Sony's Walkman tape players were the iPod of their day. The Sony Walkman NWZ-A729 is the latest evolution of the brand, and is currently available in 8GB and 16GB capacities for $199 and $299 respectively. The interface is similar to that of many entry-level Sony Ericsson cell phones, with a main screen consisting of several icons and four arrow buttons for navigation. The interface is decent, but looks a bit primitive compared to the iPod Nano and its ilk. While the NWZ-A729 is a bit bigger than the Nano, it's still small compared to other media players. Also, the screen is impressive on such a small device.
While the software on the device is average, the PC software is very bad. While it can help you manage podcasts and gives a somewhat intuitive interface for putting music on your device, it will do so at speeds far slower than those offered by iTunes or similar software. Fortunately, unlike with iPods, the NWZ-A729 will let you drag-and-drop files onto it.
Performance (read the full lab performance results at MediaPlayerInfo.com)
The Walkman NWZ-A729 performed well on our audio quality tests. We found out that the player emphasizes bass a little bit, but not by any significant amount. The player also had very low distortion and noise, which is great for picky audiophiles. The channels also won't bleed into each other much; if a sound is supposed to be 100% allocated to the left channel, you won't hear it out of the right one. The only issues with audio quality were on our output power test and on our headphones audio test. Headphones that come with the device are typically bad. Although the ones that come boxed in with your NWZ-A729 are better than the iPod headphones, but still aren't particularly good. The output power issue will only really concern those who plan on listening to high-impedence headphones at a high volume. The low output power means that high impedence headphones will suck up a lot of the juice that could otherwise go towards powering the headphones. Overall, however, the Sony Walkman NWZ-A729 did well on our tests.
Comparisons (read the full lab performance results at MediaPlayerInfo.com)
The NWZ-A729 has a few factors going against it. Compared to modern iPods it simply feels old. The interface isn't as polished and the physical design isn't as well thought out (d-pad scrolling through long playlists is suboptimal). While there's definitely a market for the NWZ-A729, we can't find a compelling reason to choose it over other media players in its price bracket. At $200 and $300 for 8GB and 16GB, the NWZ-A729 will cost an extra $50 and $100 respectively, compared to the Nano. If you can find one of these on sale, or the price has dropped significantly, then we'd recommend considering it; at the moment, however, we can't recommend it. For the price, those who don't mind Apple should look into the Nano, and those who don't want an iPod should check out the Creative Zen X-Fi.
For a more in-depth review, visit the Sony NWZ-A729 16GB Review at our partner MediaPlayerInfo.com
