Summary: I spent quite a bit of time in the week or so before I bought this product researching the main players in the MP3-CD field. While my favorite based on everything I'd read was the iRiver iMP-550, I decided that I could get everything I wanted out of a player for less than $100. The features that I sought the most were:
1) an AM/FM tuner
2) the ability to fast-forward through MP3s, which I found many of the lower-end players could not do; and,
3) a jog dial or other implement that made navigating through songs and folders fairly simple.
I ended up narrowing my search to Sony and Panasonic products, and eventually went with Sony because I was curious about their ATRAC technology, which I'll get into in a bit.
STRENGTHS:
For the most part, Sony is going to put out decent products, and this player seems to be no exception in terms of quality and workmanship. I don't have any complaints yet, although I've only owned it for about a week. The D-NF400 has every feature I had looked for in my initial research, and then some. The TV and weather bands have turned out to be more entertaining than I would have guessed.
I didn't spend any time actually listening to other MP3-CD players, so I don't have a basis for comparison when it comes to volume output. I can say, however, that with all of my 192kb songs and most of my 128kb music, I can get plenty of sound at about 3/4 volume capacity even while commuting by train. At home or in my quiet office, I'm often only at about 1/2 the volume capacity. Although I've replaced the stock headphones with a set of Sony MDR-V150s (ear-muff style), the stock headphones are nearly as loud and reasonably clear except at very high volumes. They also let in a lot more outside noise, however, so if you really love your music, you're better off replacing them.
So far, I've not heard a skip from this player. As I said, my most frequent usage in on the train, which isn't the smoothest ride in the world. I've also hooked it up to my car stereo via a cassette tape adapter and driven all over the mean streets and freeways of LA without a hiccup. And, of course, since I commute, I do a fair amount of walking with it between the train and subway. So I'm impressed that I haven't had any issues at all here.
I haven't had the player long enough to truly comment on battery life except to say that I've put in approximately 20-25 hours of active play time, and the battery indicator still looks full. Certainly nothing for me to complain about.
WEAKNESSES:
I'll start with the biggest weakness, which is the SonicStage software. I've read reviews from several other people who have used it who have called it completely useless, and I can understand why. This software is designed to allow you to compress your music even beyond MP3 compression while still maintaining high-quality sound. Sony claims that at 48kbps, you can have up to 490 songs on one CD.
Now, let me start by saying that when the software does work, it does an excellent job. Using the default setting of 64kbps, I've recorded several CDs with over 300 songs on them. There is something very pleasing about being able to store your entire library of certain genres of music on a single CD. And although I'm no audiophile, I haven't noticed an appreciable difference in quality in my music, most of which was ripped at 192kbps.
The software operation itself leaves a lot to be desired, though. My main complaint is that it is e x t r e m e l y s l o w . The conversion from MP3 to Sony's ATRAC format is painful. The first CD I burned, which had 283 songs on it, took over 5 hours just for the conversion process. Thankfully, in this day of 100GB+ hard drives, SonicStage will keep the converted files on your hard drive so that if, for some odd reason, you ever needed to burn the same songs on to another CD, you would not have to repeat this tedious process. SonicStage is also buggy, but it does work most of the time. And it's fantastic when it does.
The only other issue I've had is with two of the buttons. The jog dial for navigation consists of the left, right, up and down directions, with a play/pause button right in the center. Because the buttons are so small, I've often found myself trying to skip to the next song and instead pausing the current song inadvertently. The other odd button is the one used for switching between FM/AM/TV/Weather Band. It's a flimsly-feeling thin rubber bar, and it just adds a cheap feeling to the player when everything else is so solid.
SUMMARY:
Overall, I have had a great experience with the player, and I'd highly recommend it to anyone who prefers this format to the stored memory MP3 players. Great job, Sony!
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