November 3rd, 2009 | 
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- 16 GB capacity for about 4000 songs
- 33 hours of audio or 9 hours of video on a single charge
- 3-inch, 262,144-color OLED touchscreen display with 432 x 240 WQVGA pixel resolution
- Supports MP3, WMA, AAC and L-PCM audio formats; AVC(H.264/AVC), MPEG-4, and WMV DRM video formats; JPEG image files
- One-year limited warranty
Product Description
Rediscover music with the X series Walkman video MP3 player. Boasting a stunning 3.0-inch OLED touch-screen display, digital noise cancellation and wireless connectivity, the X series takes portability to the next level. Equipped with built-in Wi-Fi, you can connect to the Internet and access your favorite websites including Yahoo!, YouTube and Slacker personal radio. You can also subscribe to your favorite podcasting sites and receive podcasts straight to the MP3 p… More >>
Sony Walkman X Series 16 GB Video MP3 Player w/ OLED Display
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IT SOUNDS AWESOME! But that’s the only good thing about it. The supposed OLED screen isn’t that bright, and compared to the ipod touch 2G, it looks the same! It’s web browser isn’t bad. . . IT’S HORRID! It is reminiscent of web browsers on you cell phone. It has a cell phone like keypad that you use to type in the website. IT TOOK ME 20 MINUTES TO TYPE IN THE WEBSITE! I kept hitting the wrong keys, and then the Walkman assumes the letter you want to hit and places it like a T-mobile cell phone would. And it doesn’t present the website like it should look, it just shows it’s contents. It is smaller than I expected, and watching a video with it is sad compare to an ipod touch, which has a bigger screen. If you are just looking for a great mp3/4 player and don’t care about web browsing or wi-fi internet, then this is 5 stars! Otherwise, I would stick with the iPod Touch.
Rating: 3 / 5
I buy portable players for sound quality first. If you use good headphones this player sound quality is NOT good at all. I have no idea how some think this player sounds good. They perhaps were so impressed by the functionality (which is excellent) and/or use low quality files and poor earphones. Also this player is noisy.
I have used many portable players. The old Creative Zen and Zen vision M are the 2 best for sound quality. The classic Ipod is noisy but has good frequency extension. The Zune is not as noisy but just does not have as rich or frequency extension on the top end.
Rating: 2 / 5
Let’s get the good out of the way first: the sound quality is indeed impressive, the screen is gorgeous, the touchscreen is very smooth. WiFi, Rhapsody, YouTube, battery life, build quality, sturdiness: all good.
Now for the bad, first on the software side:
-for a player that boasts such an excellent sound quality, the lossless codec support is very poor: only WAV is supported, but the files are huge. Where is the FLAC or Apple lossless support? These formats are extremely simple to decode. Right now, I’m re-encoding at 320kbps AAC to save space, but I haven’t found a way to add the artwork back. Fail.
-the podcast application is terrible. [...] website is dreadful, there is no search, it’s far from a complete source of podcasts, there is no support for iTunes-style podcast URLs, and the podcast download fails 90% of the time, unless you keep it “awake” every 30s by taping the screen (and even then…). Epic fail.
-the browser is buggy and slow. Fail.
-Mac support… What can I say… itunesmywalkman is decent but far from a seamless integration into iTunes. Also, eject doesn’t work properly: the player reconnects automatically, forcing you to unplug the player.
-the typing interface is annoying: why can’t we get a complete touchscreen keyboard instead of the T9?
On the hardware side:
-I can’t get a good ear fit with the included earphones. My Etymotic ER6i are way better. The problem is, if you don’t use Sony’s earphones, you can’t use the noise cancellation feature. Fail.
-Bluetooth would have been convenient for file transfer or A2DP, but it’s not there. Fail.
-a proprietary USB cable means one more cable to carry around. To be fair, Apple is as guilty of this as Sony. Still, a micro-USB plug would have been nice.
-the case is ugly: weird dark metallic paint on the back, and funky styrofoam-like grey plastic on the sides: huh?
So overall, it’s a nice effort, but the execution could be better. With a bit more polishing (especially on the software side), this could have been a fantastic player. Of course, Sony could make good and offer a software update that could address a lot of the issues I described, or offer a SDK and let developers come up with better software. But I wouldn’t bet on it…
Rating: 3 / 5
The good has already been described by the other reviewers. The unit is a strong mp3 player, with a couple of gadgety features that work well when connected to WIFI. The achilles heel of the unit is video formats. Why have a beautiful OLED display if getting a video file onto the unit is next to impossible? I have spend two full days sending files back and forth and only one out of ten will play successfully. This is for files of the supported formats of Windows Media and MPEG4. There is some sweet spot of bit rate and size that is mentioned nowhere in the documentation. The included content transfer program is worthless and tells the user nothing other than if the file transfered successfully. At times it truly appears random.
Why in 2009 do players not have the ability to play and decode even their “supported formats” in all bitrates. This does not even touch on its lack of support for DIVX, XVID, or MPEG2. There is no excuse for a 300USD unit to not perform both audio and video functions. This harkens back to the gyrations that one needed to perform when Creative Labs was releasing crippled units in the late 1990′s. I have owned at least twenty different audio / video portable players and this unit is by far the most frustrating. A huge amount of potential totally crippled by lack of adequate video support.
Rating: 2 / 5
The positives of this player have been mentioned in other’s reviews but I’ll mentioned them briefly:
The only reason I have not yet returned the player is because the sound quality is indeed very good.
The wifi works well for the youtube features.
The FM radio receiver is decent.
However, one of the selling points of the player – slacker radio support – does not work very well at all. The player refuses to refresh slacker stations properly. I’m not impressed with the included web browser either. Many of the mp3 files that work just fine on two other player that I have cause this player to freeze up.
If this was a cheaper player, then these problems might not be so bad. However, for this price if you advertise something to work, it better work or you will have PO’d customers.
I do not return purchases very often at all but unless I can get the slacker radio and mp3 file issues work out, it is very likely I will be returning it.
Rating: 1 / 5