Monday. On music. The Sony Walkman A.

So I got one yesterday.

Physical:

It's a beautiful object. Very good finish. Screen is covered in glass edge-to edge. Fingerprint magnet. Easy to clean though. Lightweight. Fits in a condom pocket of the jeans with the controls sticking out. Perfect to use without removing it from the aforementioned pocket. It's mainly long and thin, so it makes one-handed operation a breeze.

Sound:

It sounds good. I think the last-gen Walkman S sounded a little better (the voices were a bit more in front). Don't make the mistake of buying the new Walkman S though - Sony shifted product categories around so what was a premium sound but basic featured player is now an E-Series with useless speakers on the back.

It sounds decent enough on the included earphones (they are an open design, I suspect because they have microphones in them as part of the noise cancellation thingie) so they are pretty airy. Not the best though. The Sennheiser CX500s sounded better (had to lower the highs just a tad) and the Grado S80i sounded almost perfect (and they get driven just fine). My Grados have, however, developed an annoying hiss-distortion at certain frequencies in the left can (for a while now). I hate it.

I know people try to describe "what it sounds like" but I can't. It sounds right. Your music will be fine. You won't cringe (like I did for the last two months while listening to music on my Blackberry Curve). You'll mostly be on the move and frankly, all the details you might pick up at home as differences won't matter. It'll sound close enough to your speakers. Probably better, if your speakers are not something you put some effort in.

The soundstage varied with the headsets. It sounded "portable" on the included Sonys (although they do enable the noise cancellation tech to kick in so there's that) but sounded quite big and airy on the CX500s and wide open on the Grados. So the player does just fine.

In use, it's a breeze. Plug it in, Windows Media Player picks it up, start dragging and dropping. Windows Vista needs extra care about the album art (I had to paste it manually to make sure it would show up on the player). Windows 7 seems to be fine.

It's significantly faster than the last-gen S-series both in use and in transfer. The screen is great indoors, although OLED doesn't really shine in sunlight and the glass cover doesn't help either. So yes, bright sunshine directly on the screen - squintfest and running for shadow cover.

The noise cancellation is interesting. It will filter out some sounds - it takes out the air conditioner perfectly, for example. It's mostly symbolic though. The earphones work well enough to isolate you, and you will be using a decent volume,so on or off doesn't really matter.

Actually, it might even be counterproductive to leave it on - for example, when a bus you're on hits a pothole with a "thud, my axles!" the sound cancellation is overwhelmed, completely overdoes it and garbles the music for a second or so. Which is actually FAR worse that having a thud somewhere outside behind the rubber seals of the earphones - it puts it IN your soundstage, stereo and all. So yes, I disabled it for car and bus rides (and anything similar).

All in all, remember it's not a smartphone. It doesn't have apps. It has video but you won't use it. You will listen to music on it. That's why you should get it. That's what it's made for. It will sound better than any phone - maybe even better that any "portable media player" that tries to do everything. You will be able to use it one-handed while walking - try that on you iPod touch. You will be able to skip to the next tune without looking or waiting for Android to decide to stop doing whatever it was it was doing and listen to your finger. It's a fast, good, easy-to-use single-purpose-device. Think "Kindle" not "iPad". Treat it as that and you will not be disappointed.

PS: what about the Ipod Nano, you say? iTunes on Windows, that's what. Nuff' said.