Review: Sony NWZ-A815 portable media player

Same excellent audio as before, but now with easier file transfers

We've been extremely impressed by Sony's efforts in the MP3 player market in the past, most notably because of the consistently excellent audio performance and degree of control over your music.

The NWZ-A815 addresses one of the biggest issues we had with the range - the lack of drag-and-drop file transfer.

Previously, Sony has persisted with the Sonicstage media management suite along with its Atrac format, but it has thankfully given up the ghost and bowed to popular demand.

The NWZ-A815 includes all of the features of its predecessors in this range, including video and photo playback, but now includes an improved 2in colour display, offering superbly vibrant video and photo playback to go with the impressive audio.

As expected, you're given an excellent degree of control, from the Time Machine shuffle (which randomly selects a year to play tracks from) to the range of equalizer presets to fine-tune the audio. There's also an impressive set of headphones, which use twin drivers to separate the bass and treble for a more distinct sound.

The addition of drag and drop has resulted in Sonicstage being left out altogether, which means you have nothing on the disc to convert video to the required format. The end result is you'll have to pick up separate video conversion software.

This problem aside, there's not much else we can fault the player on, aside from perhaps the lack of an FM radio or voice recorder. The 33-hour battery life (seven for video) and low price point of just £89.99 for the 2GB player, rising to £129 for the 8GB makes up for this. And when you throw in the best media playback performance around, this is a fantastic device for those who don't like making compromises with their music.