Good player, great battery life
Written: Apr 25 '04
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Pros: Amazing battery life; stores 350+ songs
Cons: Sound quality is only okay; volume doesn't go very loud; bulky player.
The Bottom Line: If battery life and song capacity are important to you, this is a wonderful player. But if you are an audiophile, you probably want a different model.
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| justgreysky's Full Review: Sony Walkman D-NE510 Personal CD Player |
I recently bought this Sony D-NE510 player to replace an older Panasonic SL-SX460 that I’ve had for a number of years, and I’ve not been disappointed by my purchase. This player has a slew of really awesome features that make it worthwhile, especially its support for ATRAC3+.
The sound quality of the player is fairly good, although not quite as clear as my old Panasonic (the difference is quite negligible). The first bass boost option is okay, but the second option distorts the sound too much. No bass boost at all sounds a little thin though. The headphones that come with the player are pretty much junk, so I’ve been using a pair of Sony earphones that I bought a while back, and the quality is much better.
MP3 navigation is extremely easy with the jog-dial, especially if you organize songs into folders. When I tried to play an MP3 disc without folders, it took me forever to find the songs that I wanted, but now that I have everything organized into folders for each album, I can almost instantaneously find the songs that I want to hear. There is a slightly annoying pause between each song, maybe about 1-2 seconds but enough to break the flow of a mix CD, although for regular CDs with individual songs, this is less of an issue.
I used the bundled software to compress 28 albums worth of songs onto a CD in ATRAC3plus format at 64 kps, and now carry around 50+ albums on just two discs. Each disc took me about 2 hours to make, without a hitch, although I did not attempt to use the MP3 conversion feature. I figured it would be useless to convert from one compression format to another…and burning an MP3 disc is faster than converting it to ATRAC anyway.
ATRAC quality is much clearer than MP3 at 64 kps or even 96 kps and is certainly very listenable, but isn’t quite on-par with CD quality. When you turn up the volume and listen closely, you can hear the limitations of the lower bitrate. However, I usually listen to music at low and “regular” volumes, so the quality isn’t that big of an issue with me (it’s easier on my hearing too). Besides, I figured that being able to carry around that many songs (approximately 350) on a CD makes up for the slight decrease in sound quality.
The player also has incredible battery life—Sony claims 80 hours with ATRAC discs, and 50 hours with regular CDs when using alkaline batteries. I have been using the unit with Rayovac rechargeable NiMH batteries (more environmentally friendly) and these give me about 35 hours of play time per charge, which is usually enough for 3-4 weeks of regular use for me. And I used to think that the 12 hour rechargeables for my Panasonic were long-lasting!
The D-NE510 is also fairly stylish. It’s rather large but has an attractive gray exterior and clean design. The plastic shell is cheap and fragile feeling, but seems durable enough. I’ve actually dropped the CD player from my desk a number of times (onto hardwood floor) and it was not yet skipped or had any problems.
Overall, Sony has made a wonderful product. Some would probably complain that the ATRAC software has problems but keep in mind that even if you don’t use this feature, the player is still a great deal. The Sony reliability, the excellent MP3 support, the jog dial and the incredible battery life make for a pleasurable and long-lasting music listening experience. True, you can buy a cheaper MP3 CD player, but if you consider long term reliability and battery costs, then the Sony D-NE510 is really a good buy.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 49
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Epinions.com ID:
justgreysky
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Reviews written: 3
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