SonyStyle Visit and the X

I had some free time this morning when I was downtown so I hoped on over to one of the SonyStyle stores. I decided to see if I could convince the sales person to lower the price of the X-Series to some civilized level. I mentione I could get the X-Series (32GB) shipped from the UK with taxes for 410-415 Canadian. The sales representative was puzzled by the low price but still decided to see if they could match it or at least come close to it.

Unfortunately for SonyStyle and me, they could not match the price or even lower it which was a pity since I would have gotten the X if they lowered the price to 420 (with taxes of course).

I decided to spend some quality time with the X-Series at the store to see if it would be worth the purchase. The specs on the front are not as noticeable as I imagined them to be and the device is quite small and light but yet feels solidly built. The stock headphones were exchanged for the mdr-nc7 headphones but noise cancelling did not work, so I went onto the internet side of things. Connecting to the store’s secured network was a breeze, I had the option of 3 different networks and choose the top most and it connected within 5 seconds. Surprisingly YouTube videos worked very nicely with the Featured videos playing with no lag or issues. The browser as many of you know is poor and I had trouble even entering the address for this blog and it was not until I entered the entire address that I realized I needed the http portion as well. Google loaded with no issues but it was not the actual full Google site. I gave up on searching for anything since even entering anything was becoming frustrating.

One thing I did like was the predictive text which you can scroll through and this did save some time when writing things. Sound quality as many of you know is specific to the person who is listening to it. I did find the sound to be quite good but I could not do a direct comparison since I did not have any of the songs on my NWZ-A818 that the X-Series had. Another issue was the screen, while it is fast when things work, it does not always respond well and this can be annoying. Apart from the responsiveness issue, I have to admit the OLED screen is amazing.

Currently I am looking for a replacement for my NWZ-A818 but I have not decided whether to get the X-Series or wait for the new A-Series. If Sony were to release a firmware update for the X-Series to address some bugs and add new features AND lower the price, I would get the X, but as it stands now, the X is just not worth 499.99 plus tax.