Review on Sony NWE394/B 8GB Walkman MP3 Player (Black): Enjoy Music Anywhere! by James Vilchez

I took almost a year to fully test this product before sitting down to write my review. I have used this item both at the gym and in the office. The only way to say it's correct is to compare it to Sony's MP3 players of the past. None of the problems I had with it were remotely related to the older metal-bodied versions. First, using Windows Media Player to create playlists was such an easy and familiar experience. Just grab your playlists and upload them. Well, it's absolutely incompatible with Windows Media Player. Now if you want to download entire playlists, you have to do it with a weird aftermarket music program. (Music Center For PC) Restoring your playlists in Music Center For PC requires a log, a tedious process, but once you've done that, you can download them. The next issue is processing speed/performance. If your playlist is very long, it will take a few minutes to load. For example, my Best of Electronic playlist is over 20 hours long. When I click on it, the player practically freezes for a few minutes before the playlist loads. Models released just 4 years ago didn't do this at all. Then the player also freezes with certain files, which previous models had no problems with. My MP3 player is allergic to Aphex Twin! Not cool. Every time an Aphex Twin song comes up, it chokes and after 5 minutes an error message pops up saying "Unable to play file". The file in question is a regular MP3 file ripped from a CD. So Sony really made a big mistake. This is really discouraging, because Sony used to be the best MP3 player of all time. What made them great was that they could accept playlists (many popular MP3 players don't) and they were SO robust. I saw them survive what should have ruined them.