Sony Walkman NWZ-E443 (4GB)

By Kelvin Low, CNET Asia
Aug 28, 2009

It seems that despite the trend for portable devices receiving the touchscreen magic, several manufacturers have kept the simple button controls for budget MP3 players. Sony is famous for introducing the concept of portable music players in the past, but it hasn't had any answer to the onslaught of Apple iPods. Still, in an iPod-infested world, the Walkman branding fortunately lives on with Sony's still kicking out some pretty decent players.

The new E-440 series consists of the NWZ-E443, NWZ-E444 and NWZ-E445. These come in 4GB, 8GB and 16GB capacities, respectively. Memory capacity is the only difference between these three players.

Design

No big surprises as the layout of the E-440 range remains largely unchanged from the older E-430, but the size of the five-way D-pad has grown considerably, with the Back and Option buttons overlapping it (and giving it the Mickey Mouse look, as several sites point out). The bottom of the device is where we find the 3.5mm headphone jack and proprietary Sony WM-Port.

Moving on, the good, old-fashioned function lock slider and proper volume control rocker are on the right edge of the player. The E-440 series is reasonably palm- and pocket-friendly as well, measuring 86 x 44 x 9mm. Despite its size, the player is easily controlled with one hand.

The E-440 series has a rather odd-looking slanted design and is slightly larger than the E-430 players. But no matter, the new design looks decent. The upper region of the player receives the glossy plastic look, while the lower region has a rough texture to it. However as we found out, the glossy plastic is a scratch magnet, even with the use of a carrying case and we discovered marks appearing on the glossy surface after a few days into the test.

Features

The QVGA screen offers a 320 x 240-pixel resolution and rather sharp display. Visible color banding in images as well as videos suggests a limited color range display. The screen sits beneath a glossy plastic panel which induces glare when viewed under the sun. However, the screen still remains readable.

The tactile buttons have a nice chunky feel, and coupled with the interface, navigation through the player is easy. Browsing the music library after loading the player with songs is relatively simple as the player will group the albums into alphabetical groups: A-I, J-R, S-Z, 0-9, etc. It only got tedious when we chose to browse by song level. Scrolling is quick enough and the player also offers folder browsing as an option, which is nice.

You can connect the player to either a Macintosh or Windows computer and choose between file transfers with Sony's Content Transfer software and the simpler and easier drag-and-drop file transfer. Like the X-series Walkman we reviewed, the E-440 players will operate only in MTP mode with Windows PCs, but automatically switches to UMS when connected to a computer running on a non-Windows OS. Just an annoyance, but not a major flaw.

The player lacks an expansion card slot and the battery is built-in, taking a rather quick 2 hours to fully charge via USB. Sony claims a 30-hour audio playback and 6 hours with video.

The E-440 series will take MP3, AAC-LC, WAV and WMA formats. In addition to that media, AVC, MPEG-4 and WMV video are supported as well. However, the video size is restricted to 320 x 240, which seems low, but a small niggle as the players don't feature TV-output.

The FM tuner features auto scanning, 30 station presets, and FM recording. There's a built-in microphone at the bottom of the player for making voice recordings, and the Sony accepts JPEG images as well. Annoyingly, there is no on-the-go playlist creation on the device itself and deleting music files off the player is not possible.

Tags: Player, E-440, E-440 Series, Apple iPod, Sony Corp.

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