Sony NW-A3000 MP3 Player
Review by John Wordsworth authored on Friday 12 May 2006 (2359)
The Sony NW-A3000 is a stylish 20Gb MP3 player with an extended battery life to challenge that of even the latest iPods.
The NW-A3000 certainly looks like it belongs in the 21st century. With it's sleek exterior and rounded edges, the device fits comfortably into the palm of any hand. The OLED screen sits underneath the case's transparent exterior providing an easy to read and bright display. At night time, the display is amazingly easy to read, even half way across a room - however, in bright daylight the screen can be a little awkward to perceive and a slightly frustrating shadow effect is caused by the fact that the OLED screen sits under the cover (so you get a reflection on the cover, half a centimetre above the screen). All said though, it definitely looks pretty.
Unlike the majority of the competition, Sony haven't tried to introduce anything revolutionary with the user interface. The simple 4 way pad with the 'ok' button in the centre is fairly standard, but the player's software has been made in an efficient manner and it's surprisingly easy to find your way around your tracks and albums. There's a handy volume jog button on the side which makes it very easy to nudge the volume when the player sits in your pocket and the two buttons on the front bring up the menu and go back. There's also an Artist Link button on the side, which is meant to offer a quick way of finding similar tracks by other artists. This is a nice but fairly pointless idea that requires you to download all of the artist link information through their software - not a quick task, which renders this button useless for myself.
Moving onto perhaps the most important feature from an MP3 player - the quality of the output. And I have to say that I've no qualms on this front at all. The sound is great, even if the bundled headphones are quite simply average, and there are no noticable artefacts or problems with the output. The volume is a little quiet by default, but you can remove the AVLS limiting feature to make it loud enough for the majority of the population (the volume hack is available at the bottom of this review), but if that wasn't enough - there's also a firmware hack that you can enter by going through the service menu (takes 2 minutes and is very easy) which brings the maximum volume of the device to something nice and potentially damaging.
The main thing which lets this device down (but also lets down the majority of Hard-drive MP3 players these days) is the fact that you have to use the, rather pathetic, bundled software to load tracks onto your player. While the device appears as a wonderful 20Gb hard-drive when you plug it into your USB port, you won't have any joy actually playing any of the songs that you copy onto your device unless they were loaded on using the CONNECT player or (downloadable from Sony if you prefer) Sonic Stage. While the bundled version of CONNECT is absolutely pathetic, it automatically updates from the internet and the upgraded version seems to work like a treat. It's still not the most efficient software in the world, but it's certainly usable and has a fairly convenient function that allows it to keep your MP3 player's song list parallel to that on your PC. All in all, the updated version of the software is average - nothing to write home about, but nothing to moan about either. It's just a shame we can't use Media Player, or even just drag and drop. It's also worth noting that the new Sonic Stage (version 4) is actually quite a competent piece of softare. Definitely worth looking into over the CONNECT software.
The last thing that's important for MP3 players of today is battery life, and this certainly doesn't miss out on this front. With a quoted 35 hour battery life, the device lasted in the region of 32 hours for myself while playing MP3s at a fairly decent volume. 32 Hours is quite an impressive length of time, and combined with the fact that the device can be fully charged from the mains in only 3-4 hours, or from a USB port in just over double that, this device is definitely something that won't be annoying you on the route too often by dying on you. As for peripherals, there's very little in the packaging that I would consider 'extra', but it certainly comes with everything you need (USB cable, power supply, headphones, device and software).
In Short: All in all, this is certainly a very stylish MP3 player that performs exceptionally well in every way that an MP3 player should. With great sound, impressive battery life and a readable screen (except in bright sunlight) - there's very little you can fault about this device. It also acts at a 20Gb portable storage device - very useful. My only advice to Sony would be to sort out their software issues (which they've almost done now) and to consider adding a few more extra features to the device. So, while you could probably save �10 / �20 on other devices the same size, I would definitely consider the extra for the extended battery life and the rather pretty exterior.
A3000 Volume Hack: If you want to disable the volume limit on your A3000 MP3 Player using the following AVLS Hack, then simply go through the following steps and your volume will then go up to 30 instead of 20.
- Power up your device and press the [HOLD] button to enter hold mode.
- Hold down the [ARTIST LINK] button (on the left of the device) and then press in succession [UP], [DOWN], [OPTION], [UP], [DOWN], [RIGHT], [LEFT], [RIGHT], [LEFT], [LEFT], [PLAY/PAUSE], [OPTION]
- Press [HOLD] again and you should be in the Service Mode.
- Press [RIGHT] to display the main menu items and then scroll down using [UP] or [DOWN] until you reach the item "OTHERS". Then press [RIGHT] to enter this sub-menu.
- Again, scroll through this submenu using [UP] or [DOWN] and find the item "SP SELECT."
- Press the [PLAY/PAUSE] button and the unit should display "ON/OFF". Now press [OPTION] and then sound pressure regulation ON or OFF should become selected.
- Now press the [PLAY/PAUSE] button to enter this option.
- Finally, press and hold the [BACK] button for a few seconds and then turn the player off. When you restart, you should be able to set the volume up to 30.
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love the name bro lol!!! extended battery life yes !!!beats the pants off an ipod mini software is next too useless sony had badly messed that up ease of use its interface is not as good as an ipod but it wins it foe me on the battery life and i got a 3 year or so lod one on ebay for thirty pounds and the battery is still ok good VFM PEACE R WORDSWORTH isleworth middx |
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