Just slip it in your pocket

An affordable portable high-definition music player with good sound quality and hi-res wireless connection, the Sony 

Hi-Res Audio Walkman NWZ-A15 is a small and light music player weighing just 66 grams and with a footprint of 43.6 x 109 x 8.7mm.

It comes with a 2.2-inch LCD-backlit TFT display with 240 320-pixel resolution and 16 gigabytes of internal storage, which is expandable with a micro SD card. It supports a microSD card of up to 128 GB – important because Hi-Res Audio music files take a lot of space. Indeed, a song in 24bit/192 kHz format can use more than 150 megabytes.

The player supports LDAC codec for streaming hi-res audio to headphones that support the codec. The A15 also has an NFC function that assists the Bluetooth connection with headphones.

I had no problem connecting the A15 to Sony MDR-1ABT headphones during the test. I simply tapped the NFC mark on the player and the headphones, the Bluetooth connection was established.

If you don’t have hi-res audio files yet, you may use the A15’s sound enhancing technology to improve the quality of your existing music. The player has DSEE HX technology that upgrades the sounds to near high-resolution quality, and makes you feel as if you are in the recording studio.

The A15 uses S-Master HX digital amp technology to reduce distortion and noise across a wide range of frequencies – giving the music a rich, full-bodied sound when it amplifies the sound for wire-connected hi-res audio headphones.

The A15 also has good battery life, playing approximately 30 hours of FLAC 192 kHz//24bit songs in wire mode that turns off the Bluetooth connection.

The A15 is easy to use too with just a few buttons including the back/home button, option/power off button, a hold switch and a 5-way button.

From the Home menu, you can use the five-way navigation button to navigate through all the functions. You choose the one you want then press enter to confirm your choice. The enter button doubles as the play/pause button when you’re playing music.

The available functions on the Home menu include SensMe channels, FM radio, music, videos, podcasts, photos and bookmark.

The SensMe channels automatically groups songs by theme, and plays them according to your mood, current activity and time of the day, for example.

The Bookmark function is useful as it allows you to play just your favourite songs or rearrange the order in which songs are played. You must first add your favourite songs to the bookmark lists. The A15 can also display photos on its tiny screen as well as play video of MPEG4 and WMV and H.264 formats.

It can also play podcasts, which are audio or video files that are published on Internet, and can be downloaded for playback using RSS. You can use the Media Go application to register podcasts and download episodes and transfer the episodes to your A15 Walkman.

While playing music files, you can use the karaoke, language study function or Dance Mode as well. The karaoke function will suppress the vocals of the songs currently playing as well as change the key of the song.

The language study function lets you play content at a speed that suits you and you can listen repeatedly to the desired section. This allows you to use content transferred to A15 as an effective language study tool. When you use this function, you can rewind about three seconds to listen to the part of the audio file currently playing again.

The dance mode is fun to use. It lets you repeatedly play sections of a song and change the speed.

The A17 has a Display Lyrics function that lets you see the words of the song being played. Again, the you will need Media Go Version 2.7 or later to input the lyric information or you can use a notepad to create a lyrics text. The lyrics text file must have the time (minutes, seconds and hundredths of a second) at the beginning of each text line.

During the test, the A15 played hi-res audio songs of 24bit/192kHz FLAC format smoothly and the quality of music listened to through the MDR-1ABT headphones sounded great.

Sony Hi-Res Audio Walkman NWZ-A15 retails for Bt6,990.

n Internal storage: 16GB with microSD slot

n Bluetooth: Bluetooth Ver 2.1+EDR1 A2DP / AVRCP / OPP

n NFC: Yes

n FM Tuner: 76.0-108.0MHz

nDisplay: 2.2-inch QVGA 

(240 x 320 Pixels) TFT colour display with white LCD-backlight

n Power Source: Built-in Li-ion Rechargeable Battery / USB power through the USB connector of the player

n Battery Life: MP3 - 50 hours (MP3 128kbps, when Bluetooth OFF) Hi-Res Audio - 30 hours (FLAC 192kHz/24bit, when Bluetooth OFF)

n Recharge Time: 4 hours

n Dimensions (W x H x D): 

Approx. 43.6 x 109 x 8.7mm

n Weight: Approx. 66g

n Sound Effects: S-Master HX / DSEE HX / Clear Audio+ / Clear Bass / Equaliser / VPT(surround) / Dynamic Normalizer

n Number of Songs: MP3 128kbps: 3600 / Linear PCM 1411kbps: 330 / FLAC 96kHz/24bit: 100 / FLAC 192kHz/24bit: 50

n Music formats supported: FLAC / Apple Lossless(ALAC) / MP3 / AAC / HE-AAC / WMA / Linear PCM(WAV) / AIFF

nMovie formats supported: MPEG-4 / AVC(H.264/AVC) / Windows Media Video 9