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This isn’t your model run of the mill MP3 player. It’s got stereo speakers, FM radio, a microSD card slot, line-in, and a new D-Click system. Then there’s the large 2.4-inch TFT LCD screen. Did I talk about, it weighs just two ounces? This sweet MP3 Player is on hand in two aptitude, a 4GB version and 8GB, both with flash memory. Some color choices are Solid Black, White, Sky Blue, and Pink.

You get a bunch of audio and video formats, Rhapsody, Napster, and Yahoo payment services, voice recording, text watcher, photo viewer, and more. The battery will tender you 5 hours of video playback or 17 hours of music. You wouldn’t be expecting it to be virtually priced, but it is, at just $109.99 for the 4GB model or $159.99 for the 8GB version. Nice! You are receiving a lot for your money.

A great value music player with built-in USB connection, FM tuner and voice recording function. Keeping up with the tradition of manifesting the best in technology, Sony India has launched its latest MP3 Walkman NWD-B100 series. Compact and stylish in look, this great value MP3 player features a USB direct connect, a three-line color LCD display, an FM tuner with radio recording means and a voice recorder function with a built-in microphone.

Weighing just 30g, NWD-B100 connects directly to the computer through a USB port without the harms of cables. The Sony MP3 player adopts the drag-and-drop interface for music and files transfer without any software installation that makes it easy to connect with one’s music collection whenever and wherever.

The newly developed “Auto Transfer” software built into the NWD-B100 makes it incredibly simple to load up the player with your favorite digital tunes. This smart software automatically searches and transfers the most of late added tracks from your PC to your MP3 Walkman, ensuring you are always up to date by means of your latest tunes 1. Also if you’re relaxing at home, you can enjoy listening to the entire tunes store on your Walkman from end to end the speakers of your Sony mini/micro hi-fi system via the USB connection. For extra convenience, the NWD-B100 will charge its battery through the USB port while connected to a PC. Extending the capabilities of the MP3 Walkman NWD-B100 series are the FM tuner and the voice recoding function.

With a 3-line colour LCD display, the NWD-B100 displays a simple menu for easy and intuitive navigation. Users can also search for their desired song fast by artist, album and song2 or by the folder and file name. Its 6 dissimilar equalizer functions of heavy, rock, classic, pop, jazz and custom mean sound can be tuned for your listening happiness.

The Sony MP3 Walkman NWD-B100 series player comes in two different capacities and colors. Available at select Sony display area across the country, the NWD-B100 also comes complete with contented, easy-to-wear headphones that team superb audio quality with stylish design.

1 If the memory capacity is full, you have to delete the songs manually.

2 Songs with ID3 tag information

3 Song length: 4 mins appox.; Size :4MB @488kpbs Format MP3.

Creative launched its tiny ZEN Stone MP3 player in India. This digital audio player is a lightweight one that has a 1GB capacity. Do not get fooled by the player’s small size. Like the saying goes, “all good things come in small packages,” this player too is extraordinarily built with a featherweight and miniscule body. The Creative ZEN Stone has a smooth contoured design that feels great to hold. It has a glossy finish and is obtainable in a number of colors to suit just about anyone’s flavor and style.

The ZEN Stone sports a multi-color LED screen that provides users with a glimpse of the player are charging rank as well as its playback status. Not only that, this MP3 player features ergonomically designed wheel that are very user-friendly.

Loading up the Creative Zen Stone with your favorite music is a piece of cake. All you have to do is drag and drop the melody tracks to the folder. With 1GB aptitude, this player is able to store around 500 songs. You can either select the “Play” or “Random” functions to hear your music. A single charge of the ZEN Stone’s rechargeable, built-in battery offers up to 10 hours of incessant playback time.

The Creative ZEN Stone player comes bundled with the Creative Media Lite software. You could also personalize your player with attractive translucent skins that include a clip; a sporty armband and even a stylish key chain with a minute case that houses the ZEN Stone.

The Creative ZEN Stone is accessible in six colors- black, white, red, blue, pink and green. It is accessible for a price of Rs.3299 (excluding taxes) and comes package with a free ZEN Stone key chain worth Rs.500 as well as a 1-year warranty.

Everyone knows Walkman but at the same time hardly does anyone realize that it’s a trademark range of players from Sony. The old Sony Walkman line-up consisted of just cassette players and CD-Players. It’s been sometime now since Sony launched their flash based Walkman players. But unfortunately for the masses, though they sounded the best, most disliked them because they were able to play only Sony Audio Formats like AAC, AAC+, etc.

Now the Walkman line-up has been revamped to support MP3 and WMA as well. But it has made it pretty late as all the glory these days for portable audio has been taken-up by the iPod. Nevertheless Sony will always remain Sony and those loyal will surely opt for it, because of its top-notch excellence products.

Today, we have the Sony Walkman S2 Sports, which is a flash-based DAP. It is no ordinary player, the name states that it’s sporty and destined for athletes or for the physique conscious. The player have sport features like calorie counter, etc. previous we had seen a similar player from Genius by means of the sport features; Genius MP3-DJ Sport. But then that’s Genius and this is Sony the old gold quality kings.

The Sony Walkman S2 Sports comes with a lot of accessories. Not just to make it a good deal, but because it sports an MP3 player. These accessories are meant to make it easy to keep in tune with your favorite songs while performing tiring activities. A similar kind of bundle was seen by means of the Genius. Let’s have a run through with the bundle before we go for a complete workout through the rest of the review.

The Sony Walkman S2 Player is a flash-based DAPS and is available in 1GB and 2GB variants. The 1GB variant is black in color while the 2GB is silver. The black looks simply stunning especially with the unique design that the player flaunts. The player is cylindrical in shape. The player reminded me of a digital thermometer with a display just

That it was way thicker. I’ll explain why a thermometer later. The player’s size and shape can be easily compared to that of a cigar. The player has a display at one end followed by a tiny Disp key, then a quantity UP/Down control, Play/Stop button, and a knob at the end. All of the controls are placed along the length of the player.

The earphone jack is placed on one side and a USB port on the other side. The USB port has a cover, which locks neatly and doesn’t come off easily. The player has an amazing build quality. Even though the portion of the player that houses the display and the surface for the buttons is glass; it feels all sturdy and there is no doubt of fragility. The only problem faced with the glass was that the paint used to name the tiny button and a Walkman logo eventually will find its way off the glass. The rest of the player is made from brushed aluminum.

The player is Water Resistant and that means you can do your jogging in the rain as well without bothering about the player going dead. The water just slips off the body of the player and there is no sign of irrigate holding in. For example I got it wet under a wash basin tap and then just flicked it a couple of times to notice hardly any water on it. This adds completely to the sportyness of the player.

The Interface

The S2 Sports has a neat interface. The interface is made very simple-to-use with the knob. The knob has 3 levels; at one level it’s “hold”; at the second level, it lets you scroll through the songs, and in the third level you can browse through Albums (or which ever sorting method you choose.) The reason why I earlier called the player a thermometer was because of the G-Sensor feature. This feature enables you turn shuffle ON/OFF by just shacking/flicking the player to and fro 3 times (each.) Remember the times when your doc used to flick the thermometer to get the mercury down before taking a reading?

Anyways, this is a neat feature and comes in very handy while jogging keeping in mind the player is strapped to your arm. So instead of actually reaching out to the player to change the track all you have to do is hammer the air 3 times and the song will change with the shuffle turning ON. If Shuffle is already ON then you’d have to hammer the air 6 times; 3 to turn it Off and then 3 again to turn it ON (considering you have enough strength to do that.)

The player controls are towards the right of the player, but S2 Sports doesn’t discriminate between leftties and righties. A rotation of the display under Settings, Advanced Options makes it possible for the left-oriented to use the player with utmost ease though the button naming in paint/impression doesn’t rotate.

The tiny Disp button lets you switch between different displays, like you can get info on the song, check the number of steps you took, calories burnt, the time/date, and even keep a visualization running. On keeping the Disp pressed, you can see the list of modes offered by the player. First up is the search mode. You can search for tracks by Artist, Song, and Album. This is apart from the browsing mode by the knob. Next up is the Sports Mode, which I’ll take up separately. Then there is Stopwatch mode that is a stopwatch, should I even explain further? The only thing worth mentioning is that the music still continues to play even with in the Stopwatch mode. Next is the Music mode followed by an FM. Then there is a Playlist mode to browse playlists or make a Playlist. Last in the mode list is the Settings option. Play mode, track sorting, Equalizer, etc, is under Settings; the options under Settings change with the mode you’re using the player in.

Sport style

The Sport mode just lets you keep track of a particular workout for example something like you plan on top of burning a couple of calories before you go back home. Then you can set the amount of calories or the amount of time you wish to workout or for that matter how many Km/miles you wish to run/stroll make sure to set the values like your height, weight, avg. footstep, and avg. run/jog step under Settings, Advanced Options; else you’ll have misguiding results.

The Sony Walkman S2 Sports sells for a retail price of Rs. 8,999 with a one-year warranty. The price is steep, but for all that is there at the contribution and impending from a brand like Sony, it’s quite expected. At this price you could most likely get DAPs that have a higher capacity. There is a sea of DAPs to decide from and this player is not the best choice especially if not for the Sport features. The audio quality is superb, but there are other players which offer at-par audio dominance like the iAudio’s.

The Samsung P2 is the newest. It’s not the greatest, but it’s pretty good, and it’s damn cheap for what you get. Anyone who wants a touch screen media player should definitely have a good seem at it. The P2 looks smooth and black - a plan you’ll recognize as a Samsung if you’ve seen the K5 or the T10. The 3 inch touch screen dominates. There’s a little light below it which as far as I can tell does nothing but flash during start-up.

You’re paying extra for the touch screen, so you should really be getting your money’s worth. The P2’s is pretty good, but not as precise as Apple’s iTouch. Navigating menus just isn’t since easy, and you make fault. As usual, I should point out that I have quite meaty hands, which means touch screens don’t play nice with me in general.

There are four buttons, two on each side - power/play, volume up, volume down and a hold switch. A main menu shortcut button, even icon on the touch screen menus, is missing. The main screen has three layouts. Some take more practice with the touch screen that others to use properly, but the navigation is intuitive and easy. Normally reviews resolve talk about the music first, because that’s really what you’re buying it for. But the best part of the P2, for me, was the customizability.

You can choose you main screen, but you can also choose the type font (from 3 choices). For music there are 11 equalizer pre-sets as well as a nine-band customizable equalizer, which will please audiophiles. The sound is very good for a player of this size, similar to the Samsung T10. For my money Curative’s and Sony’s top-end players are better but only the picky will be disappointed with the P2.

While files play the touch screen has icons to pause and skip forward and back. Below are the back icon, equalizer shortcut, and menu (for sound effects, equaliser, play modes, play screen, and “horizontal stroke”). Swishing your finger horizontally (”horizontal stroke”) skips to the next track or one before it, depending which way you move your finger. You can customize this to move within a track instead, down to five second intervals.

Above the track info are the battery indicator and time. It’s a nice touch - Samsung has really made use of the extra space a touch screen allows to put in the info you’d want. The quality of the videos is good, you won’t have much to complain about there. Touching the bottom of the screen brings up the control menu. It comes with a small plastic device that props it up to watch movies. Photos showed clearly and bright on the screen, one of the best average players for photo I’ve seen at this price so far. In slideshow mode you can use your finger to move onward or back. This is a bit tricky though, because pressing the display bring awake the menu to. You have to swish your finger to switch photos, which takes a bit of practice to get right.

Also, pressing in different parts of the screen sometimes does different things. In a slideshow, pressing on the bottom bit (concerning as wide as your thumb) only brings up the slideshow menu, and not the settings single (which you have to press in the middle for).

There’s also Bluetooth, file browser, a text viewer, calendar, world clock and pod cast player. The quality of the FM radio was very good, though I found finding channels with the touch screen quite tricky. I often had to move my finger the opposite way to what I thought I should to get it working. File support wasn’t so hot. It only plays the most common audio formats (MP3, WMA and protected WMA). Photos are limited to JPG and video to WMV and WMA. Battery life was very good for a touchscreen - 35 hours of audio, 5 hours of video. I never pushed it the limits to test this though, and You can add songs to the built-in alarm too, so you can wake up to the music of your choice instead of beeps.

It’s a high-quality player, and at $379 for 8GB it’s $100 cheaper than the 8GB iPod Touch. It’s really the same price at the LG Touch Me 4GB model. At that price, and with these features, it’s a no brainier if you want a touchscreen media player. You are paying extra for the touchscreen though, about $50 on the equivalent iPod nano.