The reason I had stopped listening to music while at work was
- My work area is in an open place
- I hate the tangle of wires associated with most MP3 player headsets
When I saw the Sony Walkman W202 being advertised I was tempted but also a bit skeptical about it being very rudimentary. After about several weeks of usage I find the features not only more than adequate for my use but also very intuitively designed.
One of the first thing that I tried with W202 was to plug it in to my Kubuntu desktop and sure enough it showed up as a USB storage device called WALKMAN – transferring music was just a matter of dragging and dropping them into the WALKMAN. There are some M$ Windows software provided but I never bothered to look at them.
The weight of W202 is just 35g and it comes with three different size soft rubber ear plugs both these things combined make it easy to wear for long durations without feeling heavy.
The controls are also minimalistic a multifunction jog dial and a volume up down rocker switch. The charging is via the standard USB port provided and you shut off the device by joining the two ear pieces which are then held together by a magnet. Despite the small size the sound quality is comparable to other Sony Walkmans – something which I have preferred over other more popular MP3 players. Charging is quick 3 mins will give you 90 mins of play time a full charge will give you upto 12 hours. Yes! I tested that and it did last that long…
Given that the W202 fits exactly what I want it to do it is hard for me to point negatives for this device but if someone pressed me I would say, at nearly INR5K it is a wee bit expensive for the capabilities. Scrolling or zapping thru a large number of songs can be tedious.
A thing that I would wish for is giving W202 Blue tooth capabilities
Here watch a nice capabilities overview video of Sony Walkman W202