Sony NWE393/B 4GB Walkman MP3 Player (Black)

great item , good interface , too bad they don't make them anymore

I got this Sony Walkman (16 gb) to replace my older model that was only 4 gigs. That and I think that the battery was failing on the old one as it would only hold a charge for half the time it did when it was newer. That being said, it was a little workhorse that I used at work and doing yard work that never let me down. So when it started giving up the ghost a few weeks ago, I knew that I would replace it with another Walkman. Like the previous one, it has easy to use controls even though the volume control is on the side as opposed to being on the front as with the last model. Some reviewers have complained that the face is plastic and not metal, but honestly...how much abuse is this thing supposed to be put through? It is an mp3 player not a sledge hammer. So that was not an issue for me. Second, I think that the sound quality is just fine. This is another point of contention in some of these reviews. Again, this is a small mp3 player...not a high fidelity sound system with EQ's and a 15,000 dollar built in mixing board. With a good set of ear buds or head phones, you will be pleasantly surprised. The one issue I did run into was when I tried to upload my playlists to the player. Using Windows Media Player, I did the usual click and drag into the "sync with device" routine. My music was on the player but not in playlist format. When I went to "Playlists" on the player it said something to the effect of that there are no recognized playlists. After some searching online, I ended up downloading the Media Go app which is compatible with all Sony devices and after seeing and using it, is far superior to WMP in my opinion. I don't know if others have has this issue or just me or is it my WMP being problematic. Either way, Media Go solved that problem. In summary, I am happy with this purchase as it fills my need to have music and only music on the go. I don't want to use my large and expensive phone while at work around chemicals or working outside in my yard with dust, dirt and debris flying everywhere. If you have or have had a previous Sony Walkman and are looking for a replacement, I think that you will be satisfied with the latest incarnation of this device. Some of the controls have moved and maybe there's no pig iron on the face to stop bullets, but you'll find the same great battery life, ease of use and ease of loading music into it...and that's exactly what its supposed to be. Happy listening.

I already have one MP3 player, one of those SanDisk Clipjams. I love that little thing! I mostly use it at night when I need to listen to specific things to help me sleep. Listening to podcasts is motivating for me when I walk. I wanted to keep my podcasts separate from the bedtime stuff. I haven't had a Walkman since the first caseet walkmans came out! I think I spent $270 for that thing, and it was a fine piece of metal and machinery. It felt so good in the hand. This mp3 player is nothing whatsoever like that. It doesn't give you the feeling that you're holding a quality piece of Sony gadgetry, one that gives you the feeling of listening adventure ahead! Instead, this Walkman is a cheap piece of light Chinese plastic. The photo screen is exactly the same quality as my 1990's Creative Zen (which passed away long ago). I think this Walkman is a poor piece of equipment for $50. Even for $25; you expect the Sony name to be quality. This is not. With that said, this player is very light. I bought it because I cannot use Bluetooth - the wireless stuff hurts my ears with extended use, which is why I can't use my phone for podcasts outside the house with a headset, even wired it just hurts. People that complain about " this player has no Bluetooth!" need to pick a Bluetooth option - there are so many. The wired headsets are for people like me, with sensitivities to the signals against their heads. I specifically only wanted that feature. One this I really needed is an ability for the equipment to keep it's place on a podcast. I have this 3 hour podcast I'm trying to get through. My walks are about a half hour. The player keeps the place if I turn it off and back on. But if I'm even the slightest bit clumsy, fat fingered or slip to one of the other areas of the arrow circle instead of hitting Play directly, my place will be lost. I have fast forwarded to my place only to have it reset to 0 about five times. You have to FF and then only touch play. Touch anything else and it's back to 0 again. Pretty darn annoying. I absolutely have to pay attention to how far I am in to the podcast before I shut the player off. This may cause me some issues in usage that make me reconsider this player. But, I'm not sure how this will work on another player without me trying things and sending back. I still may shop for a nicer player before my time is up to send this one back. If I could get one that felt better in my hands and didn't look like it came out of the Dollar Tree, I still might upgrade. Hope this helped if you are considering this. I don't mean to be negative about this. It is a good basic player and the sound is good. The radio works just great (my SanDisk Clip picks up zero stations). Don't buy this if you like to look at photos. But if you want a basic player with simple wired headphones, with good capability to drag and drop at the computer, fast charging, very light, and the Sony name, consider this. If you're looking something that feels good in the hand with a bit more refined look and features, maybe look elsewhere.

It is like the Playstation 3 controller being compared with the Playstation 4 controller. This feels more fragile than the previous model, but it is lighter and brings upgrades that are just as subtle as the PS4 controller's. The plastic is different, hence the different feel, and actually may be the same as the PS4 Controller plastic. The controls are different: Volume and Hold buttons are now individual. The menu navigation has slight changes in a way that would annoy someone who had the previous model, but once you are used to it, or if you have never had one of these, you won't care at all. It runs fairly smoothly so far, but I have not loaded my own music yet(The 5 free tracks were never mentioned on the other reviews). These are preliminary observations mind you, but another thing I like is that there is a simple "Bass Boost" now which is set to "On" out of the box. I suck at Equalizers. I don't really understand what the flip I am doing with them so on the last model I was never able to use the features it had properly. It had different presets which mostly sounded the same, but had the option of saving 3 custom settings. Let me tell you, if all you want is a little more bass for your Miles Davis or Vera Lynn tracks, you won't give a toss about any of this. I am aware that had I not kept my previous one in the car it would still work today and maybe it wouldn't have had the multiple software lockups, which I must say happened with the iPod Nano 3, although much less. Someone stole it. That was the last Apple product I was impressed by....but I digress. This is as simple as you can get while still maintaining quality, and also it comes with 5 free songs, by artists you may not recognize, but free music better than what you would have gotten with your latest Windows Operating System. In summary they may have over reached themselves in some ways with the controls, but in most ways this is less annoying than the previous one, simplifying by giving a button one task. While it is more expensive than the some of the stuff listed it is what it is. A specialist that does specific things, and does them all well.

I hope this isn't the height of tech and music storage. I stopped listening to music some twenty years ago. I am of the Walkman (AM/FM) generation. I need something to keep me entertained while hiking. If you know the items I bought (a tight fanny pack for keys, etc; Water carrying system and now the MP3) I have prepared for some serious hiking for fun and exercise. Well, this will be a deep analytical look at this device. It has positives and negatives. Negatives: uploading; how do I buy Music off the internet? Sites are so user-UNFRIENDLY. Negative: algorithm to play any item (photos, Radio, saved music) Feels like 'Pong' in time of XBox. Positive: All my CD's are on this device. Let's start at the negative beginning. Sony must think an XBox user kid would buy this product. ZERO instructions to how to Upload my CD's or buy music. My dad would have cussed his ass off giving up on it working. I have Gamer Experience from the 80's to now. I pushed to upload my stuff onto the device. I've forgot how, but an hour or so, I can upload an album in a couple minutes. I Cannot GET THE INTERNET to load a pic of said album. Thus, the album is listed with songs in an algorithm list without a visual reference to the album. Beatles White album with a list of music, no picture. Negatives are you must be experience to load music on it; no pictures of albums loads up. Algorithm list is primitive list. Mind you, I have not covered how the machine remains on the last thing you were listening when you charge the contraption. It isn't like your phone where you get 98% Charged displayed while it is off. Bar being low, I've a good three feet of CD jewel cases. All my music are on the machine with some more space left over. If my grandmother with her 1930's Radio heard me hook up my MP3 to stereo speakers, she'd scream WITCH! WITCH! I've vinyl records and Tapes. I know BOOM Boxes. this tiny thing could play a big, clean sound with the right ports to go from small to huge sound. However, I bought it to replace that SONY Walkman (AM/FM) that slips on the shoulder. Song doesn't have a band or pouch to hang about the neck. I know how to sew, so.. I will be making a cloth pouch with a simple string that will let it hang like a cop badge on NYPD or some police badge show. Nothing fancy. But, like this MP3, it will do the job when Hiking is my priority. For a person with uploading experience with a low-tech feel to just do the job, I recommend it. For the tech challenged like say grandma, you will get frustrated. Those, I would look for something more "User Friendly." I'm sure that the fancier ones will be very pricey. For a person that barely listens to music anymore, give it a try. The Sony Walkman kept slipping off my shoulder. The armband wasn't ever tight enough. It effected my workouts in the gym or out with nature. I wanted something LIGHT. I needed it to not obstruct my activity.

Where do I begin with this one... I bought this Walkman to replace to older Walkman model, the Sony NWZE385, which had finally bit the dust after 3 or so years of use. I assumed much like many of the reviewers of this device that this Walkman would be more or less the same, just with a slight new design. Upon pulling it out of the box and syncing music to the Walkman, I noticed that it wasn't accepting certain files. And I don't mean I was trying to sync FLAC files to it or some format not supported by the device, no, just regular old mp3 files. It would straight up refuse to sync them. For some files that did get synced to the Walkman, they would for whatever reason split up the music from the same artist into multiple folders (ie, the Smiths' "Meat is Murder" album would have it's own artist section of "the Smiths" and then another album by the same band would again by separated into another "the Smiths" artist section). No matter how much I messed with the titles of the artists, even going into the properties of the individual mp3 files and manually editing them to be the same, the Walkman would not place them together into the same artist section. This Walkman, despite being a newer version, somehow has LESS features than the previous model. In the previous models of the Walkman, by going into the genres section you could choose to play all songs from one genre. That feature is not on this Walkman. On previous models, music could also be played by year. That feature is not on this Walkman. On previous models, music synced to the Walkman would have the album art already on the files if they were from a CD. Now, you have to manually paste the album art onto the files (like on Windows Media Player) in order to have the album art appear on the Walkman. If that wasn't bad enough, the shuffle feature, probably the one feature I have used the most in all of my mp3 players I have ever owned doesn't work. No matter what song you start on when you play shuffle, it will play maybe one or two songs in a shuffle mode, then it will play the same string of random songs, over and over and over. I legitimately thought I did something wrong, like maybe I pressed repeat and shuffle or something weird I didn't know about, but no. Shuffle is not shuffle on this Walkman. There is no shuffle. There are other minor inconveniences too, such as the incredibly stupid bass boost feature that was added to where you can't alter the EQ while it's on and things like that. Like... why? I've pretty much turned to Sony as a means to provide my portable music needs, and up until now, they've satisfied me with all of their previous models. This time though, I'm sad to say that I'll have to look somewhere else. It's a shame, because their previous models were awesome. I can't think of anything bad to say about them; they were durable and had all the features I needed and wanted. This one is just... ech. If you still have your older Walkman, and its still running, wrap that thing in bubble wrap and take good care of it, because until Sony gets their act together, you won't be able to replace it.

There's a way to headline a review. I got this to try and replace my old Walkman that has served me fantastically from 2009 until the end of summer 2020 when all button input ceased and wouldn't let me do any selections. So after messing around and testing it out for three months, how does this one stack up? Things I like -I almost forgot what it was like to have a player with some actual battery life for once. Age-related battery drain struggle aside, I can take this thing with me to work for designated times and places during my shift to listen to music and still have battery to last me through the weekend before needing to charge it again. It also charges quickly, so that's a plus (usually within an hour when the battery has been completely exhausted). -You want bass? This thing has you covered. I find it better to use the bass boost when the music is at a very low level (such as if I'm doing homework) though the headphones you use might have a different effect as well, so keep that in mind. Minor Nitpicks -Sound volume profile doesn't seem as strong. Where a comfortable listening volume with little to no outside noise on my old Walkman was 10, this one I have to set to 15 to get a similar volume. This is with bass on and off. "What the hell were they thinking?" Issues aka User-Unfriendly features that can be deal-breakers -Buttons. Either they're stupid easy to input from BARELY TAPPING (I'm looking at you, front buttons) or stiff to the point you almost have to SQUEEZE the whole unit to get a response (hello, volume buttons). If the battery is drained by the time I get to work, it's because the thing was turned on and playing after something in my bag pressed against it. On a similar note, the only way to deter rogue power-on from bouncing in your backpack is to power the thing off and just turn it back on when you want to use it. -The playlist feature is a lie. I've tried formatting the device and re-syncing a playlist of Sonic music for a test and while the computer properly registers the sync, the device does not recognize ANY playlist synced to it as a playlist. The music will still be on there but there's no way in hell you're going to get the thing to properly register a playlist on it. -This applies to albums as well but more in the sense of spotty registration. On my Gorillaz album (the 2001 album), all songs can be found but Tracks 1, 2, and 3 (Re-Hash, 5/4, and Tomorrow Comes Today) are not properly registered with the correct information, relegated to Unknown Artist and Track _ labels. Hope you enjoy your music library being a total mess because trying to format and re-sync everything is only going to give you an aneurysm in the quest for proper labels and information. If you're a hard-core music fan and want the top of the line portable music player, this ain't it chief. If you're looking for a reasonably affordable music device that you can just plug your music in and go, you might like this but try out other players in the price range first. This MP3 player is functional and can be used as an introductory player, but that's about it and there are far, far better ones for the price that are more user-friendly.

I don't get the complaints about this product. I owned a previous Sony mp3 player model about five years ago. It lasted years and eventually died because I love my music to death. I am rough on these things. I need to have my music everywhere, especially when working or in the car. I tried a tablet for a couple of years after that but it wasn't nearly portable enough, nor did it have the tactile buttons that are really needed if you are going to navigate music menus in the car safely, So a week ago I bought a real piece of junk trying to go cheap, specifically a Thor MP3 player, and it made me realize that there are some things you can't go cheap on (you can find my one-star review on that page). So I spent a bit more and returned to Sony, this wonderful new version of their old player. It comes with a PC music organizing program page link (Media Go) that helps keep the loading process organized and will keep the music on your PC when you're done, which is handy. My only complaint is that it could not keep up with how fast I dropped my music files on it (transferring from iTunes) so I had to work with it over two sessions to get all the music on it I wanted. I have a considerable collection, and culled it down to my favorites from the 80s through today, Currently listening to Taylor Swift on a portable speaker connected via a wire as I write this. I have now listened to music through headphones, a car cassette adapter, and the speaker in my office, The sound is terrific. I simply don't get the complaints. Turn off the bass boost, set the equalizer, and go. The capacity is considerable, and nothing much has changed as far as the scrolling menus go. Sort through the music alphabetically by artist or album. You can use the control disc to tap through the menus to choose music or the radio, set the equalizer, etc. It has photo and ebook functionality that I don't use. I just know that it is easy to use and sounds great, and it's about $50 cheaper than the iPod Shuffle equivalent. The device had trouble reading the tags on some iTunes music and in some isolated cases, I had to reload it from the account or re-rip some CDs, which corrected the problem. I attribute this to Apple, which does not like to play well with others. Bottom line: I had to work with it a few hours to set it up but now I'm ready to rock.I love it, like I loved the one before it.