It looks like if you want to get a hands-on with Sony's latest Walkman, the touchscreen NWZ-X1000, you've got to do two things: travel to Japan, and seriously glad-hand the product. Despite our efforts in Vegas, the Sony crew wouldn't let us snag the player from
under its glass housing, but the Stuff team gets to toy with the OLED-faced PMP in this video. From the looks of things, Sony is at pains to recreate something akin to Cover Flow, but the rest of the UI looks sadly like a whole bunch of Windows CE-based devices we see coming out of Asia on a daily basis. Of course, this might be an early iteration of the interface, so we'll hold our final judgments till we get a thorough hands-on with the PMP. The player is set to come in 16GB and 32GB iterations, and will launch sometime this Summer. For now, enjoy the video after the break.
Update: Sony's people tell us that you're looking at $299 for the 16GB and $399 for 32 -- right in line with the iPod touch.
[Via
anythingbutipod]
posted Jan 13th 2009 9:24AM
horrible unresponsive screen
Says you. It looks just fine to me. The first few tries it looks like the reviewer was trying to be as delicate as possible, but starts going for it as he should by the end and it's no slower than an iPod Touch. (iPod Touch owner)
It really is unresponsive. I bet it's YouTube's s**tload of low FPS vids that made Tes's brain spontaneously and unconsciously filling the missing frames whenever s/he sees a YouTube clip.
Interface looks slick.
Yeah. I don't see what's so bad or "Windows CE like" about it?
yep and its not even finished yet how good could this get...
Have a look at those Walkman's at the end... owning one of those beasts back in the day made you one cool cat in school.
Best Buy is selling ipod touch 16GB for $230
Can you beat that deal?
Who is it you're actually talking to right now?
Sometimes price do not equal to anything.
Will you try to compare with a drop of water and a diamond with its price? No.
I am a post-iPod user and now I turned to Sony because of the excellent sound quality, Sony really does well. And compare two absolutely different quality products by price is nonsense.
No, they're not. I would probably buy one at that price. Maybe you bought an open box at that price, but I seriously doubt that as well.
SUNNY,
price is all relative. water is more expensive than diamonds, if you live in a place with no water.
iPod touch is the best PMP on the market.
If the touch is the best device on the market, why can't I play flac, or divx files natively so we don't have to spend time converting it. What about going to sites with flash embedded, or powering headphones that have an Impedance of over 32 but 50 or under(Cowon D2 can)? What about a sound quality that doesn't require extra wires or equipment? So the best I think not.
We still have too less information about this one.
I don't know this one's sound qullity. i know ipod touch and it have really great sound.
I don't know this one's cpu speed, ram size and it's web browser's speed. ipod touch have 533 MHz and 128 MB DRAM and safari
FM and voice cancelling is good. but ipod touch have bigger screean for video, app-store games for ipod touch surely make ipod touch at advantage (for now)
I hate the iPod sound quality and Sony is the best choice for audio player
But any words about the price?
I can seriously see Sony dumping some RF into this and making a serious iPhone competitor.
my only question is why arent they putting this kind of work and attention into their cell phone line? because if they made it a little bigger, and got rid of the WTF marble exterior, the NWZ would make one very nice cellphone.
I have to say that the manual graphic equaliser is a huge plus! I hate the presets that I have on my iPhone.
hey im happy you say this! is it stupid yes or no... No way I can get it to play like I want... sometime when audiobooks are too sibilent or muddy bassy I really need to adjust but there is no f*cking equalizer on the supposely NUMBER 1 player..!
This is a strong negative point against the ipod.
This thing still looks great. Just worried that Sony is going to be way to proud of it in the price department.
Looks slow and laggy. Saying it's "no slower than an iPod touch" doesn't impress me, there's a few reasons I don't own an iPod touch and that's one of them. I'll wait for the next iteration of the Zune.
Whats the battery life like on this player??? I've been looking everywhere for that bit of info....
No one's asking the real question: Why'd a tit magazine get an "exclusive" over Engadget, Official Blog of CES?
tits?
Because they know that Engadget will slag them because:
It has rough edges as an unfinished, not ready for market product
Engadget caters to its readers who like to whine and complain about missing features
It doesn't run a variant of OS-X
(choose all that apply)
wish they would make one same but without the touchscreen...
and without glossy screen too, if possible.
Since it's a Walkman, there are a few things to be expected:
1. way above average battery life
2. excellent sound quality & sound enhancement options
3. great screen
4. proprietary port
5. not so friendly price tag
and a few things I suggest not to waste your time praying for:
1. memory expansion slot
2. removable battery
3. home brew apps
4. accept popular audio formats like OGG, FLAC, APE et cetera.. and
5. a free carrying pouch
Sony has a reason behind releasing the device in summer: It's not ready yet! So yes, the UI isn't as slick as the Touch right now. We'll just have to wait for it to be ready and then you guys can go on and fuss about the unresponsiveness. But the bottom line is that Sony sound at its worst would still be better than an Apple could ever be. Apple's target audience is the casual listeners and hence they bundle pathetic earphones and don't put a manual equalizer in the iPods. Sony, on the other hand, love it or hate it, cares about the quality of music that people listen to. Another big feature will be the drag-and-drop. Not everyone likes to use iTunes. It's slow, cumbersome and a huge memory hog. EX series earphones with 13.5mm drivers...the pair alone costs about $50. Add to the that the Noise Cancellation circuitry and OLED screen and the $299-$399 doesn't look bad at all. The only problem here is that this is the price when the thing is outed sometime in summer. Apple will probably launch an improved iPod Touch at a lower price come September.
And about the battery life...I think Sony will be trumps here too. I wouldn't be surprised if they tout 30+ hours of audio and 8+ hours of video for this Walkman.
UI seems to lag more than the Touch (looking at how long it loads the album arts when viewing the album list). The touch screen seems to be not as responsive, not capacitive? Also, how good would the web browser be? Thing is, why would Sony price this the same as the Touch? Everybody knows, to compete with iPods, you have to put a much much more and radically better device and undercut the price. You cannot just put a kinda the same device and price it the same. The Touch is already available, and by the time Sony ship this, all Apple has to do is cut the price or release a new iPod lineup, and nobody would care about the Sony. Another thing is the Touch has all the app store, which is one of main reason it's exceptional, it's a platform. Sony should price this at least $50 cheaper, considering it's a plain PMP, not a platform with developer support for various programs and uses.
...we'll hold our final judgments till we get a thorough hands-on with the PMP...
Are you going to actually learn about the device as well before making your final judgement?
The post on the competing S9 had loads of misinformation and missing information which painted it in too much of a bad light. e.g. method of selecting songs/videos is odd because you have to hold down on the item to activate it or double tap it - holding does nothing, it's the release of your finger that triggers it and it's double tap because there's buttons at the bottom that you need to select an item first to use them on. Or no hardware home button - hold down the play/pause button.
Like_A_Glove @ Jan 13th 2009 11:51AM
and a few things I suggest not to waste your time praying for:
1. memory expansion slot
2. removable battery
3. home brew apps
4. accept popular audio formats like OGG, FLAC, APE et cetera.. and
5. a free carrying pouch
------------------------------
I looked at all the PMPs Engadget looked at, and I think the only one I found with expandable memory was the Memorex TouchMP. And this was the only one with wifi iirc. This walkman looks amazing, and I definitely think I may replace my touch with it (unless the gen 3 touch can pull off something great)
I love Sony, I love the Walkman, and anybody who has compared both the iPod and the Walkman can tell that the Walkman is the clear winner when it comes to sound quality. I own the NW-HD3, and it is such a fantastic device! However, Sony - please add HDD players to your current range; it's the only thing stopping me from replacing my 80GB 5G.
The iPod touch is still the winner, because it runs OSX and has the app store + safari for the best mobile browsing experience ever.
Yeah....not so much. As I recall on my old Mac, I could change the background. But that would explain the time it takes to boot up. Its one of those Power on, take a dump and come back sorta things. Safari is worse than IE. Everyday I used it it would crash and pester me to install yet another update. The app store is pretty useless. Sony doesn't like Zippo lighters very much. What is with you iTards? Its like a freaking cult! Macs are not that good OR nice. In fact I can find a cheaper better alternative to every Apple product on the market. Its not that hard....
iKurt, Opera would like to have a word with you.
RamRacer, Google Chrome would like to have a word with you also.
Sony is the same old Sony. Like *another* portable music device is what the market's clamoring for? They need their big home run, but I don't think is going to be it.
Where are all the Motorola trolls who chided them for making several iterations of the Razr? What is this, like the 59th time Sony's tried to repackage/rebrand/cash in on some mythical 80s allegiance to the Walkman "brand?"
Come up with something new. People have a tendency to like and respect that sort of thing.
Alright, think of an original idea for an mp3 player, come on, I dare ya.
Uh, OK, we're talking about Sony, but you want my ideas? Here are some ideas for features that would be far better additions than a weak-ass ripoff of CoverFlow, that I'll give you, gratis:
- wireless charging
- truly wireless earBUDS (no behind-the-neck strap)
- eye controlled UI
- gesture or tilt UI
- ability to edit ID3 tags on the the device w/on-screen keyboard
- open obex bluetooth for file transfer to other devices
I'll need consulting fees for any more free ideas though...
Great and useful information...
Regards,
SBL - audio Tagging