It’s been years since I’ve touched a Walkman product that hasn’t had the name “Sony Ericsson” printed on the front. The last one I had was a CD player that lasted for days and days on AA batteries, but times have changed. We’ve moved past CD players to mp3 players and the Walkman brand has adapted accordingly. I got to play with Sony’s mid-level Walkman, the NWZ-S738FBNC (couldn’t they just give it a name?!), for a few weeks and the results were really…surprising.

Hit the jump to find out how the Walkman stands in the age of the Zune, the Sansa, and the iPod.

Box contents

Walkman and noise cancelling earphones

USB Sync cable

Small stand – for use with cradle (which I didn’t have)

Walkman CD – software to sync the media; works with iTunes!

External Output wire – to attach to speakers or airplane jack

Airplane plug jack – so you can use the Walkman in-flight

Quick Start Guide

UI and hardware walkthrough

Despite my lack of a decent unboxing, I did try to make a video for the first time in…well, ever. It’s by no means a full video review, but it should help you get more acquainted with the device:

 

wrong model # in video, it’s actually “NWZ-S738FBNC”

 

Design

The NWZ is a great-looking little player, and I’m a real fan of the brushed metal look that makes it stand out from the crowd of other plasticky music players. It’s very light, very small, and fits perfectly into your pocket.

After all this time with the iPhone, it was refreshing to have some hardware buttons to press. It’s so easy to change songs by just tapping through the pants pocket instead of having to take the whole device out. It sounds simple, but it made a big difference to my experience.

The included earbuds were comfortable for about an hour, but then they started to give me an earache. This was a surprise, since I’ve used at least two pairs of these Sony in-ear earbuds in the past without any major discomfort. I wore them in both the “wire-over-the-ear” fashion like Shures and also shoved them into my ears like regular earphones. Each earbud is has the letter for the corresponding ear printed on it, so it was easy to tell how to wear them. Sony packaged three ear-bud sizes with the kit, so you can always swap the buds for a smaller set if they’re too big for your ears.

The one aspect I’d really like to pick on with the NWZ is the control scheme. I think d-pads are a solid idea for navigating a UI – but only up to a point. I think a d-pad has to be supplemented by other hardware controls (like the touch-sensitive pad on the Zune) or a solid and precise UI. As you can see in the video above, the gorgeous UI works well enough , but the d-pad isn’t flexible enough to scale large the large lists I’ll ultimately have with 8GB of storage. (edit — Doug’s reviewing the higher level Walkman and he told me he loves the d-pad controls. Different strokes for different folks)

Music Playback

But let’s cast my pickiness aside now – you might be fine with a d-pad and Sony’s UI, but what you really want to know is whether the player functions well for music. Well, first off: it can handle .mp3, .wma, non-drm AAC, and .wav files, so it’s pretty flexible.

In terms of sound, I thought the Sony (with its accompanying earbuds) sounded so good that I was actually disappointed to return to my iPhone and my Shure SE230’s. I’m not an audiophile and everybody’s taste differs, but I really think Sony brings something great to the stage in terms of sound quality – especially with their digital sound manipulation (all of which is accessible in settings, or through the menu key on the now playing screen). You know how those DVD ads that try and make you think that the digitally re-mastered sound of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves is going to make that much of a difference to your ears? I’ve basically become that DVD guy. The “VPT (Surround)”, when set to live, worked absolute wonders on pretty much all my music. I felt closer to the music than ever before, and my other players and earphones just sounded dull afterwards.

So that’s sound quality – but what about all those other fancy pants features we’re used to having on our players? Sony’s counter to everybody else’s gimmicky ways to go “beyond mere shuffle’” is called SensMe. SensMe really made an interesting first impression on me, since the first time I tried to use it the Walkman told me I had to update my library. Five gigabytes of music took about 15 minutes to process on the Walkman, although I found out [only] later that using the included Walkman software instead of Windows Media Player 11 would actually have set up the SensMe channels automatically. I talked about what SensMe is in the video, but not what I thought of it. Overall, I’m not all that impressed with the whole affair. It’s still very hit-and-miss, at least for my tastes and what I might consider “quiet” or “energetic” music.

The other mode, time machine shuffle, has a cool little slot machine effect when activated (via the main menu) and will select a random year and formulate all the music from that year. This worked without a hitch, but I still preferred regular old shuffle in the end.

Video Playback

The Walkman sports a very small screen, but at QVGA (320×240) resolution it looks quite sharp. It could also read all of my .wmv and .mp4 files. I’m pretty blind, but I am used to small screens, so watching a movie is actually no problem for me on a device of this size. The device is also light enough so that holding it up for a two-hour movie isn’t a chore (it’s different when you hold up a Dell Axim x51v for that amount of time).

Noise Cancelling (NC)

Once activated via the switch on the bottom of the device, I only noticed  NC making a difference when I maxed out the mic volume (this is done through settings). This resulted in a very minor static buzz, but it was practically inaudible whenever I played a song. Noise Cancelling (unlike isolation – which just seals sound out) filtered most of the low-end sounds in my area out and made everything around me sound more distant and echo-ey. My building happened to have some loud drilling on the floor above mine during testing, and the NC really helped make the week bearable.

Photos

I’ll be honest with you: I didn’t really use the Walkman as a photo viewer. I’ve never really been one for storing pictures on my media player, but I will say that the UI was very easy to figure out and anybody who can use the Walkman for music will find it adequate enough for photos. It has all the usual bases covered, so you can rotate your pics and set up quick slideshows. The pictures are all organized by folder, and it’s easy to sync them through WMP or the Media Manager software that comes on the Walkman CD.

Radio

Also a fairly simple section that I didn’t play with for very long. I could use the d-pad to tune to certain stations and setting presets was only a few clicks away. One thing I did forget to check was whether the earphones were needed as an antenna for the radio functionality, but I don’t think they’re necessary.

Podcasts

The iTunes drag-n-drop support added by the Walkman CD really makes this a lot easier than it otherwise would be. I just dragged audio podcasts right onto the Walkman and they were ready to play when I disconnected. However, since it is a drag-n-drop system there didn’t seem to be a way to have auto-sync like with iPods. So you’re likely going to have to manage the podcasts manually.

Battery Life

It turns out there’s one thing that’s similar between this Walkman and the CD Player I used years ago: great battery life. This Walkman doesn’t sport any replaceable battery, but who needs to replace anything with a rated 40-hour playback time for music (10h for vids? I didn’t leave the Walkman on for two days straight to test this, but I did use it as much as I could in the evenings after school and the device lasted about four days on one charge. The battery life will vary depending on whether you have equalizers/noise cancelling/sound manipulation on, but I think the players will definitely last at least four days of  heavy music playback (4+ hours per session). This player is not going to need a daily charge, but you can always check the battery level on the lower-right corner of the screen.

Conclusion

I thought I’d pretty much always point friends in the direction of the Zune or the iPod, but after this time with the Walkman I think it really can be a contender. I know the Zune’s not a massive player (especially not here in Canada), but I liked its ease-of-use and hardware design in much the same way I like the iPod Nano’s. The Walkman might not have a unique control scheme, but it does have some major advantages over the competition: noise-cancelling earphones, great battery life, and the ability to sync with iTunes make the whole Walkman experience a lot more user-friendly. I really respect Sony for offering customers not just a good player, but a good set of earphones to really enjoy their music.So if you’re thinking of a new player for yourself or a friend, I’d just like to point out that this is really the most complete package that I know of for really enjoying your music right out of the box. Phooey with “real earphones” sold separately (I’m lookin’ at you, Apple!).

Price: $179.99

Availability: SonyStyle, Amazon

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