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| Is this the iPod killer?
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Blimey, Sony appears to be tripping over itself to release new MP3 players at the moment. Only a couple of weeks back we got news of the Walkman Bean range of flash-based players, and now its hard disk line-up is getting a make-over.
From the sleek, but techy looking NW-HD1 to the more accommodating appearance of the NW-HD5, Sony been has constantly altering the design of its hard disk players to try and gain some ground on front-runners Apple. The latest models, the 6GB NW-A1000 and 20GB NW-A3000 have an interesting curvaceous design (the 20GB version is slightly larger and sports a bigger screen) and both have a range of intelligent features that aim to get the most out of that giant music collection. Both offer ATRAC3plus and MP3 playback and will ship with the new CONNECT Player software, which replaces the much maligned SonicStage platform.
One of the criticisms of Sony hard disk players in the past was that the interface didn't feel as intuitive or user-friendly as the iPod. With this in mind, the company has developed an 'Intelligent Shuffle' function, allowing music to be searched via genre, artist, album, song, release date, rating and recently transferred. Other features include a 'Time Shuffle' for playing songs of a randomly selected year and 'Favourite Shuffle' for playing your top 100 most listened tracks.
The players are also able to access three years of playback history and feature what Sony claims to be the first ever 'Initial Search' on a hard disc device, allowing you to scroll from A-Z for ultimate ease of use. And if all that's not enough, there even an 'Artist Link' button which searches every artist, album and song stored on the device and offers suggestions of artists and bands closely linked to the genre of music being played at the time. To round things off both players come equipped with a rather lovely looking organic white EL display, first seen on its smaller flash-based range.
All these fancy features have definitely whetted our appetite and we can't wait to get our hands on one when they're released in November. Available colours are violet, silver and pink with prices yet to be confirmed. More information can be found at www.sony.co.uk
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NW-A1000 (6GB)
Max No of Songs 4000
Dimensions W55.0mm x H88.1mm x D18.7mm (the thinnest part is 11.5mm)
Screen Size 1.5 inches
NW-A3000 (20GB)
Max No of Songs 13000
Dimensions W65.2mm x H104.2mm x D21.4mm (the thinnest part is 13.5mm)
Screen Size 2 inches
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