AP Reviewer Says Sony Walkman Is No iPod Killer

August 4th, 2004 at 3:00 PM - News by Vern Seward

The AP has published a review of Sonyis new "iPod Killer," the Walkman NW-HD1, that mirrors a review by Walt Mossberg; The conclusion both reviewers reached is that Sonyis device is inferior to Appleis iPod. Reviewer Matthew Fordahl points out that the Sony Player did better than the iPod in battery life -- 31 hours on the Sony player versus 13 hours on the iPod -- and unit size, but he found all other aspects of the iPod and iTunes to be substantially better than Sonyis current offering. From the article as published by The Macon Telegraph:

I have a collection of nearly 1,200 MP3 music files that take up about 6 gigabytes on my PC hard drive.

Appleis iTunes software had no trouble transferring the MP3 files to the iPod, which can also play other formats such as Appleis Advanced Audio Coding codec and others. In all, it took 12 minutes to transfer all my files.

The Network Walkman only plays Sonyis own ATRAC3 and ATRAC3+ formats. Before each song transferred, it had to be converted. The process took nearly seven hours.

There is much more in the full review at The Macon Telegraph, and we recommend it as a very good read, especially for those considering which device to buy.