Performs well; slightly expensive

The Sony NW-A805 player’s format and style resembles that of many compact phones, only this one comes with three big buttons. There are four other direct buttons to navigate through the interface displayed on the crisp 2-inch colour LCD screen.

The player has 2 GB of internal memory, and no expansion slots. You can play audio and video, and view images on it. Certain audio enhancement features—DSEE (Digital Sound Enhancement Engine) and VPT (Virtualphones Technology)—are built into the player. DSEE is supposed to enhance quality, and VPT means you get virtual surround sound. A feature called Dynamic Normalization helps balance out major volume jumps between tracks.

The player comes with canal earphones, which isolate noise pretty effectively. Speaking of earphones, the cord is really short; thankfully, an extension cable is provided.  We also used the Bose 321 Series in-ear phones as a standard to gauge quality. Bass was decent, and so was the treble. Using the Bose earphones over the Sony ones gave us just a tiny improvement in quality—meaning the Sony earphones themselves are pretty decent, and you won’t have to go hunting for separate ones.

You can use the player as a storage device. The transfer rates were around 1.29 MB/s while transferring files directly onto the embedded memory.

Charging takes a little under three hours, and the charge easily lasts for more than a day with the volume set to 50 per cent—really good.

Similar to the Apple players, all the media that goes onto the player has to pass through Sony’s software—SonicStage and Image Converter. The media is converted to the supported formats. The software lacks an attractive interface, but gets the job done. You get two extra pairs of caps for the earplugs, and a stand to place the player on.

Rs 9,990 is not exactly cheap for a 2 GB player. You do get a video player and an image viewer, but neither of which are very exciting on the tiny 2-inch screen. It’s not extremely compact either. For the same price, you’d be better off getting a media player with a larger storage capacity.

Specifications
Dimensions: 43.8 (W) x 88 (H) x 9.1 (D) mm; weight: 53 gm; inbuilt memory: 2 GB

RATINGS
Performance  4
Features  4
Build Quality  4
Value for Money 3
Overall  3.5

Contact : Sony India Pvt Ltd
Phone : 66006600
E-mail : sonyindia.care@ap.sony.com
Web site : www.sony.co.in
Price : Rs 9,990