| User Product Reviews and Ratings | |
Average User Rating:  Number of User Reviews: 5 |
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| | | Reviewed by: zornrah from CT on Oct 10, 2004 | Rating:  | | | Experience: 2 Months |
| | | | | Strengths: Design, battery life, disc capacity, music navigation system, USB harddrive. | | | | Weaknesses: Perhaps fragile, remote/headphone length/bulk, cradle function, software, headphone quality. | | | | Summary: (Edited November 14th by zornrah) First its strong points: It is a beautiful little toy, all brushed silver metal and a little black plastic. Very tiny and surprisingly thin. Even though the battery is tiny it lasts a long time. The unit tells you how much life is left in hours and minutes which is useful. When it charges it does the same. The discs hold quite a lot of music, even at the highest quality setting. The navigation via remote is well done, the scroll/enter wheel is simple to use, simple to find your tunes amongst the hundreds of titles on a disc. The fact that you can use it as a USB hard drive/removable media device is pretty useful, especially for storing photos. The weaknesses: because of its compact size i believe this unit may be especially fragile. This is not really a weakness as it is unsubstantiated. The length of the cords on the headphones and the remote are all wrong. The cord on to the remote is too long. The remote itsself is a little bulky, but it is the main music navigation system, so that is a necessity. The cradle is used for charging only, it should really be used for data transfer too. But that isnt possible because the same usb socket is used for recharging and data transfer. OK, my prior review had sowtware on the strength side, but i have changed my mind. While it does work, you constantly have to update it to keep up with XP updates, or the thing just doesnt work. Like the other reviewer noted the copyright protection is obnixious. Even if you created, ripped and mastered the recording, this thing wont allow you to migrate your work (to another PC via the walkman), it says, "cannot copy; tracs copied from another computer." It is maddening. It doesnt matter all that much, unless you want to copy your old minidiscs onto the new 1 GB discs. Cannot be done (except in real time/analog). The headphones are cheap, a mouse chewed mine into six pieces. Odd but true. All that being said i highly recommend this toy to everybody. The weaknesses dont bother me except for the copyright issues and the cord length issue. It is a beautiful little thing. I far prefer it to its competition. | | | | | | | |  92% of people (34/37) found this review helpful. Was this review helpful or unhelpful for you? | | | |  There are no comments for this review. Post a comment | | |
| | | Reviewed by: fstg on Jan 5, 2005 | Rating:  | | | Experience: 5 Months |
| | | | | Strengths: Size, recording quality, battery duration, conversion to other formats, sound quality | | | | Weaknesses: Lenth of the Jog Dial cord, the Jog Dial itself, the size of the window on the unit, fragility | | | | Summary: I have been using the unit for the past months with great pleasure. I had a reading problem for a while (I am not sure but carrying the unit in a pocket in front of the hearth seems to have disturbed the mechanism...this is not sure, but the electricity generated might have stopped the machine), but only in these occasions. With the Sony converter you now can record a show, download it on your computer and burn a CD, and this with great sound quality. I have bought "Sound Professionals In-Ear Binaural Microphones SP-TFB-2" and enjoy great response, even recording on the street. I also use " Sony Fontopia Headphones MDR-EX71SL". With these I feel incaged with the music. I carry the MZ-NH1 everywhere I go, even crosscountry skiing with the dog. Well I would't throw it on a wall just to see if it still works. Try it you will adopt it. | | | | | | | | 86% of people (6/7) found this review helpful. Was this review helpful or unhelpful for you? | | | | There are no comments for this review. Post a comment | | |
|  | | Posted: 29/03/05 | | 'FUNKY NEW HI-MD PLAYER' |  | Strengths:
The player looks and feels great and the remote control from previous versions has been vastly improved upon, with a three-line display and new ‘jog dial’. The transfer from PC to MD is extremely fast, and the ability to transfer recorded tracks from MD to PC sounds exciting (although I haven’t tried it out yet). The storage on the new Hi-Md is good. | | Weaknesses:
Although storage of up to 45 hours is advertised on the Hi-MD, you only get 17 hours of music at an acceptable quality of 128kbps. Earphones provided are absolutely unbearable. Hi-MD discs seem to be difficult to get hold of on the high street. It's a bit pricey - so shop around! | | Overall:
I recently bought this unit as an upgrade to my existing Sony MZN-10 and as an alternative to buying an MP3 player (I was considering a ‘Creative Zen’ for their superior battery life). It's a nice player to have in your hand and seems to pack an endless batch of features into a compact little shell. |
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User rating Spectacular
9 out of 10
2 out of 2 people found this review helpful. Pros: Sleek design (magnesium!), simple interface, Hi-Md compatibility, rechargeable battery Cons: Sonicstage is slow to transfer music, battery life is erratic
The MZ-NH1 is the best MiniDisc yet. Previously, I used a MZ-N505, but I recently upgraded to the new Hi-MD format (which holds ONLY 8 hrs @ 256kb!).
At first glance, the design of the unit is very sleek and modern with magnesium casing and slim profile. The unit comes with a slick docking cradle (which, oddly enough, you cannot upload to the unit while docked?!), and operates on a lithium-ion rechargeable battery.
Asthetics aside, the interface is both good and bad. The interface for the unit, using the in-line remote to control your musical selection, is easy and simplistic to operate. On the other hand, the SonicStage software for managing the files on your computer is cleverly laid out, but slow to operate, even for small file sizes.
The unit produces excellent sound thanks to a built in digital HD Amp, and sounds great at 256kb/s. Invest in a nice pair of headphones (Sony MDR-V700DJ recommended) to make this unit put out sound like it was made to.
The first drawback i have is the battery life. The unit promises up to 18 hours of battery life, but i just havent seen it. It seems that i get no more than 5-8 hours out of the battery before it dies. The remote, which can be used to display battery life, has given me erratic reports of battery life (one minute it has a full charge, the next its half full?).
The second thing to keep in mind if you use a Windows computer, is that SonicStage is disabled by a Windows XP security hotfix. It took me hours to figure out why it would not initialize, but Sony provides a patch online to fix the problem. Just be aware of it.
Overall, the NH1 is an excellent purchase....just make sure that if you want the most out of the unit, invest in a quality pair of stereo headphones.
You won't regret it! | | | |
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Spectacular
9
out of 10
Pros:
uploading and downloading from the player, speed, edit and playlist options, battery life, remote, size, design, and multiple source recording.
Cons:
software stinks, attrac coding is slow.
Full user opinion
People tend to get down on md's because they don't understand what they truly do. let's get this out of the way: MD's are not mp3 players(they're mp3 converters), they're much more than that. you can record on the fly from any possible source you can imagine (tv, computer, stereo, live concert, another ipod at a cafe), upload and download anything you record, the battery life is insane (it tells you exactly how many hours you have left *ex: 15 hours left*, and the quality of the hardware itself is amazing. as for the capacity, people are also pretty ignorant of that too and sony somehow does nothing to promote it in the right light. the new hi-md discs say 1gig but it compresses to almost 4. i can get 750 songs on each disc. ALl in all, this latest entry of md is absolutely amazing. i use it and wonder why so many people settle for ipods. i have a ipod mini and i love it too. but for a real piece of audio hardware that does more than play a song from a computer, you have to try this new hi-md out. I can't tell you how many times i've just pulled a song from a line in stream of a comp, some cat at a library, or recorded a live concert from my md in my pocket then uploaded it as an .wav file. the only player out where you're not reliant on your computer to get music but when you need to you can. give it a chance.
and i forgot to mention this wonderful bonus!!!
...the thing doubles as a usb plug and play removeable harddrive. just plug it in and it shows up as drive g: or whatever drive you'd like it to.
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