have an A3000, bigger brother of the A1200; beautiful machine to behold, but very annoying; slow, unreadable screen in daylight, and worst of all, ridiculous short batterylife. People here hypothised the internal memory was so small the DAP needed to read its HD much more then my former player, the incredible NW-HD1 (same as the HD3, but with a magnesium instead of aluminium housing). Could be, anyway, battery life on the A3000 was <5 hours, where I could easily get 20+hrs out of the HD1.

The A3000 sounded slightly better though, but I was happy to give it away once I bought the A808, which is still my DAP today. Great sound, long batterylife, beautiful design, only 8Gb is too small to hold all my favorite music, but I'm skipping the A82X and waiting for a 32 or even 64 GB sony, probably next year or the so.

Edited August 6, 2008 by dura