Customer Reviews
Average Customer Review
(51 customer reviews) 32 of 33 people found the following review helpful
A good player for the price,
February 1, 2006 Moonwatcher (Earth) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Sony NW-E307 Walkman Bean 1 GB MP3 Player Black (Electronics)
I bought my bean a month ago, and I chose this mp3 player mostly because it has a low price for 1 GB and I trust Sony to make good quality electronics. Overall, I am satisfied with it, although there are a few annoyances. This is my first mp3 player, so I don't have much to compare to other than what I've heard from others.
Pros:
-The battery life is amazing, and it doesn't take long to charge up (less than an hour for a full charge, which gives you almost 50 hours). I don't know how long the battery will last (I've heard horror stories about iPod batteries), but so far it's fine.
-If you use Sony's Atrac3 format rather than mp3, you can fit twice as many songs as you can on other 1 GB players. The sound quality of this format is supposed to be worse, but I honestly don't notice much difference.
-The controls are simple and take only a few minutes to learn.
-Sony's Sonic software is simple to install and use.
-I love...Read more
82 of 92 people found the following review helpful
Unbelievable Battery Life, But....,
November 15, 2005 I. Hayles (Seattle) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Sony NW-E307 Walkman Bean 1 GB MP3 Player Black (Electronics)
Let me start by saying that: (A) I'm not a big fan of Apple and (B) I've had a good experience with Sony Walkmans. However, its apparent to me that NO company that makes MP3 players is getting it quite right.
Anyways, perhaps I'm a little biased towards Sony (Sony is a music company, Apple is a computer company...barely), but I have to say that this is by far the best MP3 player I can find. Most notably, the battery life is unbelievable. It's specified at 50 hours with [ATRAC3] 64 kbps. My girlfriend is using it at [ATRAC3] 128 kbps and it's been going for 30 hours so far. That's twice as long as even the other FLASH players out there, not to mention the HD players. Clearly, Sony's years of experience building portable music players has taught them how to get battery power right.
Other pluses:
The software is very easy to use, but like all other software-managed players, you're going to be tied into using the software. If you want drag-and-drop...Read more
34 of 37 people found the following review helpful
I love my Bean,
December 28, 2005 Robin T. (Maryland) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Sony NW-E307 Walkman Bean 1 GB MP3 Player Black (Electronics)
This past Christmas weekend, I had the opportunity to set up both a 2GB iPod Nano (for my daughter) and the 1GB Sony Walkman Bean (aka Network Walkman) for use on my computer.
These are some random observations with regards to the Bean:
- In my opinion, setting up SonicStage (Sony's music service) is a little easier to set up than iTunes. The interface for transferring your music is very intuitive.
- You are required to register your Bean through SonicStage before you can use it. (Very easy to do.)
- 5 free music credits came with my Bean, but you have to register a credit card with the service (same as with iTunes, I believe) before you download your 5 songs.
- I purchased new headphones. The headphones that came with the Bean are not as good as those that come with the Nano. I don't like the earbud-type of phones anyway.
- There is no "hissing" noise during playback, unless your music has the noise in it before you...Read more
