A week ago I opened my mailbox to find this:

A representative from Sony had contacted me and asked if I was interested in trying out one of their new products, the Sony W Series Walkman MP3 player. Of course! The idea is really cool – instead of having a set of headphones attached by a wire to the mp3 player that you carry, Sony has slimmed things down by putting the mp3 player right on the earbuds, negating the need for a long, dangly cord. The two earbuds are connected by a flexible wire that curves around the back of your head.

I was interested to see how I’d like this new setup. I figured either it would be really good, or really bad. After a week of testing, I’ve decided that Sony did a really great job on designing a pair of dangly-cordless headphones. That said, I think that I’ll be sticking to my iphone for most of my runs.

Software

After unpacking the box and reading the directions, I tried to sync music to the player using their instructions. It doesn’t work with mac! You have to use their special software in order to do the syncing, and there is no mac version (that I know of). Luckily I have VMWare on my mac, so I had a “Windows Machine” that I could use. On the PC things were easy! You just drag and drop into folders and then you’re set to go. Some of my songs didn’t transfer properly, though, and I’m not sure why this was.

Controls

One thing I was very curious about was how the controls would work without (a) a visual display or (b) a hand-held controller. Sony’s solution was to put buttons on the bottoms of the earphones.

Sony W Series Controls

I don’t know about you all, but usually by mile 3 my brain is zoned out.  Zen, wandering thoughts with no clear direction are what fill my head. But give me a more complicated task — and I use complicated very loosely here — and things get hairy. My math fail from a few weeks ago is evidence of that!  So I was really afraid that using controls that I couldn’t see would be an issue.  The main controls – skip, play, pause – are very easy to learn and use without being able to see them. They’re on this little slider that is very intuitive, slide forward/backward to skip, hold forward to change playlist, and press in to play/pause. The volume was a little trickier, only because I would forget which direction was louder. Maybe having different shapes for the two of them would help? Sony tried this, there’s a little dot on the +, but it’s hard to feel, especially mid-stride.

Audio Quality

The audio quality on these was amazing! My songs sounded so much better than they do on the iPhone. Range of volume was good, too. I could make things quiet enough that I could hear what was going on around me on my runs, but they can also go really loud if you want them to.

Earbud fit

The headset came with 3 different sizes of earbuds. I started with the medium, but after a run in those where I had to keep shoving the buds back in my ear I switched to the larger buds, and that worked a lot better. They were snug and they didn’t bounce around. The buds are the “in-ear” kind, so if that bothers you then this headset is not for you. I found them pretty comfortable.

Looks/Construction

These are VERY well put-together. They feel solid and durable, and they didn’t skimp on materials. The battery life is GREAT – they really do last forever (the box says up to 11 hours, I’ve put about 7ish hours on them and they’re still playing) and you can get 90 minutes off a 3 minute charge (I tested this, I got a little over 90 minutes). The only thing about them is that because the MP3 player is part of the headphone set, the part of the headphone that houses the music player is pretty big. I looked pretty silly, I think — like I was trying to wear two giant bluetooth headsets at the same time.

Conclusion

This headset is awesome for what it is. If you hate having cords dangling, this is a great piece of electronics. The price isn’t bad at $50 dollars, and it holds 2GB of music, which is pretty good. For me, I think I’ll stick with my iPhone during my outside runs – I feel safer knowing I can call if I get hurt or lost. I like using this headset for treadmill runs, though, because I don’t have to worry about yanking my iPhone off the “dashboard” of the treadmill. One major advantage to the Sony W Series is that it allowed me to skip songs much easier than my iPhone did, because with the iPhone strapped to my arm I am basically stuck with whatever comes on. I liked having the freedom to skip songs.

Definitely recommend for those who hate cords! Thanks Sony!