Pretty damned good

Having got increasingly fed up with quiet sony headphones on my phone, I decided to try these. If the frequency response had been 10 - 21000Hz, thye would be perfect. They are loud enough, the sound is clear and they can be used with the hands free sets for Sony Walkman phones - ie. they have a short cord for the headphones and an extension lead. I'm using these with a DS200 bluetooth stereo headset and a w910i. The W910i works well as a walkman but Sony's headphones are getting quieter all the time. These are good enough to make me consider other sennheisers too. I don't expect walkman headphones to last forever but these do a good job and at the price are excellent value. Id' be happy to replace these after 6 months as I only paid about a fiver.

Great Price....Great Tapes

I have recently bought a Sony Camcorder to replace my broken Canon.
I had a couple of brand new JVC tapes that I had never used so I used these with my new Sony.
I noticed a lot of glitches in my recordings...you know, the picture momentarily glitching, pixilation etc.
So I thought I would try Sony tapes to see if they would make any improvement.
I can't believe the difference....the picture is perfect with no glitches at all!

I can't understand why the Sony doesn't like JVC tapes as they always worked flawlessly in the Canon.

Could Sony camcorders be configured to favour Sony tapes!

So if you're getting poor recordings with your Sony camcorder using other brands of tape try using Sony's own tapes...it worked for me.

Awesome sound for the money

I bought this on the strength of the reviews and I have got to say I wasn't disappointed. Definitely the best I have listened to, and great value for money.

Sound great. But what on earth is all that packaging about?

Okay so firstly I picked these up for buttons off Amazon £11.30 plus £4.95 P&P. So right away I am on a winner, I mean these are Sennheiser so how bad can they be even at that low price. Well no worries, they are absolutely fine, I was looking to upgrade from some Sennheiser OMX 50, which hook around the ears, which I used because my right ear is slightly misshapen and standard phones keep popping out. These are the first in ear phones I have tried and I was slightly wary, hence not splashing out on the CX55 or CX95. They fit a treat, slip them in with the wires pointing towards the horizon, then twist around until the wires are parallel with your ear lobs and bingo! :) I was able to immediately reduce the setting on my Sandisk E280 from loud to standard and zero the equaliser settings. Thus increasing the already impressive battery life and reducing any irritation I may have previously caused other travellers.

I still need to get used to the sensation of having something in my ears and the cable can occasionally transfer the sound of the cable moving, but overall I am very happy with my purchase.

Now to the downside and I admit it is a touch petty and brief in nature, but the packaging is designed by a lunatic with an advanced degree in applied sadism. Okay I appreciate the packaging has to be secure, but this is so over the top and the plastic when cut is sharp. Then there is the number of component parts to the packaging once you hack through the plastic. Someone needs to apply the philosophy of less is more to the packaging me thinks.

In Brief: Buy them now!

Update: Just travelled by coach 2 hours out and 2 hours back, these 'phones ROCK! Pink Floyd - Momentary Lapse of Reason, used to be a benchmark for home HiFi well it sounded like I was using my Arcam Amp and Mission 704a towers, clean, clear and great definition.

I am touched that Apple cares so much...

If you want your music to be shown in a cool fashion, and you also want everyone to look at you and go,"WOAH!! Where the crud did he get that, Man?" this is the iPod for for you.

Apple has obviously put so much work into this little beauty, that whenever you turn it on, you and it look so proud to be with each other!

I love it, love it, LOVE IT!!!

Also, if you have an iTunes account, you can update your software and get new programs like e-Mail and Maps!

Once again I really love this piece of kit and if you can, no even if you can't spare 250-odd pounds - GET IT. NOW: I implore you!

Note: if ANYONE says that this is anything less than brilliantly fantastic and vice-versa don't give a DARN. This is way too good for any of that nonsense!!!



Get it.

You get what you pay for....

It's a pretty poor piece of equipment - poorly built. It does not charge ipods whilst in their docks. Tried it on both a nano and 80G classic. Charges them both seperately though.

Fatally Flawed for me

Firstly this item does not work effectively with the Ipod Touch. The unit does not seem to change frequencies while attached to the Touch, and certainly does not display the transmitting frequency on the Ipod Touch screen. Consequently to get it working in the first place I needed to borrow my sons Nano to tune it in, then switch to the Touch afterwards.

As a result, today when I drove north up the M1 I could only use it for ~25 minutes in a 4 hour journey because of the poor radio performance of the 'clear' FM frequencies I stored from home. As I live in the south east there are far fewer FM stations available. Around the M25 there are almost no clear frequencies at all. If you own a Nano, then it may be acceptable to re-tune it on the fly, but for me, apart from 'near to home use', this item is useful only as a car charger.

Great sounds and build quality

OK this item is agreed a tad expensive. However this is a quality product, the case is very well constructed with two speakers at the frount and a back bass speaker which means the unit produces very clear sound. Reception from the DAB radio also very good. I particuarly like the way the ipod doc pushes in when not in use.

Ipod Nano case and inflated P&P

I bought two Nano silicone cases advertised for only 1p each when bought with a Ipod. The Ipod came from Amazon which was fine but the cases came from this supplier and were less so. The postage was £8 and they came in a tiny jiffy bag with postage and packing really about £1.

The cases were also not the ones shown in the photgraph but cheap, made in china ones. Very disappointing! I am amazed Amazon lets traders do this P&P scam.

Fantastic and unbeatable value for money

Why some people choose to dismiss this player or moan about it's lack of features is beyond me! It's simply brilliant! I use mine purely for the gym, so where else could you expect to get 250 tunes on an mp3 player which is lightweight can clip on your pocket and not even know it's there and not have to worry about breaking it? I used to take my 30gig ipod with me to the gym and after it falling off the equipment so many times and bearing in mind it usually fell onto something made of cast metal, not ideal really when you have a screen to break! So the fact that it doesn't have a screen is a bonus for me cos it's less to worry about and why are you ever likely to want more than 100 let alone 250 tunes on it when you can simply change them anytime you like on itunes. I just load them on press play finish my session at the gym turn it off and next time I turn it on it starts where I left off and you can choose the order you want them to play in itunes or press the shuffle feature if you fancy a random playlist for a change. As for those who question the sound quality, well I load less tunes on mine but at 320kbps which is cd quality and mine sounds superb, so if you are going to put tunes on it which are 128kbps or less you can only expect some deteriation in sound quality! Yes the headphones aren't exactly B&O but I don't really need to listen to 5.1 surround sound when i'm at the gym so for me they are more than adequate. I ask you where else can you get all those ingenious features for £32? Fantastic bit of kit for the right application!

Fabulous

Volvo S60, no option to change stereo, no aux in, no cassette so no cassette adaptor... it had to be an FM transmitter.

The first 'cheapo' one I had was fine - proving that they can work in my car - but died. When it came to replacing it I chose this one on the basis of features-for-the-money. I did extensive reading on-line in an effort to choose a 'works for definite' one... found that they all have good and bad reviews and I suspect that it's more to do with 'works fine in this or that vehicle' than the products themselves.

As well as playing music (well) through my car stereo (and loud enough - a challenge for UK iPods with cheapo transmitters)... it has the added bonus of the RDS transmission so I can see who is singing what displayed on the radio display (admittedly 8 characters at a time, not scrolling but line-by-line). It's a bonus feature which I already really appreciate!

I wouldn't hesitate to choose this again - highly recommended!

Great little gadget and particularly so for the price

Until recently I had been using an 8GB Sansa E200 from Sandisk and had been very happy with that, minor software problems aside. I was tempted across to the Creative ZEN 32GB player due mostly to the sheer size of the memory and also through the ability to add storage in SDHC format and also the built-in FM radio...and have been extremely happy with it.

It is extremely simple and intuitive to use for both the menu and also the ability to work well with Windows Media Player (which the Sandisk never quite behaved with). It looks very good and has an excellent screen quality. The sound quality is very, very good and shows no distortion at all when cranked right up or when any of the custom equalizer settings are set up to max 12.

I did have a bit of an issue with the claimed 25 hour battery life on my first unit and a test showed that it was definitely only 10-12 at best. Fortunately a friend had one too and he was getting a very long life and thus I was happy to returm it for a prompt replacement unit.

There are a couple of things that could be a tiny bit better...
-- The FM radio reception is pretty weak. I can pick up nearly nothing out in the countryside and pretty fuzzy signals even in the centre of Edinburgh.
-- The SDHC storage is annoyingly separate from the 32GB and can only be played by direct track selection by manual searches in the folder structure. That's not too bad if you intend to for example store all of your music on the 32GB and then your photos on the SDHC. It's pretty naff though if you expect to be able to do something even basic like shuffle-play on any music you've put there. By way of comparison, the Sandisk was brilliant in its integration of the 2GB micro-SD card although at the cost of a 30 second"refresh database" at every startup. You'd think that the ZEN folk could have done a bit better considering the quality of the rest of the offering.
-- The volume levels are pretty good but it could be a little louder (OK...I do understand about health and safety concerns..). You can get pretty decent volume with the volume limiter turned to the max and a bit more of a boost by cunning use of the custom equalizer. The saving grace is that when you do put the volume up to the 24 or 25 max that you sometimes need to then you get no distortion.
-- The video conversion issue is a pain for anybody that wants to do the video thing...but I don't so no issues there.

All in all, this product is a very good little item and I'd recommend it to anybody compared to anything else I've owned or ever tried out....particularly at the price (which seems to be rapidly dropping).

Simple to set up and use and robust.

If you're looking for a cheap, reliable radio with good sound quality then you've found it.

I bought this for my wife to use during her maternity leave. I wanted something so simple that even a dunce like me could set it up and robust enough to survive the attention of our two-year-old daughter.

This has done the job superbly. It took a few minutes to set up and has survived being grabbed and dropped by grubby fingers and we've had no problems with it.

Love it!

I love my nike + attachment for my ipod and use it all the time. It really helps motivate me and I enjoy the challenges and goals you can set up on the website. I've used it on the treadmill and once calibrated it seems very accurate. I would definitely recommend it.

Worst player ever

I'm now on my third 4GB Stone in a week. The problem is that there is a distinct background noise that can be heard between tracks or at any point when the track goes quiet. It's a sort of electrical twitter.

I can't be bothered to go back to the shop again...so this player has been binned.

Save yourself time, money and hassle and stick to Ipod.

Great Gadget

This is my first Pod. Its a fantastic little gadget. I use it walking to and from work and at lunchtime. Its extremely light and clips onto a shirt, tie, belt or jacket. Its easy to use and you get a good 12 hours from a very quick charge up [2-3 hours]. Quality is good and better than some MP3's i've tried and I like the headphones. They are comfortable and good enough quality. Maybe a bit light on the bass.

The only criticism is the fact that you can't select the music you want to listen to and after a while its something I miss. You can listen to whats installed in order or shuffled up. My advice is to fill it up with music at the start.

I only gave it 4 stars because of its limitations. I now realise I should have got a Nano. This is however perfect for the gym or jogging.

A very good Case

This case is very good, offering good protection for my ipod pink 8gb, as well as looking very good. It is relatively small itself so unlike many cases, it does not make the ipod too bulky. Definitely a good purchase

Ideal quick gift for someone needing a new headset

I bought this headset for someone else so when we chat, I'm able to hear the sound quality it produces - for under a tenner it's much better than I was expecting but of course if you spend more you get even better quality (such as one of the officially billed Skype headsets, the larger of them made by Plantronics).

The one complaint from the recipient was, the earpads weren't the most comfortable in the world and if you have small children you have to make sure they don't get hold of this headset and rip the pads off making them too painful to wear.

Spending more gets you a model that can take more physical punishment, but that's the same with all technical equipment. If you're just kitting someone out with a better mic than they may have received with a new PC, these are ideal and I'd buy them as a gift again.

excellent machine provided all you want is music

At the time of writing this review there are 68 others already on here, but I thought I would tell you of my own experience with the ipod shuffle.

I go the gym and used to have a MP3 player - just a basic"memory stick" type that I plugged into my computer to recharge and I could drag & drop songs onto. Unfortunately it died so it was time to look for a new one. Now I was undecided whether to buy a basic model by a less well known company, or go for a leading name. It seems to me that if you're prepared to go for a relatively unknown manufacturer you can get a basic mp3 player for half the price with twice the memory, but eventually after much deliberation I plumped for the apple ipod shuffle, swayed by a combination of the reputation of apple & (hopefully) a better build quality.

I have had it just over a week now and I think I have made the right decision.

Yes, there is no screen, but I knew that when I bought it. I know from my prior experience at the gym that I just tend to switch it on and let it play so I didn't really need one. Also, I have a mobile phone that takes pictures, plays videos, games etc and I hardly use any of those features so I figured I wouldn't need a screen to watch tiny videos on. The earphones are great - several reviwers say they fall out but I've used mine on the treadmill, rower, cross trainer, exercise bike and wave machine and they've stayed in throughout! I've got about 14 hours out of it before I had to recharge which is impressive, and although initially I missed the simplicity of the"drag & drop" method of my old mp3 player, its just a question of getting used to itunes and once you have it seems simple enough.

All in all, an excellent purchase and having never had any previous experience of apple or ipods I am very pleased with my purchase.

Good for the price

For the price this is an excellent product. The leather is pleasing to the touch and the finish is really good, offering perfect protection for the Sony MP3 player. I don't understand the comment from a previous reviewer that the case covers the buttons because that is certainly not my experience. The only slight niggle (and the reason for deducting a star) is that the case is rather snug so that it is hard to avoid engaging the"Hold" switch as you insert the player into the case. It took me at least three attempts to get the case on without engaging the Hold switch. A question of slowly does it.