Our quick take
Sony NWZ-A845 Walkman - 4.5 / 5
On the bottom of the device, you’ll find a socket for hooking it up to your computer’s USB port with the supplied cable. One of our only gripes with the player is that you have to charge it through your computer as there is no separate power adaptor. The headphone socket is also located on the bottom, which we think is a simple, but effective, stroke of design genius. As it’s on the bottom, it means that you don’t have to contend with the headphone wires dangling in front of the screen when you’re trying to seach for a track to listen to. One of the NWZ-A845’s big selling points is its large 2.8-inch OLED screen, boasting a 400 x 240-pixel resolution. All of the on-screen menus appear clear and bright, making navigation a cinch. The icon-based home screen enables you to choose between the main functions including Music, Video and Photos. The menu set-up is easy to understand and very intuitive to use so you’ll be whizzing through the settings in no time. When it comes to music playback, the player supports MP3, WMA, and AAC files which can be transferred in one of three ways. You can either move them across from a CD using Windows Media Player 11, you can use the bundled Content Transfer software to load tracks straight from iTunes or you can simply drag and drop files using Windows Explorer.
To recap
The extensive noise cancelling technology means that the player boasts an impressive audio performance that’s far better than many of its rivals
