Sony NW-HD1

its has the ultimate sound quality, ihave tried almost all other portable players and non portable; but its also depends on the earbuds the batter the earbuds the more it stands over others. as for the software, controls, display and featurs its not the best; so at least you should have one hd1 when you wana realy listen to any music(especially rock).

ps: you could find it now used.

The Sony NW-HD1 is one of the most amazing players out there, I am so surprised that there isn't more hype around this player, I love this little thing, and yes the thing is very very small, smaller than a pack of gum infact (pop-out kind).

This baby gives you 30 HOURS of playback (more like 24 or so) but this is still amazing, great for plane rides, or people that go on long trips that wont be able to get a chance to charge. This is a mini hard drive, and the smallest in the world. Hold 20 GB, about 13,000 songs (after converted), very cleen interface, I have had no problems with it, no skipping, no menu errors, it has differnt sound modes, and other things that are nice. Now the only thing people might have problems with: you have to convert all your music to OMG files....BUT, it doesn't take THAT long, just leave it over night, and bam in the morning, you have all your music, very good about converting as well, you don't have to do ALOT of click to get it going.

I bought one of these Sony NW-HD1 Portable Mp3 Players at Sears. Thought it was great, until I discovered it DOESNT PLAY MP3's!!! It converts everything over to Sony's own ATRACplus format (.oma) and nothing else will play this format except Sony players. There is a quality loss in this conversion, and also you must save this format to your harddrive before putting it on the player, which takes up twice the room(Mp3 version and Sony's version). So if you take this to your buddies computer to give him some tunes, he has to use Sony's player to play them!

Firstly, just to show that this Sony NW-HD1 review is as unbiased as I can make it, I have used the iriver iHP-100 and 120, creative Zen touch and Zen Xtra 30 gigabyte, the 3G 15 gigabyte and 4G 20 gigabyte iPods aswell as the iPod mini, all of which I have thought are fantastic players for different reasons. The iriver has the best sound quality thanks to supporting the ogg vorbis format, the iPods have the best design and could be classed as a bit of a statement if that's your thing and the creatives beat both on grounds of what you're getting for your money (if you shop around on the web, you can find them pretty cheap).

However, I decided to go for the NW_HD1 when buying my own (to replace my old Sony MZ-N1 minidisc player), it has all the best qualities of the above players combined (apart from cost, which is a bit steep at £300 in shops). It uses the atrac3plus format, which supposedly gives a high level of compression without losing a noticeable amount of quality. After using an mp3 cd player with this format, I was disappointed but on the HD-1 even the highest level of compression sounds good with hardly any distortion (I used a range of music to test this, including the Prodigy with the loudest sound option on). On the lowest form of compression the sound quality is mindblowing, in my opinion there isn't really much of a noticeable difference between that and the iHP-120 using ogg vorbis. The other good thing about this format is that it can make so much more of the harddisc space than an iPod or creative zen without it sounding too bad.

The other feature that makes this player stand out above everything is the battery life, twice that of the iriver iHP-120 and not far off three times that of a fourth generation iPod. However, Sony have also opted for the inbuilt battery option, so after 3-4 years of constant use I expect it'll have to be sent off to Sony for replacing, at which point it will be cheaper to buy a whole new unit... not a great idea but forgiveable considering the life of the battery. Charging takes less time than the iPod, too.

Finally, the looks. I think the magnesium case looks excellent, and the screen is nice (I use the reverse colours, so it's green writing on black background rather than the standard black on green, another nice touch). It isn't as much of a design icon as the iPod, but it looks individual. Even the charging stand is well designed!

This new player is definitely worth a look if you're considering buying any of the competition-its more expensive bet certainly worth it if you're looking for high sound and build quality. Just buy some different headphones for it!