Sony W-series Walkman MP3 player

Apple's recent re-design of its iPod Shuffle wasn't exactly greeted with universal enthusiasm. Now Sony has come at the idea of a screenless music player from a wholly different direction and decided to build the player directly into the earphones – or vice versa, depending on how you look at things. Sounds clever, but does it …

[Anonymous Coward]

Wonderful workout player

Picked this up over the weekend. Love it. The SQ isn't as great as my S639 and Cowon i7, but it is still good enough for none-critical listening. The in-ears appears to be the same (EX082/EX85), provides ok isolation and is far better than the crap Apple bundles their iPods with. The controls are also intuitively placed.

[Anonymous Coward]

"it would be a pretty straightforward snatch

and grab for any felonious urban youth that you happened to encounter."

unless you beat them at their own game and wear hoody

[Anonymous Coward]

ninety percent?

I have no idea how you can give something like this 90% when it supports so few file formats. I could do with a new music player for the gym, but if it doesn't support ogg/flac I'm afraid it's the functional equivalent of a tepid turd.

[Alex]

More memory, same price

Not much to ask for ... well, yeah, ok it is.

Interesting idea, although it's interesting to note that it's not MAC compatible, yet can link in with iTunes... and that it's Win compatible, but yet not WMA... Hmmm... Something is afoot here..

Nice idea though.

[Bad Beaver]

"£59" is not enough of a title

It's more like €80+ over here.

Not bad, Sony.

[Harvey Trowell]

Looks a bit daft, that.

However their NWZ-B135 at £25 for 2GB is a good USB rechargable drag and drop player which sounds decent with a good pair of phones and has a small but perfectly functional OLED screen and an equalizer, great value. Advert ends, rant begins...

And another thing, why oh why oh (spells yoyo) why does the Register house style for reviews insist on using a regal "we" when an "I" would make the reviewer sound significantly less stupid? The following passage gives the impression that the writer has delusions of grandeur or is in the bizarre habit of sharing a pair of headphones for three-legged jogging excursions and flights:

"The longest we wore the player for was a little over three hours while on a flight and at the end we were pleasantly free of any sort of earache.

To see how well the player stayed in position in day-to-day use we took it on a quick jog up and down Regent Street early one morning. Not only did it not shake loose during our run but it even stayed firmly in place when we tripped over a curb edge and ended up face down on the pavement in a tangle of limbs and expletives. The things we do in the name of a comprehensive product test..."

Then again, if the editors were concerned about the reviewer sounding stupid, the kind thing to do would have been to chop out the shagging gag.

[Dave]

Boycott

Sony have done way too many bad things in the past for me to consider buying anything from them.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Dave

Then what do you use?

Apple? lol

[Mark]

re: Boycott

I see the HD DVD / XBox losers have made it here... They must have a "sony" filter on.....

[Another Anonymous Coward]

Hmm...

While I like the concept of integrating the player into the earphones, I don't think this was the best way to go about it.

Anyone wearing those would look like a right muppet, and get stared at with a level of derision normally reserved for people on segways.

Paris, who is clearly pressing "skip" on her glasses with integrated MP3.

[David Paul Morgan]

does anyone make...

...bluetooth stereo headphones for deaf people?

Deaf people might like a pair of hearing aids that function as a BT add-on. then you could use ANY compliant music player. a tentative thumbs up, as I prefer my Sony noise-cancelling headphones for my daily commute.