The Sony Walkman X-series is Sony's exceptional flash-based carriageable media player, packing Wi-Fi, noise-cancellation, a redesigned UI and a attractive OLED touchscreen. But can it attempt with the ascendant champ, the iPod Touch? In a word, no.
That's not to say it isn't an absorbing amateur in its own right. It calmly beats the Samsung P3 and the Cowon S9, but I'm larboard apprehensive who would aces this up instead of a Touch. But if Sony were to stick this UI into one of their Sony Ericsson Walkman musicphones, they ability accept something able indeed.
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Physical
The X-series is a actual glassy player, agnate in admeasurement to the Samsung P3 and decidedly narrower and beneath than the iPod Touch, admitting anytime so hardly thicker. It's advised with an abnormal aesthetic: The abandon of the amateur are this odd array of rough, blatant metal, agnate to amateurish granite, and the aback and foreground bezel are atramentous bottle with little agleam sparkles in them, like a granite countertop. It's a nice-looking player, certainly, and it feels actual solid in the hand. I just don't absolutely get the granite thing—it's not spectacularly eye-catching.
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On the foreground of the X-series is the screen, an awfully acknowledging 3-inch OLED capacitive touchscreen, and a ample "Home" button beneath the screen, abundant like the iPod Touch. The awning is bright clear, the sharpest account I've anytime apparent on a PMP—it lives up to the affiance of OLED. Viewing angles are limitless, and blow acknowledgment is great, afterwards any lag at all. Unfortunately, that bottle foreground and aback are abominable fingerprint magnets, admitting getting glass, it does assume to abide abrading adequately well.
The appropriate ancillary hosts the babble abandoning about-face and a decidedly cheap-feeling aggregate rocker. The top has the headphone jack and the abundantly close play/pause, clue advanced and aback buttons, while the basal bend is home to the proprietary USB jack. Interestingly, the authority button is a behemothic semicircle about-face on the aback of the player—it seems weird, but I in actuality adulation how simple it is to ability and how solid it feels. The abundant accouterments buttons accomplish it a actual nice amateur to ascendancy in the pocket, admitting mostly getting touch-based player.
The X-series is one of the alone PMPs with congenital babble canceling, but it alone works with the included earbuds. Fortunately, said earbuds are accomplished for freebies, and the babble abandoning formed altogether on my blatant Chinatown bus ride amid Philly and New York City. Babble abandoning does annihilation the array life, though, clarification it twice as fast as approved playback. When you're aggravating to asphyxiate out the affectionate of crazies who yield the Chinatown bus, you'll be animated it's there.
Audio superior is a authentication of Sony's PMP line, and the X-series does, in fact, complete great. It includes a customizable five-band blaster for audio dorks and some nice complete enhancers like DSEE. On the added hand, you're bound to the lossy codecs Sony supports (MP3, WMA, WMA-DRM, AAC), so it may not be a acceptable best for austere audiophiles.
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UI
The home awning has a accustomed filigree of icons, including Music, Movies, Photos, Podcasts and some added arresting Wi-Fi-based apps like Slacker, YouTube and Browser. Navigating through lists of artists, songs and albums is actual agnate to the iPod Blow appearance with a grab-and-flick interface, admitting a fast flick leads the account to aeon through a lot faster than the touch, about like there's beneath basal friction, and we'd say it feels just a hair beneath exact.
At the basal of the Now Playing screen, there are four icons I've absitively to appellation Back, Navigate, Web, and Options. The icons themselves aren't actual literal: The Aback figure is a bulleted list, and Cross is a accumulative glass, so it's hardly ambagious at first. But already you blow it, it becomes actual bright what anniversary button does, and I had no problems afterwards that.
The "Navigate" button is great: It'll accompany up a account absolute Artist, Album, Songs, etc that'll let you jump appropriate to that account afterwards accepting to hit the Aback button four times. The iPod Blow doesn't accept annihilation like it, and now I ambition it does. The Web button is aswell absolutely cool: It brings up a awning that'll let you seek the clue name, artist, or anthology with Yahoo or YouTube. The Yahoo seek brings up hits like Wikipedia and AllMusic, and the YouTube seek anon brings up a ton of music videos, reside concert footage and added to watch on the player. Appealing air-conditioned stuff. Oddly, the X-series will alert you to re-connect to a wireless arresting every time you try to do one of these searches, and admitting it remembers your password, it's still annoying.
The X-series aswell includes an FM radio, and it's account advertence because it's one of the stronger FM tuners we've apparent in a PMP. It's not like it'll change the way you anticipate about radio, but it does as acceptable a job as you could ask.
Web Apps
The YouTube app is absolutely great, absolutely agnate to that of the iPod blow or iPhone except with a chic arduous atramentous derma to bout the X-series' aesthetic. Videos amount bound and are actual bright and watchable, provided you've got a solid Wi-Fi connection.
Slacker is addition hit for the X-series, giving admission to either the chargeless or paid versions of the Pandora-like account with the aforementioned derma as the blow of the UI. It's cool fast to amount and complete superior is excellent.
Unfortunately, Sony's alone two for three on the web app front, and the a lot of agitative of its new appearance is a aloft fail: Its internet browser—NetFront-based, like PSP and Sony Ericsson—is absolutely abstract garbage. All argument access is done via an infuriating T9 interface (why not just circle to a mural QWERTY? There's affluence of room!) that's inexact and absolutely unhelpful. It requires you to blazon in "http://www." afore every URL. Even if you've got the backbone to sit there for ten account to blazon "http://www.gizmodo.com/", the browser can alone administer those bush adaptable sites afterwards absolutely freaking out. Browsing abounding sites is an exercise in futility, as the two zoom buttons don't consistently work, you can't cross afore a website has absolutely loaded and borer links is inexact and frustrating. Basically, it's abandoned as a web browser, which is a huge disappointment. This angel appealing abundant sums up the X-series web browsing experience.
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Desktop Software
The X-series has both a MTP (Windows-only) and a UMS (shows up as a drive, accordant with Mac and Linux as well), admitting UMS accept to be switched on afore anniversary connection. That agency it'll plan with a lot of any media player, save iTunes. Sony's "Media Manager" software is included, but it's appealing awful, actual ancient and difficult to use, and will not catechumen video unless you pay for the "Pro" upgrade. That endure allotment is a absolute analgesic for the X-series' video capabilities.
Speaking of video conversion, you'll be accomplishing a lot of it, back the X-series alone supports a few video codecs and none of the accepted charlatan formats (Matroska, XviD) are included, clashing the pirate-friendly Samsung P3. I acclimated Cucusoft and was able to get a few MPEG-4 videos assimilate the player, but your boilerplate user will absolutely accept agitation addition it out. None of the WMVs I approved would work, and I never was able to get a great-quality video on to analysis out what the OLED awning can absolutely do. iSquint for Mac does work, but the quality, while absolutely watchable, is disappointing: On an OLED awning like this, you wish to be destroyed abroad by video quality, and I wasn't.
Audio codec abutment is black too, because the X-series' arch audio performance: The alone lossless architecture is WAV, which cipher will use due to its massive book size. Besides the adopted lossless formats, added alcove codecs like OGG aren't accurate either. The amateur has absurd capabilities, yet Sony cripples it by attached its compatibility—they could accept courted the audiophile market, but 320kbps mp3 files can alone complete so good.
Price and Conclusion
The X-series, according to Sony, is a exceptional apparatus and appropriately commands exceptional prices—coincidentally the aforementioned prices as the iPod Touch. The 16GB adaptation costs $300, with the 32GB traveling for $400. The aberration is that the iPod Blow comes with a massive App Store for boatloads of new features, not to acknowledgment an accelerometer, a web browser that will not accomplish you continued for the canicule of WAP, bags of accessories, and software that in actuality works. The X-series just can't attempt with that.
The X-series is a absolutely solid player: The anatomy agency is nice, the awning is incredible, complete and video superior are as top as these things get, and it comes with congenital babble canceling. If it were $50 cheaper, I'd accept no averseness about advising it over the Samsung P3 and Cowon S9, but if you're spending at that level, you'd be affairs the amiss apparatus if you chose the Sony.
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On the added hand, we do see a acknowledged approaching if Sony put a buzz adaptation of this up adjoin Nokia's XpressMusic. It could never be a smartphone, not in this shape, but it could be a abundant music-based dumbphone.
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Sony understands that PMPs can't just be PMPs anymore: basal iPods aren't affairs like they acclimated to, and the Blow is allotment of a adaptable accretion platform. But to just being in some Wi-Fi appearance afterwards cerebration about software expandability or even a accessible browser—that's not traveling to cut it these days. Sadly, admitting all the things the X-series does right, and its absorbing stats list, it's just not abundant in a day and age endemic by networked and app-friendly gear. [Product Page]
Beautiful and acknowledging OLED touchscreen
Abundant size
Nice added appearance like babble abandoning and YouTube
Accomplished complete quality
UI is sometimes unclear, but has added options than iPod Touch
Array activity is aloft boilerplate but not thrilling
Web browser is complete garbage
Arresting T9 argument access system
Bound audio and video codec support, and video about-face is a pain
Too expensive
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