Sony NWZ-A828 player review

Sony NWZ-A828

At first, short and to the point, and under the cut more
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Pros:
- sensibly assembled
- a minimum of controls, all of the case
- supports bluetooth headphones
- normal video support (mp4)
- instant start
- the presence of all sorts of subtle convenience and reasonableness
- you can delete viewed video files

Minuses:
- does not support podcasts
- non-standard cable
- does not work as a standard usb-drive
- the position of the player is reset after recording new files
- the screen is prone to scratching
- you can not delete audio files

I will try to give a possible minimum of technical details, that you will find anywhere without me. Particular attention will be paid to the possibility, but rather the impossibility of using the player to listen to podcasts.

So, before sony, I had iriver and samsung, at last I was tired of fighting for ogg and I decided to buy a player of a normal company, which in theory should already be a good judge and be able to think about using its products.
Sony is not the first day on the market and makes cool devices that have been tested before the release of the series, in addition, Sony has a decent sound. In my opinion, it is foolish to evaluate the player, which is usually listened to on the street or in the subway by the sound quality, but if it’s good, then it’s probably a plus. As I have already noted the build quality - this thing is just nice to hold in your hand.

Control
From the mp3-player is not so much in the management and required: forward-backward, pause, volume and lock. All this is easy and intuitively-clear controlled blindly, out of pocket. All buttons are conveniently located and easy to reach everyone, holding the player with one hand.

Video
Normally, without any problems, it plays mp4, as long as it does not exceed 320x240, otherwise it just does not play the video, only the sound.
Marks new downloaded files, remembers the viewing position in each of them. That is, it supports all those functions that would be useful for podcasts. Rewinding for video with speeds, as it has long been in the coolest VCRs, there are no problems with it at all.
The strangest thing is that the player cannot show any frame from the video in order to understand what kind of video. For some reason, Sony decided that no one would break off to create myvideo.mp4 for everyone alongside myvideo.jpg, and so the decorated screensavers show. For this purpose, I use ffmpeg to make a screen saver from the first frame of the 140th second, but in general a strange position.

Podcasts
Unfortunately, the player is simply not intended for listening to podcasts. Sony has models that implement specialized functions specifically for podcasts, so nwz-a828 does not apply to them. That is, the player does not know how to memorize to where he listened to this or that program, which ones he already listened to and which ones did not. Especially this move by Sony is completely incomprehensible in light of the fact that all these functions are implemented for watching videos. An exception is the case if in the middle of listening to a podcast you suddenly wanted to watch some kind of video: in this case, it is possible to return to the exact moment at which listening to the audio was stopped.
Often there is a desire to rewind music or advertising in podcasts, for this there is scrolling: you need to press and hold the "right" key. In this case, the player loses the pieces, to control what is happening there, and it is usually not difficult to hear the voice of the announcer and stop scrolling. So in this case, it turns out, after stopping scrolling, the player carefully winds a couple of seconds back, and so you can hear from the very beginning what the announcer says after the advertisement or song. For one reason or another, sometimes there is a need to rewind a fairly large piece of audio over time, and scrolling for this works very slowly. But it turned out that in pause mode, the player rewinds 10 times faster, and the problem is generally gone. Well, plus all this, you can not remove the listened podcast, with time you start to get confused with them.

General considerations
As for the use of bluetooth, I’ll apparently write separately, but I’ll note right away that it cannot transfer files via bluetooth, so in any case you will need this very non-standard cable for recording files and charging. Under windows to the player there is some obscure software, but if the ms media player was installed, then the device is available and so. A separate disk for it is not assigned and copy files there, for example, far `th - it does not work, just by explorer. In linux, the device is normally mounted, as it supports MTP.
It is charged through the same cable, and since I constantly connect the player to download new files, I never charge it specifically. Subjectively - it takes quite a decent time, for example, a couple of films could be watched for sure. If you forget to turn it off for the night, it will lose everything that the audio finds and fall asleep by itself, without noticeable battery consumption.
In addition to oddities like the splash screen for videos, there are also nice little things and thoughtfulness in the spirit: if you put a hold on a pause, you fall asleep after 10 seconds (instead of the standard minute). If you try to do something with the player while it is in the hold, it will turn on and display the message “ON HOLD” for a couple of seconds. If in these couple of seconds to remove from the hold, then the player will remain on, before I didn’t notice it behind my devices. In addition, this is quite a decent navigation, somehow with a minimum of effort it always turns out to find the desired file. Scrolling through files is accelerated if you need to rewind somewhere far, so there are no complaints about this. As a screensaver, he knows how to show a clock, which in my opinion is superfluous, but sometimes it is convenient to look at it, and there is such an opportunity.
In general, the only real disadvantage I would call a complete inability to work with podcasts, for all the other parameters is quite a pleasant player. Films on it, of course, would be brute force, but TV shows, for example, are very convenient. If suddenly Sony tomorrow will release the same player, but with the support of podcasts - I will buy without hesitation.

Total
In general, an excellent player, but so-so player for those who mostly listen to podcasts or audiobooks.

Of course, I wrote about what interests me most in the player, if someone is interested in something extra, ask answer. Maybe someone is interested in the possibility of viewing pictures (and there is one) or listening to the radio or using the player in the voice recorder mode (there are no such) - ask.