Customer Ratings & Reviews

Absolute garbage. The Sony interface is also garbage. Do not buy this unless your life depends on it.

Bluetooth doesn't connect to any of my new devices, sorry I purchased 2 of these items.

Expensive, not easy to operate, no earphones, paying for the Sony name only, my amazon MP3 player is far better.

Terrible product. I do not recommend any one purchase it.

I wish I could say that I have the walkman. It never showed up.

No way to transfer music from an iMac no 800 number for customers

I purchased this because I have always had sony walkmans my whole life, my old Sony NWZ-S764 needed to be replaced. it still woked flawlessly but because it was purchased in late 2012, the battery was finally starting to show its age. I love my new A40 series so much. I don't think they still sell the model I got which was the A45, now its the A55, which is the same just newer model number. the battery life is great and the sound quality is incredible. just make sure you have good headphone ($99) or more or you wont know the true quality of this thing. I definitely would recommend purchasing one of these things because if youre like me and hate listening to music on your phone. plus truthfully, Smartphones don't have as good of sound quality as something that was specifically designed for music like a dedicated music device. hopefully this helps someone :)

TL;DR I love this Walkman. The sound quality is excellent and it plays everything I've thrown at it. I'm sure there's a format or two that it's not compatible with, but so far, it's a moot issue for me. The Bluetooth features - transmitter AND receiver make this a very versatile device. The USB DAC (think external sound card) feature has become a go-to for me. I find myself using it on my Mac almost exclusively over the built in speakers/headphone jack because of the quality and convenience. The only downsides are lack of WiFi sync, no proper Audiobook support, some quirks with MP3 tags and album art as well as the need to recreate the database every time it boots makes for some minor inconveniences, but definitely not deal breakers. With the exception of WiFi, all should be able to be fixed with firmware updates (maybe Sony reads these reviews? One can hope.) Those shortcomings aside, this is still a definite buy recommendation from me. ===FULL REVIEW BELOW === THE GOOD Sound: It's phenomenal especially when using a quality lossless, high-res format like FLAC, ALAC, WMA or DSD. If you're playing an MP3, even ripped from a CD at the highest bit rate, you really can't tell the difference between this Walkman and an iPhone/iPod. However, once you dip your toes into the high-res pool, you won't want to get back out. Functionality: This is where it shines. It can pair with every BT headphone and speaker I own - from Bose to Sennheiser - with no problems (transmitter mode). Pairing is super easy and NFC makes it even more so. I haven't had a single issue here at all. This can be a Bluetooth receiver as well and act an a headphone amplifier for your music stored on your computer or even your iPhone/iPad/iPod! I even connected it to a Bluetooth transmitter on my TV to watch TV with my headphones instead of the speakers/soundbar! If I plug it into the USB port of my computer - I have a Mac and a Surface Pro - it acts as a USB DAC. It basically becomes a USB audio interface (think USB sound card) with no drivers necessary! Interface: It's very easy to use and very intuitive. I have many options as to how to access my library and Sony even provides an option to filter out just high-res audio. The screen is bright, clear and very responsive. What's especially nice is the physically buttons with conveniently placed "homing bumps" (like on the F and J keys on a keyboard) so you can operate the player while not having to look at it; in your coat pocket, for example. Capacities: 16GB is an excellent starting point, but the fact that you can expand the storage of the device with micro SD cards alone makes this a better choice than the iPhone/iPod. You can use a single large SD card for your whole music collection or many smaller ones for different collections (like a party mix, or a study mix, etc.) I've tested this with a SanDisk 512GB Micro SD and it worked perfectly. However, (full disclosure) I use 128GB SD cards instead because I currently don't have more than this in music and the smaller cards synchronize and update the internal database quicker. THE BAD While not many, there are some glaring faults with the device. For me, they're not deal breakers. However, some could be fixed with a firmware update to further enhance the product. No WiFi. The fact that I have to plug the device physically into a USB port seems so 1990's. The Microsoft Zune was able to sync wirelessly, so there's no reason for this not to. Whether you plug the whole Walkman into the USB or use an SD card reader to copy over the files, you need to physically connect to a host. No proper support for audio books. Sony makes reference to "learning" folder that can be used for audible language less (though they don't tell you where to obtain these lessons). There's no reason why it can't support audio books as the M4B format is just a container for audio files that it already supports! All they need to do is update the firmware with support for this file type. Updating the database. Every time you power on (not wake from sleep) or disconnect the Walkman from your computer, it has to create the database which adds to the boot time. If you have larger SD cards, the time is increased. There's no need to recreate the database if no files were modified. ID3v2 Tags. Unfortunately, Sony chose to use the OLDER v2.3 of the MP3 tags. This means that you have to embed a baseline JPG or PNG into the song itself for album art to show up and tags with multiple values aren't supported. Going to the latest v2.4 spec is just a firmware update and Sony should do this to stay current. CONCLUSION While inconvenient, the bad points don't carry enough weight to have much of an impact on the positives. These are "nice to have" features that for the most part, Sony could add with a firmware update. As such, it earns a "Good" rating instead of a "Great" but I would still highly recommend it.

I've owned Sony products for years Sony Walkman casete, Home Theatre 7.1, TV and a Amp from the 80's we use when ATV'ing in the desert. The Amp is phenomal can fry an egg on it at times. As for the NW-A55 got A SD card for it with 1,000's of songs on it the sound is something else for such a small piece of hardware. Go SONY

I bought the NW-A55 because it had good reviews. It would not connect to my Bluetooth speaker. After a long online chat with Sony service they said it was defective and I sent it back to them. They sent me a replacement and that also would not connect to the speaker. After another long online chat they told me to return it again and they promised the third one would work. I returned it to Best Buy and they gave me a refund. Don't buy this product if you are planning on connecting it to a speaker.