Sony NWZ-A815 (2 GB) Digital Media Player

Many music players exist on the market, but most of the flash based units out have build quality issues or sound quality issues. Does Sony live up to their heritage of quality goods or is it another flash player in an over saturated market that does not perform, read and find out.

Sony opts to enclose the device in a blister pack, I was not impressed at the ergonomics of getting the player out of the package. I wish Sony would have just used a simple shrink wrapped box for both economic reasons and ergonomics as well as environmental reasons. Also the packaging does not make it clear that Sony is supplying high quality in ear monitors on the box (it says this in the package materials in small print but should be a key feature).

Packaging: 2 out of 10 (stop using blister packs)

A standard fair of included accessories come with the player, except for one notable accessory over other player. The A815 comes with a very good pair of in ear monitors with 3 sizes of tips versus cheap ear buds that other players come with. More on the ear buds later. Other wise you get a CD with media player on it, a usb cable, and a cradle adapter for the optional cradle. Also some printed material accompany the player. The usb cable is proprietary meaning that finding a replacement usb cable could be difficult and expensive.

Accessories: 8 out of 10 (really good in ear monitors come with the unit saving you money on having to purchase another pair for most listeners)

After managing to remove the player from the packaging, I was very pleasantly surprised that the unit was constructed of metal and not plastic. The A815 feels very sturdy and seems well wighted. Ergonomics are excellent as button placement makes for comfortable usage. USB and headphone connections are the the bottom of th unit. The paint on the player is high quality and after many months of use has been scratch resistant. The LCD is protected by very hard scratch resistant plastic. Also the sealing of the unit has been done well as I have not noticed any dust entering the area between the LCD and plastic screen cover.

Build and ergonomics: 10 out of 10.



Sony has long been one of the companies to use extremely poor drm crippled software to pair with any of their mp3 player product. The A815 is different though, it is a standard mass storage or MTP device. Being a standard storage compliant USB device or an MTP device give the user the flexibility to drag and drop content on the player. Being MTP compliant also means that it works with windows media player. I have tested the unit on windows XP, windows Vista, and Ubuntu 7.10 with no issues tranfering music. Sony only states the player will work with windows XP and Vista, but it will work with basically any OS with either MTP (media player) or mass storage support (so basically if you can use a thumb drive on your computer).

Connectivity: 10 out of 10 (basic and just plain works)

Sony has opted to use a 2 inch color LCD on the A815 and is definitely a good fit. The LCD is a QVGA lcd with 260k color support. At only 2 inches with a QVGA resolution the screen is very sharp and vivid. Viewing angles are above average, and the display is very dynamic and responsive. In all navigation, video, and photos look great. The only negative is that the back light leakage means that blacks only appear black to the eye in well lit environments, in dark environments the blacks look a bit on the gray side.
LCD: 9 out of 10 (excellent but not perfect)

Navigation is very intuitive and simple, most peoples will not need a manual to figure out how to perform simple tasks on the A815. You can not however customize the user interface much, though this is usually not an issue for most user (eg you cant select a wall paper or change interface colors).

Navigation: 10 out of 10 (very easy)

Video playback is excellent, yet only at 2 inches maybe an eye strain for prolonged use. Video is smooth and block free at moderate quality. Sony does not give you conversion software and the unit only supports 2 formats. Though free conversion software can be found on line. I wish Sony would support more formats live standard divx or xvid.

Video Playback: 7 out of 10 (while excellent once converted, the unit only supports 2 formats and your videos will require re conversion)

Stability 10 out of 10 (Stability of the player is excellent, I have not had a crash of the firmware or a lockup since owning it.)

Audio quality is my biggest factor with an portable music player. This is really the point the A815 shines. Music playback is amazing. For the most part the average listener will find the including in ear monitors amazing, they sound great for what they are and will out shine most other supplied solutions on other players. Sony has added a great deal of music features such as a 5 band equalizer and some audio processing features. The audio processing features are listed below with my opinions of each:

Clear bass extends the bass frequencies without distortion and works excellent.

DSEE is an frequency range expander and does a good job with some types of music but fails with complex instrumental pieces.

Virtual surround adds different audio effects to the music and for the most part sounds like crap.

Clear stereo extends the stereo sound range and most of the times adds a pleasant effect to the music.

FYI because the above functions use audio processing, they impact battery life slightly.

For the following listening tests I used a pair of Sennheiser HD-485 headphones for testing. The equalizer is set flat and bass enhancement is turned up to 2.

I have selected a few pieces of music to test the unit and will describe my results:

Bach Allegro- BMW 1052 (AAC at 160K)
Genre: classic

This piece was chosen as it has a great deal of dynamic range that is lost on low end players. The A815 comes through faithfully with great lows and punchy highs.

M-flo: Hands (192k Mp3)
Genre: Japanese Rap

I chose this piece because it has a broad range of low mid and highs and can come out muddy on some players. The piece starts out with piano, which sound crisp and clean with very good fidelity. Bass frequencies sound punchy and not clouded. Vocals are defined and distortion free.

Hikaru Utada: Beautiful World (320k Mp3)
Genre: Jpop

This song was chosen as it is very well recorded and has good dynamics. The A815 does another wonderful job defining song dynamics with a good punchy low and a crisp high and clean mids.

Sound Quality: 10 out of 10 (the best sounding flash player I have heard so far)

File support is average, the player supports Mp3, AAC, Wma, and pcm. No compressed lossless formats are supported. The only supported lossless standard is pcm which is huge.

Audio file support 6 out of 10 (average)

Battery life is very good on this unit, I get about 30-33 hours depending on usage patterns and file types. The nice features of this player is that it is instant on if you use it every day, no waiting for boot. If you opt not to use it for a few days the unit does take few seconds to power on as it fully powers down.

Battery life and performance: 9 out of 10 (not the best I have seen but close enough)

Pros:

extremely excellent audio quality
excellent build quality
great performance
stable
easy to use
excellent supplied in ear monitors
great price
excellent LCD

Cons:

lack of user interface customization
blister pack packaging


Bottom line is that this player is a great priced, very high performance music centric player with great supplied in ear monitors. A 9 out of 10 is my final verdict.