Sony NW-A3000 20GB MP3 Player - £99.97!

salthegal

I nipped down to te local tesco and got the last one, many thanks to the op.

dk143

quoia wrote:

Where did you see this offer ?

Tesco online has the silver one at £187.87

http://www.tesco.com/electrical/product.aspx?R=8289012

This offer was in my local Tesco, and it was the purple one.

From what I can tell, every mp3 player has it's own pros and cons, but £100 for a 20gb one seems really good!

sinaplenty

Aiadi wrote:

ATRAC has the worst quality out of all the lossy formats and Sony has the worst software out of all MP3 players. Stay away.

Maybe it does when you compare ATRAC and mp3 at the same bit rate - although I'm not sure that many of our ears would be able to tell. But ATRAC also produces much smaller files so you can afford to have a higher bit rate - I've found that this means you get tracks that sound at least as good as mp3.

With 20GB to play with most people could go for the top bit rate and get a great sound. But then with the noise of cars shooting by me on the cycle lane, I'm not sure I'd notice the difference between the fanciest hi-fi and the Woolworths lift music system!

DJ_KrazyLegs

Went down to tescos in redditch (none left in Birmingham)... They said they had 2 left but when i got there they scanned at 199 each. After a lot of arguing the mgr phoned the buyer and it is apparently ONLY the purple ones on sale, even tho it says nothing about that on the ticket. Still 200 quid for silver or black!!! They managed to dig out the last purple one for me but dont reckon they will be restocking so get one while u can!

mattwenn

I had one of these units, the software that it comes with is rubbish! If you have lots of files (you will do if you want to fill it up), the software is unresponsive and slow.... utter rubbish basically!

If you can put up with that the unit itself if good..... battery life is also superb.

If you get it, download 'sonicsage' and this is a slightly better piece of software than the unit comes with... no allot tho!

bleugh

erm...........ATRAC is superior to Mp3 for a given file size

thats quite important really,

and don't argue, please, technically speaking, on paper it's superior, and i can definatley vouch for it on listening tests also

(NW-HD5, arcam alpha 8 amplifier, KEF Q15 speakers, Ixos gamma biwire cables, an old combination, but one that shows music flaws very well)


as for sony's software, it works well, supports MP3's, but crashes now and again.
it can even rip a CD to MP3 and use the CDDB database to rename the tracks

it supports Mp3 and Artrac, you can choose your own data rates also

it really isn't that bad, i used to prefer drag and drop in windows explorer, but i use the sonicstage all the time now

tommyj_2

nice find.

a couple of questions:

1. do you have to use the supplied software, or can you just use the windows explorer drag and drop method?

2. can this be used as a portable hard drive?

gazbert_2

Agreed, SonicStage isn't the best, but it's useable. There was a problem with a newer version of ConnectPlayer but that's going to be sorted by a new release by the end of the month (I think) which should also improve SonicStage.

I use the NW-HD3, and it's smaller and has a better battery life a music quality than practically any 20GB iPod.

mattwenn

tommyj wrote:

nice find.

a couple of questions:

1. do you have to use the supplied software, or can you just use the windows explorer drag and drop method?

Software needs to be used...


2. can this be used as a portable hard drive?

I Think so.

Tallyho_2

gazbert wrote:

Agreed, SonicStage isn't the best, but it's useable. There was a problem with a newer version of ConnectPlayer but that's going to be sorted by a new release by the end of the month (I think) which should also improve SonicStage.

They have been saying that since version 1.5 , its now version 3.4 & still crap .