Sony Walkman NWZ-A815 review

This latest version of Sony's video Walkman is the first not to force you to use Sony's awkward SonicStage software to transfer media to it.

Nor does it insist on converting your music to ATRAC format before copying it. You can now use Microsoft's Media Transfer Protocol (MTP), so you can simply drag and drop files using Windows Explorer, synchronise with Windows Media Player, or use any program that supports the standard. Although the new Walkman can't play ATRAC files, you'll be able to listen to WMA and non-DRM AAC formats as well as Wav and MP3.

Sound quality was generally good, but treble could have been clearer and bass at default settings wasn't as deep or powerful as we would like. As a result, some tracks sounded flat, but we could correct this using the player's EQ settings. Other audio enhancement modes attempt, with varying degrees of success, to improve the quality of low-bit rate audio files, normalise the volume across your music collection and recreate various acoustic environments. The bundled ear-canal headphones aren't up to Sony's high standard, with surprisingly poor bass.

The NWZ-A815's rectangular shape isn't entirely comfortable to hold or use one-handed. Its design, button layout and interface are largely unchanged from previous models. The menu system is fairly simple to use, although the icon grid of the home menu screen is cluttered. You can browse tracks in various ways, including by the initial of a song, artist or album. Quick browsing features (such as by initial) aren't particularly necessary on a 2GB player, as you can't fit that many tracks on it, but could prove useful on high-capacity versions. The player's battery life was great at 21 hours and nine minutes for audio and just over four-and-a-half hours for video playback.

The Walkman can play MPEG4 videos created using the MPEG4 or H.264 codec at a maximum resolution of 320x240. Most videos created for the iPod will play happily. No conversion software is supplied, but plenty of freeware programs do the job. The 2in screen is bright and colours were fine. Additional brightness controls let you brighten dark images. You can watch videos vertically or horizontally, though the latter gives the greatest amount of available screen size.

The NWZ-A815 has only a 2GB capacity; the 4GB NWZ-A816 and 8GB NWZ-A818 cost £86 and £120 respectively. Sadly, while the NWZ-A815 is a decent MP3 player, it fails to stand out from the crowd. If you're picky about audio and video quality, you're better off with Samsung's YP-T9, while the new iPod Nano has better video quality.