Video: Hands-on Sony's NWZ-A829 Walkman with Bluetooth

We've had the good fortune of putting a Sony NWZ-A829 through its paces over the last few days. Remember, that's Sony's top of the line, 2.4-inch, QVGA Walkman with stereo Bluetooth A2DP and 16GB of flash. With Sony CEO, Howard Stringer, ceding portable audio victory to Apple, we had high hopes for the NWZ-A829 as an out of the box video player. After all, Howie said 9 months ago, "We have worked very hard to catch up so that in the age of video we will not suffer as much as we did in audio." So how did it do? See our take after the break.

Sony Walkman NWZ-A829

Update: We finally made it through a single battery charge (it's that good). Ours lasted 24 hours and 15 minutes under a constant load of about 1 hour of video, 4 hours of Bluetooth-enabled audio, and then another 19 hours of tethered audio.

• The included 13.5mm EX headphones are without a doubt some of the best, in-box buds you'll find. They perform equally well under the throaty, soulful, strain of Amy Winehouse (even at low volumes) or the high-pitched wail of the ambulance sent to collect her. Better yet, they make you look down-right cybernetic. The adjustable silicon ear inserts (S, M, L) are ridiculously comfortable even when worn for hours at a time.

• As good as the buds are, we can't help but wonder where the bundled Bluetooth adapter is. After all, one of the biggest selling points of the DAP is its support of A2DP and AVRCP Bluetooth profiles. They could have bundled a basic Bluetooth headphone adapter (think, G-sat BTH-820) for the wired headphones without noticeably increasing the price tag.

• On the subject of Bluetooth... well, the NWZ-A829's got it (for what that's worth). We paired the Walkman with a G-sat BTH-820 Bluetooth headphone adapter and EX headphones and began listening to music immediately. A dedicated Bluetooth button initiates and severs the headset bond -- a welcome, battery saving touch indeed. Now the rub: the compressed Bluetooth audio mucks up the experience. Especially after listening to the in-line buds. Of course, this is the performance we expected -- compressed MP3 audio compressed even further by the A2DP Bluetooth profile will never sound great.

• The look? Busy. For a modern flash player it has lots of buttons: power / option, home / back, Bluetooth, hold, a volume rocker, and 4-position navigation pad. Still, it's not busy bad, rather, it's busy high tech which to us is a good thing. Honestly, having used iPods extensively since generation one, the buttons on the Walkman feel damn-near revolutionary. Especially that beefy volume rocker and easy throwing hold switch. We just wonder how long Sony can hold out in the face of a relentless, "touch" campaign raging against tactility.

• Rejoice! Gone are the days of SonicStage and ATRAC. Now, Sony bundles Media Manager for Walkman (Windows only) and an ATRAC to MP3 "Convertion" Tool right on the CD. Unfortunately, these are only supported under Microsoft OSes. Having said that, OS X Leopard recognized the player just fine when we attached it over USB. Everything was laid out in neatly defined folders for music, photos, video, etc. Fine if you want to manage all your digital content yourself and don't want to bother with custom playlists or other niceties.
  

• Now the moment of truth: video. So we dragged a couple of videos into the Walkman Media Manager. We figured they would get sucked over to the Walkman or at worst, be converted into the MPEG-4/H.264 format the player recognizes. Nope. Oh Media Manager could do it, but you have to pay extra to turn it on. Like the Bluetooth headphones, there's added cost for functionality which should exist in the box. After all, Sony's not a market leader, they're playing catch up here. It's especially annoying when Media Manager plays the files but frustratingly (to the average user) will not transfer them. Instead, Joe User receives a message saying the file is "not compatible." So he buys the $12.95 Media Manager Pro for Walkman upgrade (via the always visible "Go Pro" tab) and grumbles to his friends about how lame Sony is.

• Once we had the video transfered it looked great... or at least as good as it gets on a 2.4-inch QVGA display.

All in all we like, but don't love our Walkman NWZ-A829. There's nothing particularly innovative here but it's definitely a high-quality player which should treat Windows users especially well over its lifetime. It's just not any better than similar flash offerings with sub-3-inch displays from SanDisk, Creative, Microsoft, iriver, Apple or Samsung. It's certainly not the video Walkman we hoped to be wowed by. Then again, Sony is probably better off pushing its PSP (with 4.3-inch display) for portable video than this tiny Walkman. And while Bluetooth stereo audio has its niche, we're certainly not going to plunk down an extra $100 (starting price) for a lesser-quality, Sony Bluetooth headset when such high quality buds are included in the $320 MSRP.

P.S. If there's anything else you want to know (we're still testing the battery) just call it out in the comments.

[Loc13 Posted Apr 2nd 2008 2:00AM]

1. the headphones included in the A829 aren't the same MDR-EX082 headphones found in the A720 and A810 series.

2. the sound quality of the Walkmans has always been superior and the A810 has received raving reviews across the board for that. I got an A728 from Best Buy more than 1 week ago, and the sound quality blows the Ipod away. Saying that it's no better than similar flash offerings from other companies is ridiculous.

3. the section on video playback, is that even part of the review? All I see is the reviewer complaining about the software provided, instead of the video playback quality. The 2.4" screen is fantastic, with very good viewing angles. I put chinese-sub anime on it, and I can read the subtitles comfortably. One anime episode takes up about 120-140MB in MP4 format. If you stop in the middle of a video playback, and say listen music for an hour or so, you can go back to the video and it would resume at where you left off last time.

4. Battery life is amazing. I only charged the Walkman once after the inital charging, and I listen to it at work most of the time. Definitely more than 30 hours of music playback.

5. The user interface is VERY intuitive, unlike what the reviewer suggested. Like someone has said, if you take the time to learn it, everything is only a few clicks away.

6. I wish it has custom screensaver and FM radio.

[(Unverified) Posted May 3rd 2008 9:53PM]

i had an ipod before i got one of these. THe sound will blow you away. the headphones never get uncomfortable or unfortablly loud. THey get loud but block out all other noise. I used them on the plane, never heard an engine sound. THe player is a good size, good memory and easy to find what i want when i want it. Sony all the way, well worth the xtra cost of all sony products. (I have a ps2, ps3, vaionotebook, psp and of course my walkman) hellz ya sony!!!

[(Unverified) Posted May 15th 2008 12:29AM]

I've had the nwz-a829 for a few weeks now. I bought it for the bluetooth capability. I have a BlueAnt headphone, and they sound great and give me freedom to workout without worrying about wires getting in the way. I can place the walkman several feet from me, and walk the gym floor to various machines. Truly a walkman with bluetooth. Additionally, it works great with wma format downloaded from the yahoo music store.

[(Unverified) Posted Jun 29th 2008 8:32AM]

how long do you have to do the initila charge for?? is it still 16 hours?

[tooodles Posted May 25th 2008 10:07AM]

i don't get why people say it doesn't do video well. it does it very well if you exclude ease of use/hand holding. if you use 3rd party software of your choice to encode the video it works fine. the playback is smooth, crisp, and the battery life is amazingly long during playback.

as for blue tooth, yea its basically useless. recompressing compressed audio is just a bad idea. a lot of money spent to avoid a wire that doesn't tether you in any real way,its not like its too heavy to carry and bluetooth range isn't long enough to leave it somewhere else anyways, and it drains the devices battery twice as fast. and of course you get the additional burden of worrying about your headphones battery as well which is just a chore.

basically forget the 820 series and get the 720 series which is identical minus bluetooth.