Despite the fact that the iPod and iPhone has grown to a ridiculous level of popularity, it doesn’t mean that they’re the best choice for listening to music.  Some will wholeheartedly argue this, while I’ll flat out tell them they’re wrong.  Why?  Both are fragile devices that are heavy, cumbersome and require you to use a set of headphones.   Ultimately, it’s not practical and nor does it provide me with that streamlined feeling I like to have if I’m taking a jog, jumping rope or lifting weights.

Last year I reviewed Sony’s W252s.  If you recall they pretty much answered my above quandary.  However, they had a few shortcomings that lead Sony to issue a new version last month.  The result?  A lighter, easier to use portable audio player, the W263.

This iteration has done away with the magnets, which have been replaced with a simple on/off switch. The magnets, which served as power switched (off when attached, on when not), proved impractical, since many a people found a simple jolt in the bag could separate the headphones and thus draining the battery.

They’ve also reduced the weight  (1.6 vs 1.2oz) and size making them more comfortable and less of interference when performing any sort of rigorous activity.  However, I still had problems with positioning the buds at the correct angle to optimize audio response and more importantly bass.  Sony does include a few different ear bud sizes, but your stuck with one pair of headphones with no options to upgrade.  And speaking of which, the hardware from the previous iteration has remained the same, which is 5+5 watts of power and 13.5mm drivers.

The W263 are relatively bare bones in the feature department.  Fortunately, in this case, that’s a good thing.  Adding music is as simple as plugging it in to your computer’s USB port and dragging and dropping music files directly from iTunes to the player.  The player itself boasts the same controls as the previous iteration, which include shuffle, play, pause, track skip and volume control.  A small LED battery light changes from green to orange to red to indicate remaining battery life.   A full charge takes 1.5 hours, producing 8 hours of playback, where as a 3 minute charge can provide enough just for up to 60 minutes of playback. I fully charged my W263 and haven’t seen the battery life deviate from the specs.

Sonically, I’m more than pleased with the W263.  I received the Meb Keflezighi special edition version of the player.  I loaded up the 2GB of storage (there is a 4GB version, though it’s not available in the special edition) with a variety of music, got the buds warmed up with a few hours of music and then cranked them during my workouts.  The spectrum of sound is not the widest, though at loudest volume they held their own and didn’t distort. As already mentioned I had to reposition them to get the most bass response from the buds, but just as fast as I did that they would revert to their original position and reduce the lows.  This is largely due to the shape of my ears and partially the band that connects the two ear pieces together.

Bottom line: A water resistant all-in-one MP3 player that will surely satiate any workout freaks music needs while in the exercise trenches.

Editor’s Rating:

4.5 out of 5 stars

Excellent

Pros:

• Compatible with iTunes; drag and drop to add tunes
• Water resistant build
• All-in-one design makes the W263 ideal for workouts

Cons:

• Stuck with one set of headphones
• Buds may accommodate all ears for maximum audio response

12►

Today, Sony Ericsson unveiled the “Live with Walkman,” their last Android smartphone.  If your experiencing a sense of Deja Vu don’t be surprised, because the handset resembles every other Sony Ericsson phone to hit the market in the last few years.  But even though it looks like a bit of a dinosaur on the outside, they’ve managed to upgrade the internals to today’s tech.

The 3.2-inch 480×320 touchscreen device will ship with Android 2.3 and runs on top of a 1Ghz processor.  The front of the device is outfitted with a low rez camera for video chatting, while the rear has a 5 megapixel sensor that can capture 720p video.  Sony has included their Sony’s xLOUD tech, which is said to enhance the audio output, but color us skeptical as to its actual effectiveness.  A media discovery app is designed to help you find tunes on your own and with the help of your Facebook friends – like we haven’t heard that pitch before.  It also works with Sony’s unlimited streaming service Qriocity, and a dedicated button called the ‘Infinite button’ hooks up the deets on your favorite artists including music videos, lyrics and more.

Other specs include a 115g weight, 8x digital zoom, auto focus, face detection, photo flash, geo tagging, image stabilizer, 3.5mm headphone jack, aGPS, Bluetooth, microUSB port, WiFi, 320mb built-in memory (expandable to 32GB via microSD card slot) and a 14 hour talk time.

The Sony Ericsson “Live with Walkman” – this might be the worst product name ever – will launch Q4 in select markets; which in our opinion is just another way of saying “not here in the USA.”  It will be available in black or white.

Press release below

Sony Ericsson Live with Walkman delivers unique social music experience for smartphones

22 August 2011

Smartphone with Walkman™ on the latest Android platform (Gingerbread 2.3)
Unique Facebook™ integration enables instant music and media sharing
Content services from Sony provide access to the latest music and video titles
22 August 2011, London, UK – Sony Ericsson today announced Sony Ericsson Live with Walkman™, an Android smartphone that delivers a unique social music experience. A dedicated Walkman™ hardware button provides instant access to the music player and consumers can also like, share and discover content through a deep Facebook™ integration. The infinite button lets the consumer explore even more and the *Qriocity service from Sony provides music and video content for the consumer to enjoy.

With attractive curved design, a glossy finish and a mineral glass display, the phone has a 3.2” screen and a powerful 1Ghz processor. A front facing camera is enabled for Skype video calling, while a 5MP AF camera can capture 720p HD video recording. *Sony’s xLOUD™ enhances audio output, while the latest Android platform for smartphones (Gingerbread 2.3) provides access to over 250,000 applications on the Android Market™.

Nikolaus Scheurer, Head of Product Marketing, Sony Ericsson said: “Consumers want smartphones to deliver a rich and social entertainment experience. Rather than a one dimensional music experience, they want instant and seamless access to new content, combined with the ability to share and connect with their friends. The Sony Ericsson Live with Walkman™ provides exactly this, in a powerful package with great style.”

A perfect combination of social networking and music entertainment:

Deep Facebook™ integration: Allows users to instantly access Facebook through the most used areas of the phone such as the picture gallery, music player, phonebook and calendar.
Media Discovery Application: A dynamic application placing the world of music and videos at consumer’s fingertips including Facebook™ recommendations from their friends.
Infinite button: Tapping it within the media player enables consumers to have instant access to new content about their favourite artist, such as music videos, artist information and lyrics search.
Qriocity music and video content services from Sony: Consumers can access millions of songs from all major labels and watch thousands of movies from all major studios. Only Sony Ericsson Android smartphones provide consumers with unique access to the entertainment services from *Sony.
*Sony’s xLOUD™ technology: Enhances audio output of the inbuilt speakers at high levels.
TrackID™: Identifies the music track you are listening to within the FM radio and music player. The track can then instantly be shared or downloaded.
Sony Ericsson Live with Walkman™ will be available globally in selected markets from Q4 2011.
For full details all products news, please visit the press room and the product blog:

http://www.sonyericsson.com/cws/corporate/press/pressreleases/latestnews

http://blogs.sonyericsson.com/products/

Sony Ericsson Live with Walkman™ at a glance.
*Please note that all services mentioned may not be available in every market.

Sony refuses to quite on the MP3 player front.  Today, the company introduced three new players: the A-Series, S-Series and E-Series.  All three models boast their karaoke mode, which should not only automatically reduce the volume of the vocal track, but allows you to load an .lrc file for songs and set the lyrics to scroll by in sync with the music.  And thanks to the built-in microphone you can record yourself on the spot, you know, for those moments when you’re suddenly inspired.  The A-Series and S-Series separate themselves from the pact by offering integrated Bluetooth for streaming music to a compatible device and receiving photos wirelessly.

The A-Series (NWZ-A860)

It includes Sony’s Clear Audio Technologies, Bluetooth and a 2.8-inch touchscreen with a 400×240 resolution. It ships with what Sony calls a pair of “premium earbuds”.  Choose from an 8GB model for $179 or 16GB for $219.

The S-Series (NWZ-S760BT)

The player is a watered down version of the W-Series.  However, since it sports a 2-inch LCD screen (not touchscreen) with a 320×240 it can achieve 50 hours of music playback or 10 hours of video.  It too include Bluetooth for music and photo transfer, but only includes a pair of standard earbuds.  It’s available in an 8GB flavor only and costs $149.

The E-Series (NWZ-E460)

The low end of the three players is available in 4GB ($79), 8GB ($89) and 16GB ($109).  It too has a 50 hour music playback battery life anda  2-inch 320×240 screen.  Unlike it’s big brothers it has an FM radio and comes in 5 colors (black, red, blue, green and pink).

People love karaoke. Okay, not everyone, but a lot of people do (especially the Japanese). Which is why Sony’s new E450 Walkman sounds interesting, though it’s sadly only hitting Europe at this point. It’s got a Karaoke Mode in which you sync lyrics of a song to the device, which then reduces the singer’s vocals in the song using some custom software. Just make sure that you’re not bothering other people when you start belting out “Don’t Stop Believin’.” There’s video playback on the device as well, which should get you a ten hour battery life, or fifty hours with music only.

The Walkman E450 is available in August, with pricing currently unknown.

Read

In the 80s and 90s Sony dominated the portable media player market.  Then Apple came along and released the iPod.  Ever since Sony has been scrapping to keep pace and finally, after many years of denial, started building iPod compatible stereos, docks and bedside alarm clocks.  So does the Sony’s NWZ-W252 Walkman even warrant a look?

Fortunately, the day after I ran my iPod Shuffle through the washing machine, the NWZ-W252 showed up at my door.  So there couldn’t have been a better time to review the MP3 player.  The first thing I noticed about the Sony NWZ-W252 is that there are no cords to manage.  I ride a bike and always listen to my Shuffle or my iPhone while commuting to and fro.  More often than not the cords get tangled in my helmet, which may seem like a petty concern, but when it happens time after time I assure you it is not.  Everything needed to listen to the NWZ-W252 is contained directly in the headphones themselves, which includes all the necessary controls as well as a USB port for transferring and charging the device.

Use a Mac and iTunes?  No problem.  The NWZ-W252 is completely compatible.  The included software doesn’t support Mac OS X, but fortunately you can just drag and drop tracks directly from iTunes to the player (it holds roughly 1.68GB of music), which mounts as a flash drive on your desktop.  That’s it.  There is nothing more to do or any drivers to install.  Sony tossed in some additional software to facilitate transfers, but it’s PC compatible only, so I couldn’t review that.

A 3 minute charge can provide the NWZ-W252 with up to 90 minutes of playback time.  However, a 1.5 hour charge, a complete charge, can provide up to 11 hours.  I used my NWZ-W252 10 times for an hour at a time until I had to recharge the player.  This is on spec with Sony’s website.  When the battery begins to die the LED light changes from green to orange to red and the headphones emit a beeping noise.

The NWZ-W252 weighs 1.6oz (43 grams).  While significantly heavier than most headphones, they’re surprising comfortable and remained in my ears through most activies, though this didn’t include running since I loathe that activity.  Sony has engineered the NWZ-W252 to with stand moisture, which means you can sweat all you want and they’ll keep pumping out tunes.

Since the NWZ-W252 lacks a display, Sony has built a proprietary music scanning system called Zappin.  When engaged – you press and hold the play/pause button for a second or two – a voice says “Zappin in”.  It chooses a small snippet from each track and plays it.  Once you’ve found a song of interest you simply hit the play/pause button to deactivate the option, which is followed by the same voice stating “Zappin Out”.  It’s all rather cheesy, but hey, it works.

You can opt to listen to all your music or shuffle from song-to-song.  During my experience both options produced a shuffle play, which leads me to believe that the NWZ-W252 plays music by the order in which it is added, not by artist.  I didn’t like this since logic says that ‘all play’ should group or play by band, which in turn allows you to find tracks by a particular artist more easily.

The sound quality of the NWZ-W252 is well on par with most of today’s top headphones and MP3 players.  Personally, it thought it lacked bass, while Jeff felt as though it sufficed in the lower frequency department.  Bass on ear bud headphones can be very subjective as each person’s ear canals are shaped differently and thus provide a different level of bass response.  Sony provides up to 3 ear bud attachments to help quell this problem.   To much dismay the NWZ-W252 lacks an EQ function so there was no help there.

The only drawback of the of the NWZ-W252 is the way it looks when worn.  Which I should note is a completely subjective statement.  It can be best described as wearing a bluetooth headset on each ear.  Yeah, it looks that bad.  But than again the NWZ-W252 is intended for working out, so really this is a some what moot point.

So despite Sony struggling to find their niche in the portable media player market, the NWZ-W252 receives high marks for a solid sound performance, a decent battery life and easy operation. While it won’t supersede my iPhone for day-to-day casual listening, it’s a exceptional device and should be considered well before Apple’s latest iPod Shuffle.

A variety of sellers on Amazon sell it for about $60.

Pros:

• Super easy to use, even with a Mac & iTunes
• Solid sound quality
• Decent battery life

Cons:

• No display
• Just 1.68GB of storage
• Shuffle function flawed

In all its synergistic glory, Sony Japan has announced their new Walkman W Series featuring the Metal Gear Solid Edition.  The NWD-W253 will go on sale in Japan starting May 22nd for the price of $110, with the MGS version at $130.

The MP3 players are waterproof with a 4GB capacity, a mini USB port, and compatibility with ATRAC/MP3/WMA/AAC and Linear PCM (WAV) formats.  The MGS edition will come with six songs from the games’ (Peace Walker for the PSP) official soundtrack.  I think it looks cooler on Snake than it would on me.

Anybody into this?

Read

With little to no fan fare Sony Ericsson kicked out two new Walkman phones today, the Zylo and Spiro.  As you can imagine both handsets have a strong focus on music playback in addition to social networking (i.e. Facebook, Twitter, etc).  The Zylo, the higher end of the two, includes an interesting feature that lets users play background sounds or music while chatting on the phone – great if you want the wifey to think you’re still at work.  It also sports a 2.6-inch screen, 3.2 megapixel camera, FM radio and a microSD card slot.  The Spiro, however, rocks a smaller 2.2-inch screen and a 2 megapixel camera.

Both handsets will be available in select markets sometime in the third quarter.

Video after the ‘leap’

Read

I’m totally cool with showering with my MP3 player and apparently that’s what Sony wants me to do with their latest, the WALKMAN NWZ-W250.  Capacity options are limited to a 2GB and 4GB model, while color choices include four sporty colors (silver, pink, green and black).  For those of you on the run a 3 minutes charge will provide up to 90 minutes of playback and a full charge will provide up to 11 hours.  Codec compatibility is pretty expansive (MP3/WMA/AAC/Linear PCM), but DOES NOT include support for iTunes DRM. 

Sony hasn’t revealed a price, but has said that the W250 will be out this May.

Read

Sony is sort of hit or miss in the design department, but these new Walkman docks are a definite “hit” in my opinion. The multi-colored NAS-V5 and NAS-V7M models are technically designed for the Walkman, but other players will work just fine with it. The latter also features 16GB of internal memory, allowing you to rip CDs directly the device for easy playback. Both also have WiFi support for Internet radio, good old-fashioned AM/FM radio, auxiliary inputs and a USB port. Each device is powered by 32-BIT DSPs for crisp audio quality.

The NAS-V5 and NAS-V7M will be available in Japan on June 26 for around $428 and $535 dollars, respectively.

Read

A great number of people are sitting on a small mountain of cassette tapes from back in the hey day.  From mix tapes to singles recorded off the radio, the Tape Express is a compact solution to help bring that old medium into the MP3 era.

Using the included EZ Tape Converter software, the Tape Express connects to your computer via USB and the work converting your cassette to MP3′s is done.  It also doubles as a standard cassette player in case you are feeling like you want to listen to your old tapes on the go.  On sale and in stock for $82.

What do we think?  Essential?

Read

We’re a little late to the gate on this news, but better late than never, right?  Sony Ericsson’s Aino phone, you know the one with a 3-inch touchscreen and can access your media files on the PS3? Yeah, it’s available for $599.99 and will ship tomorrow!

Features:

• 3-inch touchscreen with keypad
• GPS
• Includes charging cradle and Bluetooth headset
• Sony Remote Play
• Flash lite compatible
• Accelerometer
• 8.1 megapixel camera
• Media player
• WiFi
• DLNA certified
• Shake control
• Bluetooth with stereo
• FM Radio
• 3G connectivity

Read

I can’t say I’ve been holding my breath waiting for Sony’s latest X Series Walkman (NWZ-X1000) with OLED screen to release here in the US.  But today Amazon US officially received pricing info for the 16GB and 32GB MP3 player.  It will set you back $299.95 and $399.95, respectively.  Unfortunately, there is no mention of an actual ship date, but expect it any day now since Amazon rarely posts new products unless they’re a few days out from shipping.

[via Oled-info]

Read

Sony has just introduced a new E-series Walkman MP3 player and based on appearance and lack of functionality it looks like it will remain in Japan.  Available in 3 sizes 2GB, 4GB, or 8GB and 10 different colors, the E-series also features an FM radio and interchangeable front panels and caps.  It will hit Japan this May for $80, $100 and $130, respectively.

Read

Sony Ericsson bridged the gap between high end and low end today by launching the W205 Walkman phone.  It features a paltry 1.3MP camera with video recording, a 1.8-inch 128×160 display, memory stick card slot, FM radio with RDS, Opera web browser, Bluetooth and an Ambient Black finish.  The W205 will support GSM/GPRS/900/1800, while the 205A variant will support GSM/GPRS 850/1900.  Expect the W205 to launch in Q3 2009.

[SonyEricsson]

Still thinking about picking up Sony’s newest Walkman, the NWZ-X1000, when it hits store shelves sometime next quarter?  SonyInsider scored a video walk through of the 3-inch OLED touchscreen PMP.  I particularly like the built-in noise cancellation option, even though it will be a battery suck.

Video after the ‘leap’

[SonyInsider]

Sony’s NWZ-X1000 Walkman with 3-inch AMOLED touchscreen just got a price and release date in the UK courtesy of Amazon.  The 32GB will run you about $400 while the 16Gb will cost you $300.  Expect the player to ship in the next 2-5 weeks.

Sorry, no word on price or release date for the US.

[Amazon via Oled-Display]

As MWC draws closers we continue to see more and more handset leaks.  The reality of the matter is that the manufactures are ‘leaking’ many of these product images to generate buzz.  Regardless though, we still wanna to know more about Sony Ericsson’s Hikaru Walkman phone.  What we do know is that it includes a 2.6-inch screen (not sure if touch), Walkman player 4.0, 3.5mm headphone jack, WiFi, A-GPS and an 8MP camera.

And in case you’re wondering, Hikaru means ‘to shine’, at least according to Wikipedia.

[SEMCBlog]

Features:

• 8GB flash storage
• 2-inch LCD screen, plays movies, photos and music
• FM radio, 5 band equalizer