Sony MZNH600D Hi-MD MiniDisc Walkman

I bought this little Sony Minidisc player as an alternative to the iPod. I bought an iPod ($400) that lasted less than a year. Nice. First the scroll wheel broke, then the hard drive crashed. Done with iPods!
This device is now retro - it's at least 5 years behind the times. But look at what it does:

-Portable 1 GB discs that are encased in a durable plastic shell. Did I mention that you can put 45 hours on one disc?
-Very small: you can definitely put this in your shirt pocket. About the size of a Gameboy SP.
-Great sound quality: what is it about Sony music players that make them sound SO GREAT?
-Great battery life: 25 hours on one AA battery
-Store your music on little discs instead of your hard drive
-Minidisc Media is small and durable. I have an old Minidisc player from 1992 (talk about retro!). It and my original discs are still around and sounding great.

On the bad side, you must own a PC to use the Sonic software. I have a Mac, so I have to use my old laptop. A minor inconvenience because once you put your music to the discs, you are done. Some complain about the software, but look at the alternative. You have to use iTunes to add music on an iPod right?

This is the second minidisc player I've owned. My first one (Sony MZ-R30) was exceptional in quality so maybe it isn't fair to compare the two... but this newer one is slow to respond, awkward to open, and the control panel is slightly hard to see. The sound is fine. My main complaint is the slow operating speed and clumsiness of opening it to insert the disc. I probably would not recommend this item unless you don't care about ease of use.

I'd read a lot about the Hi-MD format so I wanted to check it out in person. I don't know how in the world I missed this when shopping, but this model DOES NOT HAVE A MICROPHONE, NOR ANY WAY TO USE ONE WITH IT! Well, shop twice buy once I reckon. To me that eliminates at least half of the usefulness of such a device, but it's my fault for not finding that out before buying.

So why the 4 stars? Because, as a player it's awesome. The Hi-MD format is everything I'd read, I can't for the life of me fathom why Sony isn't doing more to spread the use of MiniDisc. Yah SonicStage is a pain (though better than I expected from reviews, I guess Sony did improve it) but the Japanese lessons & music I put on the disc sounded absolutely fantastic. The interface on the machine is kinda clunky but for stuff like Japanese lessons that won't really matter too much since you won't be fishing around too much.

So as just a player, I really like this little booger. I've read that some people get 34+ hours of battery usage & I wouldn't doubt it. And the Hi-MD format is just terrific.

I'd love to have a more versatile machine using Hi-MD, that I could easily record things with, move files around under Linux, and use OGGs etc. with. But this machine ain't it. It's just too limited, and only because of the iron paw of Sony. Shame. With a mic jack, and some software tweaks, this would be a heck of a machine I could be happy with for years. Now that my little experiment's over it's probably heading to Goodwill.

Oh, and the folks I ordered it from (ship2you) did an absolutely superb job, thanks, it got to me in 2 days! I got a refurbished model for I think around $90(?) and everything was great.

The 1 gig capacity and atracplus codec are reason enough to use HiMD. The fact that the media is removable makes this device even more attractive. If your hardrive player or flash player breaks and it will, or if the battery fails then you can't access any of the music on the player. In contrast, you always have your mini-discs. Minidiscs last longer than cds. I've had cds corrupt data in as few as 2 years. Minidiscs have a much longer life span. Minidiscs are rewritable a million times according to Sony, and act as a hard disc drive meaning you can delete and rearrange the music or data on the disc. Since the advent of HI MD minidiscs Sony has made this the only portable way to listen to music.

The Pros: It's a thing of beauty. Some people say it's made of cheap plastic. Well may be true priced at $100.00+, but that aside I would have to disagree. Runs on a single AA battery for days. Sound quality is excellent for compress music. The bad . . . It uses the obsolete USB 1.0 so it take 45 min to 1 hr to transfer 1gb music or data. Sonicstage isn't music-sharing friendly.