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Hands-on with the gorgeous new Sony Walkman NWZ-A820

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It's here! The new Sony Walkman is here!

Everyone gets excited over new iPods, so we thought we'd show some over-enthusiasm for Sony's new metallic beast, the NWZ-A820, which comes in 4GB, 8GB and 16GB capacities, known respectively as the NWZ-A826, NWZ-A828 and the NWZ-A829. Prices start at £140 from later this month.

Since the last incarnation of the MP3 Walkman range, Sony has increased screen size to 61mm (2.4 inches), added stereo Bluetooth, changed the navigation button layout and improved the user interface. The result is a highly attractive player, with an intuitive icon-driven GUI inside a gorgeous metal enclosure. Really, we're very fond of this player and to top it off it sounds amazing, but we'll get to that shortly.

Specs-wise you're looking at up to 16GB of non-expandable flash memory, a crisp QVGA 320x240-pixel screen, support for MP3, WMA, AAC and WAV music, H.264 video and about 36 hours of audio playback. You're free to either drag and drop files into the memory through Windows Explorer or Mac OS X, or using Windows Media Player.

But also included in the box, aside from some decent bundled Sony earphones, is a pair of Bluetooth headphones, though the £230 16GB model does not include these(!). Sound quality from the headphones is muddy, lacking clarity and just plain uninspiring anyway.

The Walkman itself sounds exceptional, however, complete with Sony's trademark bass-heavy signature. The NWZ-A820 drives a powerful sound with excellent depth and warmth. Through our Denon AH-D5000 reference headphones, we found the tasty new Walkman an admirable performer -- just what you'd expect from such a costly package.

We've really enjoyed playing with this little chap -- watching video on the train to and from the office is just smashing on the crisp screen. Expect our full review very soon. In the mean time, click through for more up-close and personal photos than you can wave an iPod at. -Nate Lanxon

Update: All three Sony Walkman NWZ-A820 reviews are now live. Read our full Sony Walkman NWZ-A828 review; Sony Walkman NWZ-A826 review; Sony Walkman NWZ-A829 review.

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Comments

AnonymousFri 11 April, 2008 1:00pm

How is that gorgeous??? It looks a portable radio from 1990! That's a real dog of a device.

AnonymousFri 11 April, 2008 2:44pm

Yeah great, now where's the clickwheel? Or have Sony figured out a way to provide variable-rate, rapid-scrolling that's comparable to the iPod? No, thought not. What an awful industry to be in: Apple is boring, the rest are miserable.

AnonymousFri 11 April, 2008 3:47pm

The scroll wheel are Apple trademarks, Sony wouldn't dare infringe. And I find that walkman to be quite attractive to look at, in my honest opinion. Granted it's Sony, and thus not worth the money to be put into it. But it does look rather pretty. ;)

AnonymousFri 11 April, 2008 4:02pm

I think it does look attractive but can't fight with the mobile phones comes with a mp3 player, i guess I'm going to stick to SE walkman phone.

AnonymousSun 13 April, 2008 8:22pm

I got one and it sounds much better than my Ipod Nano 8 Go... with the same headphones. If your main concern is audio quality buy the Sony NWZ-A829 and forget the Ipod!

People talk a lot about Apple Lossless Audio Codec but it doesn't make the Apple audio chipset any better. The sound quality of my Ipod is just average while the sound quality of my Sony is very good!

It's easier to put video files in my Ipod though. I use Ashampoo Clip Finder to download video from YouTube and then convert them to MPEG-4. The Ipod handles them just fine. It doesn't work right now with the Sony. However, the podcast downloaded from the Internet for my Sony NWZ play just fine with great quality. Still here, better quality than the Ipod! I just hope that I'm going to find a solution to get as many video files as I did for my Ipod. (I got the Sony only two days ago.)

AnonymousMon 14 April, 2008 1:46am

Oups! I'm talking about the NWZ-A829

(The headphones bundled with it are great by the way!)

I got one and it sounds much better than my Ipod Nano 8 Go... with the same headphones. If your main concern is audio quality buy the Sony NWZ-A829 and forget the Ipod!

AnonymousWed 30 April, 2008 4:26pm

iPods sux. people stop acting like duma**, mindless dogs and buying the same piece of s*** everyone else has.

EVERYONE AND THEIR DOGS HAVE IPODS AND THEY SUCK!

this thing roxs.

AnonymousTue 13 May, 2008 3:13pm

I went into a Sony store to have a look and i think it looks great. The fact that its bluetooth sells it for me, for some reason Apple just wont but bluetooth on the ipod, so their loss Sony’s gain.

AnonymousMon 9 June, 2008 11:16pm

I agree with the Sony having better sound then the I-pod and it shouldn’t really come as a surprise seeing as though they have been in the sound/music industry longer then Apple. I just couldn’t believe that my Sony Ericson cell-phone plus my 12 year old Sony CD player had better sound while listening with the same headphones and same song then my I-pod ever did.

The I-pod needs,
A; Custom equalizer controls on the I-pod itself and separate from I-tunes software.
B; Better stock equalizer settings for the I-pod.
I now have my I-pod collecting dust ever since getting my NWZ-A728 Walkman and listening to my music the way it should sound. Thank you Sony for having great sound.

AnonymousTue 8 July, 2008 3:35pm

Dont forget the battery life, ipods die after 4 songs an the quality sucks big time. I use my Walkman through the car stereo and when my girlfriend puts her ipod through it you can clearly tell the difference.

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