Walkman vs iPod?

Being a bit of a late adopter I am yet to buy such a device. I was wondering whether any of you esteemed fellows has gone to any lengths to compare the Sony against the iPod or iPod nano / Creative Zen / iRiver, etc?

Benefits vs drawbacks, sound quality, usability, value for money, general impressions, build quality, etc. All would all be valued.

Cheers
Greg

 

Well, I have been quite impressed with the Archos brand.

 

I prefer my iriver to the ipods I've had, its more listenable, doesn't crash like the mini pods I had did and built like a tank. The screen is frankly crap, especially compared to the ipod nano but it lets me choose songs and thats all I need (I have no idea why people would want to store photos on stuff like that). Transfers from windows media player can be dodgy, sometimes it cocks up the tracks in places which is annoying and never happened with itunes and ipod but I still prefer it.
Have no real experience with creative zen other than last night after too many gins, looks very cool but it took me bloody ages to cue up some tracks, I was ****ed but I found the scroll thing being combined with a touch sensitive button way to fiddly for my liking.

EDIT: Seems you can't be pished on here anymore

 

I had an iPod and my flatmate brought home a Sony NWA1000 Walkman a couple of weeks ago. I had a listen and it frankly blew the iPod away with fantastic sound quality. The sound is nothing like an mp3 player, it is much more like a quality cd player with a lovely full sound. Much better build quality too! Anyway, I went out and bought one. My iPod has since been sold on Ebay. Nothing wrong with iPods, they look cool and they're easy to use....plus a fashion icon. The Sony is just better at music though and that's what it's all about for me. I echo the previous poster re storing photos on your mp3 player. Er, why would you want to do that? My mobile 'phone & camera are the place for photos. As for the video iPod, I never used that feature anyway. Ask yourself just how many videos you're going to download from iTunes and watch on a tiny screen? The Sony also has a removable battery, you don't have to 'ship' it to Apple for a top-dollar replacement. My mate sent his old iPod off to Apple for the battery replacing and it cost him $100. I don't know if the prices have come down since (this was a year ago) but I do know that his iPod was a bit aesthetically worse for wear when he got it back. There are no screws on the device, Apple have to literally prise it apart with a sharp instrument - there were marks where they had done this. Even the current iPods are built in exactly the same way. I think they're designed to be disposable, people are expected to upgrade to the latest model when their battery dies. That is out of order in my mind.

For the sound quality, build quality and good looks I don't think there is any better value out there than the Sony NWA1000 & 3000. This isn't slating iPods, I just think the Walkman is better. I'm sure the trillion iPod owners out there won't but it's all a matter of opinion.

 

i've recently got back froma months holiday and during that i used a combination of archos gmini 500 and crative zen nano. the archos has a 30gb hdd which can store loads of tunes. it can also act as a usb host which means it can up/down load to other devices without hte need for a pc. i used it to store all my holiday snaps some movies for boring travel times and about 50 albums. then i used a cheap creative nano that can take aaa batteries to listen to music whilst on the beach.
off holiday i use my phone as my main music source whilst out and about. this is good especially in the car if i get a call as it pauses the music automatically it also means i only have one device on me. i'm waiting for the day when it all converges along with gps and a big hdd then i'll be happy.

 

I played with one of them sonys over Christmas and they were certainly well built. Heavy even

The guy in the shop was pleased with the one he bought but conceded that Sony Connect software was possibly the worse devil inspired POS ever put to 1s and 0s so for a person who is yet to get on board with the whole computer music thing that may be a consideration. He also said you could not read the thing in bright light. (thats assuming we are on about the same thing, the blue sony's with the organic looking display?)

As for sound quality well every one has a preference, but to my ears they all sound broadly similar. There was a thing on gadget show the other day between 3 products and the conclusion was iPod was still far and away the best if you did not mind being tied into iTunes.

As for the iPod battery thing, I changed my own with a battery from ebay for 8 quid, it came with two soft plastic spatulas you simply stuck between the metal and the plastic it took around 4 minutes to complete the operation and there was zero damage.

For me I would happily own the sony if it worked with iTunes and I would happily own an iPod video or the up and coming iPod, I like the idea of carrying personal photos and video. I would not have an iRiver as they feel like and work like junk.

 

I was hoping for some rounded and intelligent comments based on experience rather than brand loyalty... and you didnt disappoint.

However this well rounded and balanced view doesnt help me decide what to buy

The iTunes factor is interesting. Several friends have commented that they could easily find they prefer the Sony, but dont want to stop using iTunes.

Similarly myself and others here have commented they would buy an iPod if it wasnt for iTunes.

Mmmm. I'm still unsure.

 

If, as you say, you've never used iTunes before - what's the problem? It isn't like you'll miss x,y & z that you've got used to. I don't use the Sony Connect software anyway because it's rubbish. If you go to the Sony website, you can download "SonicStage" for free and use that instead - it's the program they used to ship with their older mp3 players and works a treat. I have absolutely no bother with it and I'm used to iTunes. True, the Apple software is easy peasy to use but once you've got the tunes on your player, that fades into memory. The most tedious part of buying an mp3 player is loading all your albums - after that it's a simple case of adding new cd purchases as and when. It's a pain loading 150 albums onto an iPod too you know, it isn't fun.

 

First question you have to ask youself is how much am i going to use it? Heaviest users of these things are commuters. If this heavy usage category is you then you need a dedicated large storage player such as ipod/new walkman/zen etc. Personally i dont like ipods and i dont like itunes, but thats just me.

If you are just an occasional user then something like one of the Sony walkman phones (K750i,D750, W800i etc - there are others) would be pretty good, includes a decent camera (2mp) as well. I have one of these with a 512mb card, saves me lugging around a phone and a mp3 player and camera. The camera is good enough to take photos that are not just for messaging and i can easily get 10 albums on it. (disc2phone software that comes with it is passable, but i just use LAME to make mp3s and dump them directly to the card).

I came close to buying myself an ihp-140 from iriver a while back. Much prefer that to an ipod.

 

Hi,

I checked out most. I found that I get a perfectly decent sound quality from my PocketPC Phone, when it comes to listening on the move in the Bus or Tube and the 1GB SD Card storage is good enough.

Selecting the right headphones was the much bigger job, plus I find headphone listening to recordings made for speaker listening, so I now pre-process my "on the move" music through the headplug plugin for Winamp and a parametric EQ to cancel the headphone/earchannel resonance.

The big music library resides on both my Notebook PC and the Media Center PC and my Notebook has an SD card slot, so making up a new compilation is easy enough.

The only problem is battery life, with my spare battery I get up to maybe 10 Hours listening max....

Ciao T

 

I think I didnt make myself clear. Until I saw a Walkman (last week) I was on the verge of buying an iPod Nano. However I dont fancy the idea of using iTunes, I didnt mean to imply I want to use it, in some ways the reason I hadnt yet bought an iPod was because I dont like the idea of being tied to Apple and iTunes. However some of my friends and colleagues really like iTunes - though some arent mad on the iPod, they stick with it because of iTunes.

I'm open minded - the comments above are helping me evaluate.

 

iPod plus points:

Sleek, slim and light (particularly the Nano)
Jog wheel is good
Fashion icon
Good software even a muppet could use

iPod negative points:

Expensive
Average sound
Battery replacement is a pain
Plastic so not very durable and very easy to scratch
Prone to crashing
No mains charger as standard, just USB

Walkman plus points:

Sounds better
Very well built
Very resistant to scratches
Battery lasts 20 hours for NWA1000 and 35 hours NWA3000
Surprisingly cheap
User replaceable battery
Comes with a mains charger & USB charger

Walkman negative points:

Connect software is crap(SonicStage works perfectly well though)
Heavier than an iPod (metal casing though, so better anyway)
People will always comment "you should have got an iPod":SLEEP:

I've no idea about the other brands such as Creative or Archos, I narrowed my search down to the iPod and Walkman, of which I have now owned both.

 

Jeep there is an flaw in your argument. Per gig iPods are some of the cheapest on the market.

One tip for potential purchasers of any MP3 device, if it will accept drag and drop loading (ipods do not) then you can still use itunes. In the preferences click advanced and tick the keep m usic organised and copy to itunes folder. import cds with itunes and use the software to play music on your computer. Then navigate to the itunes music folder, where it will all be stored neatly in folders by artist then album.

This will not work for itunes purchased music, but then I rather think this is not a big consideration for you guys.

 

I recently bought a little 512Mb Sony player and also own a sony Atrac CD player. I really like SonicStage (I know everyone slags it off) and prefer it to iTunes. However if you are concerned about being tied into iTunes you should be aware that Sony tie you into SonicStage (latest version is 3.4 and even better). I think this is still the case for the walkman - not sure thou. There is a little piece of software that you can download that sits on the Sony that allows drag and drop as though it is a "normal" mp3 player and therefore makes this less of an issue. Atrac3plus (Sonys own compression) is much better than mp3 compression in my experience and takes up less space. Atrac3plus at 64kbps is better than mp3 at 128 so half the space.
To conclude - if you already have a load of mp3s on your pc then I'd probably do for a Creative which sound pretty good. If you are starting from scratch, want the best sound for file size, better (than iPOD) build and don't mind being tied into Sony get the Walkman. If you want to use iTunes and carry photos/videos then consider the iPODs - but you pay a premium for the name with these I feel and get these facilities with the Creative and others - and really if you want photo/video you really should take a look at the amazing PSP
Hope that's given you even more to think about;-)
Donut

 

Agreed. Per gig they are but per actual device they're not. The 30 & 60GB iPods could be considered good value for money but as a previous poster has said, the Sony Atrac 3 compression rate of 64kbps (which is indistinguishable from WAV on portable headphones) makes such huge storage space unnecessary.

 

My son got 20G Sony for his BD and I have got 30G iPod as a present - IMHO iPod is more of a fashion accessory with lot of unnesessary options and short battery life, Sony is more practical, and I prefer SonicStage to iTunes. To me iPod sounds a bit better than Sony though. My son charges his Sony once a week, I do it every second day.

 

I find it amazing that you think the iPod sounds better. Have you listened to both with the EQ off and using the same ear/headphones? You can make one sound better than the other if one has a dodgy EQ setting. Also, was the file size identical on each device when you did the listening comparison? Still, I'm not saying for one moment that the iPod sounds bad.

 

To my ears iPod sounds fuller and causes less fatique. BTW be aware that EQ eats a lot of battery power.

 

We'll have to agree to disagree there. The iPod sounds fine but the Walkman sounds great (to my ears):MILD:

 

And as usual this is what it comes down to, preference, no one is in a position to say which sounds better.

To me they all sound similar and the main improvements come from not changing the device but changing the head phones.