nw-s600
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Sony's NW-S600 and NW-S700 DAPs reviewed
Remember Sony's new sultry super-slim music players? Well, a French site called Génération MP3 has gotten a hold of the NW-S600 (1GB) and the NW-S700 (4GB), and found that while the players may look similar, they're indeed different, with the higher-end model bringing noise-canceling headphones and an FM tuner as well. But while the players might look and even sound great, the site found some significant flaws with the S700, and some related problems on its slightly stripped-down sibling. First, on the S700, the headphone jack is proprietary, forcing you to use the standard noise-canceling MDR-NC022 headphones. While the reviewer admits that the MDR-NC022 headphones do sound good, you're stuck with 'em. Further, both players transferred data very slowly: 166MB in 175 seconds, or 0.9MB/sec, leading the site to wonder if in fact Sony was using USB 1.1 instead of the speedier USB 2.0. GMP3 gave the players a three (out of five) headphone rating, citing the solid sound quality as pretty much the only thing they have going for 'em.
Sony's NW-S700/600 series: the best sounding Walkmans, ever
Sony Japan just spilled the deets on their new Walkman S series of digital audio players. The NW-S700 players deliver pretty much exactly what we've already seen: 4/2/1GB of flash memory, 3-line OLED display capable of dishin' albumn art, FM tuner, playback for MP3/ATRAC/ATRAC Advanced Lossless/Linear PCM and AAC/WMA sans DRM files, and the ability to record from external audio sources direct to PCM or ATRAC3Plus. The player features a quick 3-minute charge for 3-hours of playback or a 2-hour full-charge for up to 50-hours playback of all those 132kbps ATRAC files you probably don't have. Finally, Sony claims that the NW-S700 series delivers the highest sound quality in Walkman history due to the integrated noise cancelation and bundled 13.5mmEX earbuds with integrated in-line Mic. Nice, if indeed their claims of 75% less ambient noise are true. Also announced are the NW-S600 players offered in 2/1GB flavas but without the FM tuner and built-in noise cancelation. The NW-S700 players will hit October 21st in Japan in your choice of black, violet, gold, and pink while the NW-S600 DAPs are set to roll on November 18th in black, blue and pink. And of course, there's the limited edition NW-S706F/T in brown which, as you know, is the new white of consumer electronics. Expect to fork over up to ¥29,000 (about $242) for the 4GB NW-S706F or as little as ¥15,000 (about $125) for the 1GB NS-S603 model.[Via Impress]
