Sony MZNH600D Hi-MD MiniDisc Walkman

Mp3 players, look out because Sony is getting it together.

Posted Mar 24, 2006 - Ive only had the player for one day, but ive already downloaded about 39 albums onto the 3 of the mds ive received with the player. I still have two 80 minute discs to go, and also the 1GB disc! The sound quality on this thing is awesome and the EQ does wonders. There are more features on this than most mp3 players. Trust me, if you are a music freak and love your music to sound good, especially backing vocals and guitar solo's, this player is for you. I also wanted to note that i didnt get a chance to convert my (very few) mp3 files, but i downloaded the sonic stage 3.4 version for security reasons. People who gave this a bad review have either two issues. One, they arent too bright and arent good with electronics, or two they just need something to complain about. Because you really cant go wrong with this awesome machine. Its smaller than most bulky mp3 players, it sounds better, and its alot more durable. Who wants to walk around with a hard drive in their pocket anyway?

100% of readers found this review helpful. Did you find it helpful , unhelpful, or inappropriate?

Comment about this review

Although obviously a music player/recorder, it is ...

Posted Jan 8, 2005 - Although obviously a music player/recorder, it is also great data storage device. It is small, bus powered (no need for bulky power supply), and each disk (about $7.00 each) holds 1GB of data!! For me the music is a bonus; better sounding than my mp3 players.

91% of readers found this review helpful. Did you find it helpful , unhelpful, or inappropriate?

Comment about this review

I've only had the player for 1 day, but I already ...

Posted Aug 9, 2004 - I've only had the player for 1 day, but I already love it and I am glad I didn't buy a limited memory flash device or bulky hard drive based player. I have transferred about 10 full albums plus a few favorite songs to the player, and I've only used about 1/3 of the disk! The 6 band equalizer allows decent fine tuning of the sound, and it has 2 user definable equalizer settings in addtion to the 3 pre-programmed ones. The Soundstage program included is geared towards non-techo savvy users, and trying to figure out the advanced settings is a work in process still due to a lack of detailed documentation, however I probably only spent 10 minutes going through the menus. After loading the software, I was transferring files within 5 minutes. However, all MP3 files must be converted to Sony's ATRAC3plus format before transfer to the device. Depending on your computer, this can take awhile. Actual transfer to the device was quicker than the conversion of the files. All in all, I think this is the best high capacity MP3 type device available in a small lightweight package, especially for the price (I paid $149).

85% of readers found this review helpful. Did you find it helpful , unhelpful, or inappropriate?

Comment about this review

The new Hi-MD Mini Disc players could have been re ...

Posted Feb 17, 2005 - The new Hi-MD Mini Disc players could have been really cool. But Sony had to blow it with a lot of DRM restrictions and only supporting there own Atrac3 format. It does say it support MP3 and WMA, but that's missleading. It actually converts it to there Atrac3 format. And when you convert two different lossy formats (mp3, wma and atrac3) it makes the quality sound worse. In the prossess of ripping an origninal CD to MP3 it takes parts of the sound you normally don't hear out, which is why it can be a lot smaller than the original CD. But then when you convert it to another lossy format it takes even more of the sound away, which makes it sound even worse than the mp3, even though they might be the same bitrate. Also they used DRM to restrict how many times you can copy a song to an Mini Disc (like 5 times) before you have to delete it from one of your other MD's (check in/check out). The worst part is if you have some songs on a MD, you can upload it at all. So if your computer crashes and you loss all your data, you can't upload your music back to your computer. Which I think that diffeats one of the main perposes of having an MD. Also there software is pretty buggy. Sometimes it'll delete your songs off of your MD without warning you. Sometimes the software doesn't work at all. To bad that you can only use Sonic Stage to transfer your music to your MD's and nothing else. Regardless what the packaging says, it's not 100x speed. The write speeds to an MD are very, very slow. It still uses USB 1.1! That has been outdated for a while now. That being seid, I still like the feature of using it as like a big 1 gig floppy drive. You can plug the MD in to you computer without anything installed and use it as storage. It is still a bit slow, but it's aright for storing pictures and stuff like that. Even though it doesn't handle very small files that well. Like when I put my favorites in it, (to back it up) it took a little over 9MB when there actually only XXXkb. A couple other good things about it is that it only runs off of 1 AA battery and the whole MD unit is pretty small. So in conclusion it's only good for a data drive and it's a little slow at that. If they added drag and drop MP3, WMA and Ogg ability (without needing any software at all) and speed it up to usb 2.0 (and maybe a bigger, higher resolution screen) then I'd give it a kick a$$. But rignt now, it's deffentatelly not worth the $199 retail price. I wouldn't even spend over $65 on one (which you can almost get one for that price now (2/18/04) on ebay, and there keep getting cheaper.

83% of readers found this review helpful. Did you find it helpful , unhelpful, or inappropriate?

Well made product and easy to use, although some o ...

Posted Jul 6, 2004 - Well made product and easy to use, although some of the format choices are not well explained in the manual. The three line readout has all the info you would expect such as album, band, tracks, length, time remaining etc. Also allows sorting of music in various ways. Battery life is amazing. The new 1GB disks allow you to store 45 hours of music. Regardless of which file format you decide to use, the converting to the Sony format takes forever. To fill a 1GB disk with MP3 files seems to take about 6 hours (at least) - seems like it cant take advantage of USB 2.0

80% of readers found this review helpful. Did you find it helpful , unhelpful, or inappropriate?

Comment about this review

I have used it for a while now, and love it. As l ...

Posted Jan 4, 2005 - I have used it for a while now, and love it. As long as your computer is pretty modern the music conversion is very fast. The batery can last for almost all week. Very small, and light wieght. It is the best thing I have found, and i recomend it to everyone

75% of readers found this review helpful. Did you find it helpful , unhelpful, or inappropriate?

I like it alot. The WMA problem is easily solved b ...

Posted Dec 28, 2004 - I like it alot. The WMA problem is easily solved but still a pain. TO bypass it burn the WMA to a wave file to a cd. Then turn it into a mp3 file back on your computer and it can be traded to your md. I have no idea why i would need another HiMD unless it was one for me and one for my wife.

71% of readers found this review helpful. Did you find it helpful , unhelpful, or inappropriate?

Comment about this review

Lost my first minidisc snowboarding, found this on ...

Posted Feb 9, 2005 - Lost my first minidisc snowboarding, found this one. Definitely upgraded by purchasing this one. I am in agreement with the other reviews. One player comes with a gig disc, and one player + 5 one gig discs is still $100 cheaper than ipod (storage on one disc is 45 60 min. cds). To get more discs, check out pricegrabber. Still plays all my old discs, and playback lasts for 16+ hours on one AA battery. If you want to modify your files get Nero, then open your saved files with Sonicstage and import/transfer.....Get it! Peace.

67% of readers found this review helpful. Did you find it helpful , unhelpful, or inappropriate?

Comment about this review

Everyone should Own one

Posted Jul 10, 2005 - I recommend this to everyone!! It can store more music than I need at any one time! You could store over450 songs in 68K lp4 mode....its great. Also allows you to organize your music on each disk into folders.

50% of readers found this review helpful. Did you find it helpful , unhelpful, or inappropriate?

Comment about this review

Strongly Recommended

Posted Dec 10, 2005 - I have had this for a year and I have shoved it in my backpack and dropped it a lot and it still works perfectly. It is easy to put songs on the disc and doesn't take to long. The songs play without ever skipping and sound great. I highly recommend this.

33% of readers found this review helpful. Did you find it helpful , unhelpful, or inappropriate?

Comment about this review

it's easy to bring out, to record music on a mini ...

Posted Mar 31, 2005 - it's easy to bring out, to record music on a mini CD and have high capacity with fine outlook. compared with its earlier generation of MD, it's easier to operate and compatible with minidisc so that i can play back music on my current minidiscs. it's good. and it's better than a mp3 device to keep some classic music. with a mp3 you have to discard some music if there are new ones you want to record on the device but it's full.

33% of readers found this review helpful. Did you find it helpful , unhelpful, or inappropriate?

Comment about this review

Sound is reasonably good as highly compressed(AAC ...

Posted Jan 29, 2005 - Sound is reasonably good as highly compressed(AAC plus 48Kbps). Looks and actually, it is cheap. But function is enough. When you start the player, disk run fast and it is little noisy. I don't think download speed is terrible. When download music from PC to player, PC is changing format. So the speed is depend on computer. And if you select the same compression between what you download from CD-PC and PC-MD, you can download like normal mp3 player. Battery life is enogh long. As total I like this player very much. I recommend this, since there is no 1G memory player for $100 now, but I bought this as $99 with a 1G Hi-MD disk.

33% of readers found this review helpful. Did you find it helpful , unhelpful, or inappropriate?

Comment about this review

I like this product because it is sony and I have ...

Posted Mar 23, 2005 - I like this product because it is sony and I have been a fan of mini discs for quite sometime. I enjoy using this product but feel that the md simple burner program included could be improved upon. I would purchase this product again because it is a good deal.

25% of readers found this review helpful. Did you find it helpful , unhelpful, or inappropriate?

Comment about this review

i mainly bought this for a buddy of mine so i don' ...

Posted Mar 20, 2005 - i mainly bought this for a buddy of mine so i don't really know how it is. i think he's really enjoying it though. he used to have a md recoder/player, but it was stolen when his place was broken into and robbed. i bought this for him to cheer him up a little. anyhow, it was great dealing with the seller, i would highly recommend him.

25% of readers found this review helpful. Did you find it helpful , unhelpful, or inappropriate?

Comment about this review

a below average MD player

Posted Aug 21, 2005 - This the worst MD palyer that I ever have. It runs out battery quickly (about 5 hours) no matter what battery you put in it. The case is cheap plastic, looks and feels crapy. The dial control is hard to use, you need to train your finger many times to get used to it. And the display is not user friendly. If you haven't get it, stay away from it.

0% of readers found this review helpful. Did you find it helpful , unhelpful, or inappropriate?

Comment about this review