Sony VAIO Pocket VGF-AP1L 40GB MP3 Player

Review for the Sony VAIO Pocket VGF-AP1L 40GB MP3 Player

Posted Jul 14, 2005 - I am currently an ipod 20GB Clickwheel and Sony Vaio mp3 player owner, and I would like to give my opinion on both comparison. First and foremost thing that I would like to highlight is the no.of feature a Sony Vaio have over ipod. An ipod is just an mp3 player, whereas sony has tons of feature in addition to that such as inbuilt bridge to pull photos from a USB enabled digital camera. It has a feature to assign any photo as a jacket, that displays while album is playing. The Remote with LCD Display. G-sense pad navigation is awesome. Battery Life is amazing. Just the software and headphone are not upto the standard. I wish sony could have charged 25$ more and provided with more decent pair of headphones. And after the sony has brought down its prices, the player rocks. One more additional information, please do not forget to upgrade the player firmware upgrade, as well as software upgrade from the sony support site. The new firmware is awesome, with lot of features added in addition to direct mp3 support.

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Go for it!

Posted Oct 23, 2005 - I purchased it a few months back after doing a lot of research and also considering other players. In the end, I went for the name barnd SONY since I have never been disappointed by SONY and I should admit that I am not disappointed this time either. Also, I listened to ipod U2 and compared the sound quality and this one beats the U2 hands down. The player has excellent sound quality, if you have a SONY digital camera, you can download the pics onto the player. It has a cool color screen and a built in feature called Jacket which can actually be any picture or the album cover and you can watch it when you play a song from that album. I initially felt like it doesn't last for as much time as it claimed it would on a single charge, but when tested it by playing continuously and the battery lasted for 24 hours which is phenomenal considering the HDD size and the volume i had set. Overall, I should admit that I am very satisfied with this player, go for it but get a different pair of headphones. I got SHURE E2C and it sounds great on them. I also have SONY MDR-E828 which you can get at any local store for less than 10 bucks and it sounds even better on them, especially the bass. I would recommend this player to anyone.

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So Far So Good

Posted Jul 13, 2005 - I have owned this product for about a month. It is my first portable mp3 player. So far I have really enjoyed it. I haven't been able to explore or use all of its functions. But overall I find it user friendly, sharp looking, good memory size, and compact. I wish it would have came with a case...but that might depend on the store.

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I bought this device after a lot of debate between ...

Posted Jul 5, 2005 - I bought this device after a lot of debate between apple ipod and sony. Seems that this is much cheaper than the all famous Ipod but I like sony's stuff as they are the leader in AV technology, SO you cannot beat that. Anyway have been playing with this for the last few days , extremely wonderful to use. Neat color screen, tons of space and can download my sony digital camera photos on the go in a snap, now I don't have to worry about transfering each time to a computer, instead use this. Thanks Sony. Only hope it would have been slightly lighter than Ipod but only a OZ heavy but cool design compensates for it. Also hope to get other accessories in the market as Ipod but does have a replaceable battery with long life of 20 hours cannot beat that. Overall a very descent player for a deal.

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Sony 40GB MP3 player

Posted Oct 5, 2005 - When this player was first released it was incapable of playing MP3's - all your music had to be encoded in Sony's proprietary format. However, Sony recently released a firmware that allows MP3's to be played. With MP3 support, this isn't a bad player. Its very sleek and stylish, like most of Sony's VAIO products. It is a little bit bulky and heavy, not exactly pocketable. The interface is very sleek and well done. Sound quality is good, but not as good as competing MP3 players from Iriver and Creative.

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VAIO Pocket VGF-AP1L 40GB MP3 Player (40GB Internal Hard Drive)

Posted Aug 5, 2005 - Overall I must say this player is well worth the discount price ($200-$250)it costs. It's well built and looks gorgeous and you can't top the 40GBs of storage. Thats the cheapest money per byte you can get today. The 2 qualms I have with the player is its size and the sluggishness of the embedded software. Otherwise, the player's features and functions are top notch. Not only can it play mp3s now but it also displays photos, album covers, song lyrics, and it still plays Sony's ATRAC format too, if you're so inclined to that is. As a bonus you can even use the player to upload digital camera pictures if you have a compatble camera. Just like most other players music is categorized by artist, album, and genre. It also includes storing music by groups you customize from a computer, has a history of all the songs you're listened to, and contains 5 playlists creatable on the player itself. Unfortunately, you can't import playlists created on a computer. The real downside to this player is the Sonicstage software from Sony. Its slow as a snail and prone to crashing. Also, charging and music/picture transfers require the docking station it comes with, since the player is only equipped with a proprietary connector. Overall I highly recommend this player if you don't mind the few short-comings it has.

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Overall this is a great player. The cost is high b ...

Posted Dec 18, 2004 - Overall this is a great player. The cost is high but thats what quality costs. It's not a perfect player but its pretty close and I am glad I have purchased it.

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Making the big switch between the apple ipod to th ...

Posted Jun 24, 2005 - Making the big switch between the apple ipod to the sony vaio was a hard choice because the ipod currently has the best interface to use between the two. However, the ipod's price point not good when compared to sonys/GB. Thus for about 100 bucks cheaper, I choose the sony vaio as it had a better sound and a good quality build. Granted, it's a bit bigger than the ipod, due to the battery compartment sticking out, but it fits comfortably in my hand, has great storage capability and an overall solid feel. The stock headphones can be replaced with something a bit better. After sony released it's newest firmware, this mp3 player can truely play mp3s instead of being stuck to converting them to ATRAC3. Overall, i'm happy that I've gotten this over the ipod as it saved me about 100 on the sticker price, while providing me with what i want, more tunes on the go.

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A very nice mp3 player, but the software is iffy.

Posted Aug 8, 2005 - I had some problems transfering my wma files, which sonic stage was supposed to convert for me. The program would just crash every single time i did it. Mp3 files transfered fine, however. While there's no one aspect of Sonic Stage I can point out to say that it's bad, the program isn't very well made. Something's there that makes it seem bad, but I can't quite place it. The player is harddrive based, so there were short pauses when navigating large menus of playlists, albums, etc, but the pause wasn't that long, so I didn't mind. I expected a little bit of lag time for the harddrive to spin-up. The screen is absolutely beautiful on this music player, and the GUI is very nicely made, but I wish there were more skins. Sony gives you 4 skins and the default to use, but they give you the ability to add more; I couldn't find any skins to download on the internet though. Sound quality is very clear, with low noise levels. I haven't used this in loud places, but it feels like this player won't get loud enough in those situations. The included headphones are weak, so I recommend buying another set. A player of this quality deserves better headphones. I use a pair of Sony MDR-G74SL street style headphones, which has a decent sound output. Looking at screenshots and pictures makes this unit look really big and bulky, but when seen in person, it looks sleek, small, and aesthetically pleasing. The design screams high quality design. The remote that is included is very nice, as it is able to control almost everything that the player itself can do. Though this unit has flaws, its strengths greatly outweigh the weaknesses. I recommend it.

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Sony's MP3 Player - Ipod Killer

Posted Jul 21, 2005 - This is a great MP3 player, after Sony decides to give this player MP3 support after you get the new firmware. It's great. The sounds is awesome, but what do you expect from sony. This includes a remote which is a great strength and for the price (250 - 300 now) it's more worth it to get this instead of the Ipod. Don't forget about the picture viewer of the player.

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Overall speaking, this mp3 player has very high qu ...

Posted Jul 5, 2005 - Overall speaking, this mp3 player has very high quality/cost ratio and only costs $240 for 40G capacity. especially, as I have a Sony DC, it becomes a huge place to store my photos. It is not perfect, as the software, file format, and whole design could be improved to get it more convenient for use. Anyway, I am pretty glad to have bought it, and enjoy it too.

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overall the sony vaio is a good product, its just ...

Posted Jun 29, 2005 - overall the sony vaio is a good product, its just sony needs to fix it so the user doesn't need the firmware update to play mp3s.

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One of the best player in the market!

Posted Jul 7, 2005 - Can not complain much for the fact that this is a SONY. YES, I love almost all SONY product. So far, all sony electronics I owned satisfied me. Digital camera, laptop, DVD player, TV... This is my first SONY MP3 player. I guess they did not catch up the big MP3 market well. But for this one, I would recommmend it to anyone for its funtionality, battery life and easy to use. The only problem with it is its terrible software interface. I wish sony can be a little bit better with their software.

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I was looking through a ton of different players a ...

Posted Feb 9, 2005 - I was looking through a ton of different players and eventually settled on this one to use for my workouts. However, I had to replace it twice and eventually returned it. The player itself looks very nice and has a nice navigation, however this player skips worse than a CD player when I run with it and actually just stops working. I upgraded to the newest firmware which is supposed to have a lyrics view function for which you can see the lyrics while playing the song. I NEVER got this to work after talking on the phone with Sony support that admitted that the product was very much in beta stage. Worst of all was the horrible Sonic Stage software which is supposed to be some sort of music management akin to iTunes. However it's absolutely horrible in how it manages everything. It categorizes everything in the player by what folder it was in, which is just stupid. It doesn't really bother to take into account the ID3 tags, and how it manages your songs in the Sonic Stage software is terrible. It doesn't look for duplicates, if you change the place of a song it requirs that you delete your entire archive and then find all the songs again! What garbage is that? Worst of all, this product promises 20 hours of battery life. While using it how I told the salesperson I intended to, I didn't even get 3 hours. This seems like a fine product, it's just not market ready and I have no intention of paying $500 to be a crash test dummy. For the problems here, Sony should pay me just to find all the problems with this thing.

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Nice photo archiving device, but photo viewing is not user friendly

Posted Oct 2, 2005 - 5Mpixel photos take over 8 seconds to display in high resolution mode; high resolution photos look pixelated/unfocused in low resolution mode (unacceptable); No thumbnail or directory view of photo directory; photos must be viewed sequentially. Not an audio person, so I can't say much about the audio player aspects of the unit. Used with a Sony DSC-V1 camera

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