Sony NW-A3000 review

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Verdict:

The NW-A3000's lack of support for protected WMA files is restrictive if you plan to buy music online. If you don't, and you can live with its odd looks, its battery life and sound quality make it a great choice

Review Date: 27 Apr 2006

Price when reviewed: inc VAT

Our Rating 5 stars out of 5

ExpertReviews Award

Review
Specs

Sony's NW-A3000 is a higher-capacity version of the NW-A1000, reviewed in Shopper February 2006. Both remind us of a bar of soap, but the design works better on the larger NW-A3000. It's available in silver or an odd violet colour.

One of our criticisms of the NW-A1000 was that it couldn't play WMA files. Sony has released firmware for both players that corrects this. The upgrade is available from Sony's website and we found it easy to apply.

WMA playback makes the player far more flexible, but it still doesn't support protected files. If you want to buy music online, you're restricted to protected ATRAC files from the Sony Connect online store.

You can copy data files to the NW-A3000 using Windows Explorer, but it plays only music files that have been transferred by Sony's Connect software. This is similar to iTunes, but not as comprehensive or easy to use.

Sony's headphones are as good as the Sennheiser sets iRiver supplies with its players. The NW-A3000 is one of the best-sounding players here through all the headphones we tried.

The NW-A3000 had the best battery life in our tests, lasting over 22 hours. It's a little heavy, but feels solid.

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