Sony NW-A810

The Walkman A810 series is a portable media player designed by Sony. It was a flagship model in the Walkman digital player family. The model debuted in Asia in 2007, and then became available in North America. This series updates the previous Walkman A800 series, with the same hardware but different on-PC music management program.

Sony Walkman NW-A810 Series
Retail box of a black NWZ-A818
ManufacturerSony Corporation
TypePortable media player
Operating systemSony Proprietary OS
Storage2 GB (NW-A815)
4 GB (NW-A816)
8 GB (NW-A818)
Solid-state Drive
Display240x320 2" 262k TFT
LED Backlight
ConnectivityWM-PORT
USB 2.0 Compliant
PowerLi-Ion Battery
non user replaceable
Dimensions44.5 x 88.0 x 9.6 mm
Mass1.9 oz.
PredecessorNW-A800 Series
SuccessorNW-A820 Series
Related articlesWalkman
Windows Media Player 11

Sony released 3 models, the NWZ-A815 (2 GB), NWZ-A816 (4 GB) and NWZ-A818 (8 GB). Some of the enhancements made include compatibility with Windows Media Player 11, and the infamous Drag n' Drop feature, which allowed the user to transfer Music, Photo and Video files quickly, via windows explorer, (using ID-Tags for the song information i.e. album, artist etc.). Sony also removed compatibility with ATRAC which replaced the customers need for SonicStage, with Windows Media Player 11.

In March 2008, Sony launched its successor in United States, A820, featuring wireless functions and with larger LCD display and memory.[1]

Design
The external design comparison between the Walkman NW-A810 and NW-A1000

This player shares same hardware and design with Sony NW-A800. The whole body is encased with metal, and has a glass covered 2.0" LCD display. The three control buttons below display are specially arranged to make up the Walkman logo in the front. Additionally, there is a chrome-like strip made of polished metal surrounding the device. Overall, the design is in a similar style with Sony's preceding Walkman A series model, NW-A1000/3000, which did not come to sale in United States. Both of them feature a surrounding metal strip and deliberately arranged control buttons to mimic Walkman logo. The available colors for the NW-A810/800 model are black, white, purple and pink in Japan.

Operation

Navigation is handled via three circular controls on the front of the player: a power/option key, a back/home button, and a four-way control pad surrounding a central play/pause key.A dedicated volume rocker sits on the right edge of the player.[2]
The user interface is composed of nine icons organized in a 3X3 square. Icons Are highlighted and magnified as the user scrolls through them. The operation system offers a searching function, letting user search for a song based on artist, album, release year and genre.

The back view of NW-A810

Performance
DSEE logo

The NW-A810/800 MP3 players have been critically praised for their audio quality, mostly due to its patented Sony technologies such as DSEE (Digital Sound Enhancement Engine) and Clear Stereo. DSEE is claimed to restore higher sound frequency lost when creating compressed MP3 files, to reproduce the CD audio quality.[3]
As well, the MDR-EX082 headphones bundled with the NW-A810 have a high bass response for headphones of its size, and also provide the MP3 player with noise cancellation technology. It's also tested to have higher-than-average battery life, with 36 hours of audio play and 8 hours of video play.

Reception

Walkman NW-A810 received great acclaim from CNET, which gave the gadget the Editor's Choice Award with a score of 8.0 out of 10, and was rated as "excellent".[2] CNET praised it for its slim design with an ample screen, extraordinary sound quality and fantastic battery life, but criticized its short earphone cable and the placement of the hold button on the back of the player.
Crave, the CNET gadget blog, named the NW-A810 series as one of the MP3 players that shaped year 2007, with another three, the Zune 80, iPod touch, and the ZEN.[4]

Differences with Walkman NW-A800
This article is about differences on the specification. For detail specification on NW-A810, see Sony NW-A800.
NW-A800 NW-A810
Audio Format ATRAC, ATRAC3, ATRAC3Plus
Bitrate : 48-352 kbit/s, Freq : 44.1 kHz
ATRAC Advanced Lossless
Bitrate : 64-352 kbit/s, Freq : 44.1 kHz		 Linear PCM
1,411 kbit/s
Freq : 44.1 kHz
Video Format MPEG-4 Simple Profile, Max bitrate : 2,500 kbit/s
H.264/AVC Baseline Profile Level 1.2 & 1.3, Max bitrate : 768 kbit/s		 H.264/AVC Baseline Profile Level 1.2 & 1.3, Max bitrate : 768 kbit/s
Gapless Playback Yes (ATRAC) No
Software Package Sonicstage 4.3
Sony Image Converter 3.0		 MP3 Conversion Tool
Windows Media Player 11
Capacity (User Available) NW-A805 : 1.81 GB
NW-A806 : 3.73 GB
NW-A808 : 7.56 GB		 NWZ-A815 : 1.71 GB
NWZ-A816 : 3.57 GB
NWz-A818 : 7.30 GB

Hardware-wise, NW-A800 and NW-A810 are identical. The main difference laid on the firmware which affect audio format support and music management software. Unless mentioned specifically above, the rest of specification is exactly the same for both devices.

See also

References
  1. Sony Noise Canceling Walkman Archived 2008-03-06 at the Wayback Machine
  2. CNET Review of NWZ-A810
  3. CNET Review of Audiophile MP3 Player
  4. Crave Article : MP3 Player That Shaped 2007
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