The Sony Walkman NWZ-E474 ($89.99 direct) is a nice looking 8GB MP3 player in search of a market. It's thinner and sounds better out of the box than the SanDisk Sansa Clip Zip , but the latter has the same amount of internal storage plus a memory card slot, and also costs $30 less. Aside from unusually good-sounding bundled earphones, the NWZ-E474 just doesn't stand out. It even has a few flaws I wouldn't expect from a product designed by Sony.
Design, Controls, and Charging
Made entirely of plastic, you can get the NWZ-E474?in red or black. It?measures 3.87 by 1.75 by 0.31 inches (HWD) and weighs 1.8 ounces. Not bad, but that puts it noticeably thicker and heavier than the latest, 7th-generation Apple iPod nano; in fact, this Walkman looks a bit like a knockoff of the circa 2008?4th-generation iPod nano, which is not a place you'd expect to find Sony competing.
The right edge holds a pair of Volume buttons and a Hold button for locking the controls. The left panel is bare, while the bottom edge contains a standard-size 3.5mm headphone jack, the charging and sync connector, and a pair of holes to attach a lanyard (which isn't included). Sony does include two extra pairs of rubber eartips in different sizes, in addition to the ones already on the bundled set of earphones.
The 2-inch, 320-by-240-pixel LCD doesn't support touch. The display is bright at the maximum setting, but blacks become dark gray. Viewing angles are about average. Underneath the screen, at first glance, it looks like Sony aped Apple's old Click Wheel design from its older iPods. But it's really just a plastic, circular 5-way control pad for navigating menus and playing or pausing tracks. The first few times, my finger pressed the center button at the same time as one of the direction buttons, but eventually I got the hang of it.?Two Function buttons to the top left and right handle Back/Home and Option/Power duties.
The NWZ-E474 uses a proprietary charging connector. You could argue Apple does this too, but Apple used the same one for nine years, and only now just changed it for the first time. Sony has used various connectors over the years, seemingly without rhyme or reason, and none of them are as popular or as easy to find as Apple's. As long as you don't lose the cable, you'll be fine, but even then, you may want to order a second one for the office or your travel bag for charging on the go.
Syncing Media and Audio Quality
For this review, I plugged the Sony Walkman NWZ-E474 into my LenovoThinkPad laptop running Windows 7 Premium. The system automatically recognized it as a Walkman, installed a native Windows driver, and opened up a window for dragging and dropping media, browsing the Walkman, or importing pictures and videos.?You can sync your music via Windows Media Player, and Sony also bundles its own Media Go software, which enables data transfer from iTunes 10 directly to the Walkman.
The main interface contains 12 icons arranged in a grid pattern; hold down the Back button for a second and you'll return to it from anywhere. During playback, the display shows large album cover art thumbnails, and it's pretty easy to navigate your songs using the control pad once you learn it.
The MDR-EX083?earbuds sound great out of the box. There's plenty of midbass kick and crisp, clear midrange and high-end details, even with all of the Sony's EQ modes set to Off. I had no problem playing unprotected AAC, MP3, and WMA files, but there's no FLAC, OGG, WAV, or AIFF support.?
Other Features and Conclusions
Audiophiles typically sneer at EQ and DSP presets, as well as most other sound-enhancing algorithms that purportedly widen the sound field or artificially spotlight certain details in the music. Sony provides a lot of these in the box. Most are in fact pretty useless, but I have to admit I got a kick out of some of the DSP modes like Live and Studio, which added artificial reverbs and other spaces to the music. They didn't completely destroy the sound of the recording in the process, either.?
You can display photos and watch video on the 2-inch screen, but it's not a great experience. Nearly all of our test videos wouldn't play without transcoding, save for 320-by-240-pixel MP4 and WMV videos. There's 6.71GB of free internal storage for your media files, but no memory card slot. There's also a useful FM tuner and a voice recorder built in. You can save FM presets, but you can't record from the radio. There's no stereo Bluetooth support, so you can't connect wireless earphones or headphones. Sony claims a lengthy 36 hours of continuous music playback on a single charge. We're still testing the battery and will update this review as soon as we have a result.
The Apple iPod nano is the best standalone music player on the market, with its unbelievably thin and light metal design, its vast (considering the player's size) 2.5-inch touch screen, 16GB of internal storage, and robust media syncing with iTunes 10, but it's considerably more expensive than the NWZ-E474, and Apple's EarPods ?still offer less bass response than the bundled Sony earbuds. The SanDisk Sansa Clip Zip saves you $30, although audiophiles will want to upgrade the stock earbuds there. Sony's own NWZ-W262 ?builds a tiny 2GB MP3 player into a pair of solid-sounding earphones; at $59.99, it's another good option. If you just want to grab an MP3 player for less than $100 and go, the Sony NWZ-E474 is a good choice. But given the Sony Walkman pedigree, I wish I could say more than that.
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