Sony NW-HD5 (20GB)

It is bad enough to have your own product category snatched from under your nose, but what's worse is to play catch-up with the usurper (iPod). Though Apple is still the market leader when it comes to harddrive MP3 players, Sony's efforts to revamp its aging NW-HD design may just have enough oomph to allow the Japanese firm to take a bigger bite out of the fruit.

Facing Up To The Music
We had no real idea what Sony was going on about when we first heard that the NW-HD5 had a feature called the "follow turn" display. Initially, we excitedly thought it meant the display would orientate itself according to the user's eye position. Turns out we were not too far from the truth.

	Sits well in the hand.

Sony's NW series has always featured the G-Sensor technology which purportedly protects the hard disk by detecting any abnormal velocity and removing the recording head before the MP3 player hits the ground. Sony leveraged on this existing technology and applied it to the NW-HD5's LED screen.

Using a mathematical analogy, the player will, on powering on, detect its position on the Y-axis and adjust the screen orientation and playback buttons accordingly.

The NW-HD5 registers only three screen orientations with the cross-button layout
readjusting themselves to suit the screen display.

However, it isn't as perfect as we would have liked it to be. The NW-HD5 was clueless which way it should turn when we had it upside down. Nor did it have any idea when we had it lying on its back. The LCD also does not actively reorientate itself when we switched position in mid-operation; apparently the G-Sensor takes only the first reading when it is first switched on.

We like the new big screen (roughly 1.8 inches) on the NW-HD5, which shows off track information with aplomb. Though it is still a monochrome display, unlike recent offerings from Apple, iRiver and even some no-name offerings, the ease of visual feedback with the large fonts and a reversible display (black on white or white on black) makes up for it.

It's All In The Form Factor
Moving away from the older NW-HD3 which has some of its playback controls on the top and bottom of the player, Sony heeded user feedback and positioned all the buttons on the front of the unit. This certainly has made things more convenient, though we are still sold on the Click Wheel interface. However, the new hardware controls are a great improvement over the NW-HD3's with very good tactile feedback and a smooth finished surface that feel very comfortable.

Though the overall metal chassis of the NW-HD5 adds to the weight of the player, it also confers a solid assurance of its build quality to the user. The NW-HD5 is also available in three different colors (red, black and pearl white).

	In three colors too.

We also like the crossbar layout for the playback buttons and the location of the Volume, Menu and Stop on each of the four corners. The generous spacing between the buttons makes navigation control at night quite intuitive especially since the buttons do not have their own backlight. What is a pity is that only the playback buttons recalibrate themselves to the screen, not the aforementioned buttons.

The menu layout has an almost flat learning curve with each menu page leading to the other intuitively. We also find the navigation within the NW-HD5 to be very organic, with a right button press to move on to the next page, the left button serving as a Back function, and the Up/Down keys to scroll vertically.

As with all high-capacity MP3 players, the ease of searching for songs on the 20GB hard drive is an important purchase determinant. Though we find that depressing the Up or Down button will accelerate the scrolling speed, it failed to help us land the right track at the first attempt and even the Initial search did not quite cut it since it can search according only to track title and not artist or album names.

	Go to page two of the review

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