SONY NW-A808 8GB Video WALKMAN - White

I have the black 8gb version of this player and I am very impressed.
Build quality is excellent - The player is light but feels very solid in your hand. The supplied headphones are very good quality with excellent sound reproduction, although I did have to change from the default equaliser settings.
The controls are very intuitive and the display is of very high quality.
The SonicStage software is required to download files to the player - It's sometimes sluggish but with a bit of perseverance it works well. Playlists are easily created and transfered.

Having seen this player in action and being thoroughly impressed with all of Sony's music players to date, I've just taken the plunge and bought one of these.

At this point, Sony has decided to sideline the Atrac format in favour of the more "mainstream" approach of the windows 'Playforsure' format. Whilst this makes a good deal of sense for them I suppose, I have grown up using the heavily criticised Sonicstage program. I've experienced none of the endless problems I've heard others suffer from - I've used it since the days of NetMD! The version I'm using now (CP 4.0) is a perfectly acceptable music manager - intuitive, dead simple to get to grips with and fairly speedy. I'll admit that iTunes has a library many times the size of Sony's Connect download service but if you're like me and just rip CD's then that's not going to bother you one bit. People, don't run away from Sonicstage!

I've written quite a few reviews for MP3 players (I tend to buy quite a few!) and whenever I review a Sony product I always seem to start with standing up for Sonicstage! Anyway, the player itself...

People seem to put it at the same level as the New Nano model of iPod... That's just wrong I'm afraid - Superior sound quality only Sony can deliver, an amazing 2" screen (Great for watching Reservoir Dogs on the tube when the PSP didn't quite fit in the bag!) and excellent build quality with 30 hours of music on a 3 hour charge?! It could scarcely be better... Is there any reason you shouldn't buy one of these?! It'll play almost any format under the sun (it doesn't play DRM'd tracks though - which is the only negative point I can think of!) and it'll look much better in your hand than any iGadget...

In short, a fantastic piece of kit... Enjoy!

I had the Sony NW-HD3 20GB for about 2 years and thought it was a fantastic player with great sound. The only let down? Sonic Stage, but it wasn't as bad as people made it out to be. Sure at times it was a struggle but most of the time it was my computer. Unfortunately I lost this player on a night out. So I bought a Zen V+ because I had heard good things about creative. Got the player. Froze the first day, player wasn't recognised, wouldn't delete songs. After a week of nothing but problems I took it back because quite honestly it was the worst piece of technology I've ever used. So waited a couple of months and saw the new Sony. Looks brilliant, sounds brilliant and best of all? They fixed the software! No problems transferring songs, videos or pictures. The video compression and quality is the best I've seen on a player of this size by far. The menu is so simple to navigate. The build quality is great as well, it feels well built (metal casing) and yet still retains a light weight feel.

The only bad thing I would like to point out is that as usual Sony are one step behind Apple. Ok they got an 8gb player that does video out before apple but only by a couple of months. The nano now has video functionality but I think Apple's new 8gb touch screen player is going to be Sony's main rival for it's 8gb player as the video nano isn't even in the same league as the sony.