Вчера решился написать на Амазоне обзор этого плеера. 4/5. Не променяю его ни на какие коврижки.

I don’t like Apple and neither understand nor want to participate in the iPod mania. My experience with Sony walkmans (I’ve got two MD walkmans before plus MD hardware) has always been positive, and the choice of NW-HD3 was obvious.

Here are my impressions:

+ Sound quality in incredible (I don’t have the background noise some people are complaining about);
+ Navigation is convenient; I’m able to control the device when it’s in my pocket;
+ Native MP3 playback is nice: I’ve got my previous collection of 300 CDs encoded into MP3 because I couldn’t take all of the CDs with me when I moved; NW-HD3 didn’t require me to decrease the already decreased quality of the music by converting MP3s into ATRAC.

* The battery lasts for 14-16 hours, not 30 (I’m mostly listening to ATRAC3Plus-encoded music);
* The charger is inconvenient but seems to be hard to break 🙂
* The screen is large but long song names get scrolled just once.
* Sony’s HD-CASE1 hard carrying case became available just recently; it’s still hard to find. It’s a must if you don’t carry your HD3 in your pocket (as I do).
* SONY Connect music store is a joke. It doesn’t have what I like (various kinds of metal and rock). I downloaded a few songs from it and they seemed to be in ATRAC3 132 kBps – could’ve been ATRAC3Plus 256 (I didn’t find a way to switch the format).

– The software takes getting used to. I tried SonicStage 2.3, 3.0 and 3.1. Upgrade requires you to re-authorize your player (kind of inconvenient). The latest release of SonicStage (3.1) occasinally terminates with some error.
– The player sorts music by album name, not by the release year. It’s a bit confusing.
– The most annoying feature is that the player forgets the song that was played before charging it, and you have to look for it again.

It should be noted that I don’t need some features many people find extremely useful: playlists, genres, games, organizers, etc. I know all the albums I record on my player (so far I’ve put 12 Gigs into it), and thanks to the fast navigation I can access any of them in a matter of seconds.

Buying this walkman was my conscious decision which I didn’t regret.

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