Review of the Sony NWZ-A828 player

Sony NWZ-A828

At first it’s short and to the point, and under the cut it is more

Pros:
- intelligently assembled
- a minimum of controls, everything in the case
- supports bluetooth headphones
- normal video support (mp4)
- instant on
- the presence of all sorts of subtle conveniences and thoughtfulness
- you can delete viewed video files

Cons:
- does not support podcasts
- non-standard cable
- does not work like a standard usb drive
- player position is reset after recording new files
- screen is prone to scratching in principle
- cannot be deleted upload audio files

I will try to give a possible minimum of technical details, you will find it 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, finally I got tired of fighting for ogg and I decided to buy a player from a normal company, which in theory should already be a good judge and be able to think through the use of my products.
Sony is not the first day on the market and makes cool devices that were tested before launching the series, in addition, Sony has a decent sound. In my opinion, it’s stupid to evaluate a player that is usually listened to on the street or in the metro for sound quality, but if it’s good, then it’s rather a plus. As I noted the build quality - this thing is just nice to hold in your hand.

Control
From the mp3 player there is not much control and is required: forward-backward, pause, volume and lock. All this is easily and intuitively operated blindly, out of pocket. All buttons are conveniently located and reach all easily, holding the player with one hand.

Video
Normally flawlessly reproduces mp4, as long as it does not exceed 320x240, otherwise it just does not play video, only 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 video recorders, there are no problems with it at all.
The strangest thing is that the player is not able to 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.jpg next to each myvideo.mp4, and so it’s designed screensavers - it shows. For these purposes, I use ffmpeg to make a splash screen 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 in which specialized functions are implemented specifically for podcasts, and so nwz-a828 does not apply to them. That is, the player does not know how to remember to where he listened to a particular program, which he had listened to and which were not. Especially this move Sony is completely incomprehensible in the 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 video: in this case, it is possible to return to the moment at which listening to the audio was stopped.
Often in podcasts there is a desire to rewind music or ads, for this there is a scroll: you need to press and hold the "right" key. In this case, the player loses pieces, to control what is happening there, and usually it is not difficult to hear the voice of the speaker and stop scrolling. So in this case, it turns out, after stopping the scrolling, the player carefully unwinds a couple of seconds ago, and thus you can hear from the very beginning what the announcer says after an advertisement or song. For one reason or another, sometimes it becomes necessary to rewind a rather large piece of audio in 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 generally disappeared. Well, plus to all this, you can’t delete the listened podcast, over time you start to get confused in them.

General considerations
Regarding the use of bluetooth, I’ll probably write separately, but I’ll immediately note that he doesn’t know how to transfer files via bluetooth, so in any case you will need this very non-standard cable for recording files and charging. Under windows there is some obscure software to the player, but if ms media player was installed, then the device is available as well. A separate disk for it is not assigned, and copying files there, for example, with far, will not work, only with explorer. In linux, the device is mounted normally, as it supports MTP.
It is charged via the same cable, and since I constantly connect the player to download new files, I never charge it on purpose. Subjectively - it is enough for a decent time, say, a couple of films could be watched for sure. If you forget to turn it off at night, it will lose everything that it finds audio and fall asleep by itself, without noticeable battery consumption.
In addition to strangenesses like a screen saver for videos, there are also pleasant little things and thoughtfulness in the spirit: if you pause it on hold, it falls 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, display the message “ON HOLD” for a couple of seconds. If in these couple of seconds to remove from the hold - the player will remain on, before I did not notice this for my devices. In addition, it is quite 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 away, so there are no complaints about this. As a screensaver, he knows how to show a clock, which is in my opinion superfluous, but sometimes it can be convenient to look at it, and there is such an opportunity.
In general, the only real drawback I would call complete inability to work with podcasts, in all other respects it's a pretty nice player. Watching movies on it, of course, would be too much, but TV shows, for example, are very convenient. If suddenly Sony launches the same player tomorrow, but with podcast support, I’ll buy it without hesitation.

Total
In general, a great player, but a 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 additional, ask me an answer. Maybe someone is interested in the ability to view pictures (and there is one) or listen to the radio or use the player in the recorder mode (there are none) - ask.