Sony NWZ-B105F (2GB, black)

Manufacturer: Sony Part number: NWZ-B105FBLK

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$69.99 - $75.95 at 2 online stores

CNET Editor rating:
3.5 stars Very good
Average user rating: 3.5 stars out of 7 reviews

More product information:: Editors' review; User reviews; Specifications; Product series; Manufacturer info

Bottom Line:: If you're looking for an affordable, utilitarian MP3 player to take on the road or to the gym, the Sony NWZ-B100F is a solid solution with awesome audio quality.

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Authorized store	Rate this store See store profile	In stock	Enter zip code to get total price: Price +Tax +Shipping =Total price	$69.99 Shop now as of 10/06/2008
Amazon.com Authorized store	Rate this store See store profile	In stock	$75.95 Shop now as of 10/06/2008
Once You Know, You Newegg! Microsoft Zune 120GB MP3 Player 3.2 inch TFT color screen 30 hrs Playback Wireless Sharing SAMSUNG 3" Black 4GB MP3 Player 3 inch TFT color screen 35 hrs Playback Touchscreen, Bluetooth SENNHEISER PXC150 Headphone 3.5mm/ 6.3mm 15Hz-21KHz Frequency Supra-aural ear coupling

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Once You Know, You Newegg!

Microsoft Zune
120GB MP3 Player
Product 1

3.2 inch TFT color screen
30 hrs Playback
Wireless Sharing

SAMSUNG 3" Black
4GB MP3 Player
Product 2

3 inch TFT color screen
35 hrs Playback
Touchscreen, Bluetooth

SENNHEISER
PXC150 Headphone
Product 3

3.5mm/ 6.3mm
15Hz-21KHz Frequency
Supra-aural ear coupling

*Total price for the Sony NWZ-B105F (2GB, black) are estimated and may vary slightly based on exact tax, shipping, manufacturer rebate or any sale/promotion on the merchant site.

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CNET editors' review

Sony NWZ-B105F (2GB, black)

price range: $69.99 - $75.95

Reviewed by: Donald Bell
Edited by: Lindsey Turrentine
Reviewed on: 10/08/2007
Updated on:02/11/2008
Released on: 08/30/2007

The good: The Sony NWZ-B100F's fitness-friendly design, high-fidelity sound quality, built-in USB plug, and FM tuner make it an ideal MP3 player for active people.

The bad: The Sony NWZ-B100F can't handle photos, videos, line-input recording or Audible audiobooks. Also, the three-line display is difficult to read, battery life is only average, and the cap for the USB plug is easy to lose.

The bottom line: If you're looking for an affordable, utilitarian MP3 player to take on the road or to the gym, the Sony NWZ-B100F is a solid solution with awesome audio quality.

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Sony NWZ-B100F

There will always be a place in the world for a small, affordable, durable, intuitive MP3 player with great sound quality--witness Sony's gym-worthy NWZ-B100F series. Available in 1GB ($59) and 2GB ($79) capacities, the NWZ-B100F is an ideal choice for anyone looking for an ultracompact player with excellent sound.

Design
The Sony NWZ-B100F series looks like a high-tech cigarette lighter. Its minimal 3.5-inch by 1-inch by 0.5-inch form fits comfortably in a closed fist, perfect for a morning jog. In fact, the NWZ-B100F has all the markings of a device designed with an athletic user in mind. Each of the device's eight buttons is physically distinguished from one another by shape, size, or texture, letting you operate the NWZ-B100F without looking at it. The player's oversize hold switch lets even the most distracted user easily disable the player's controls, and a metal-reinforced loophole directly beside the hold switch accepts a lanyard (sold separately).

One of our favorite NWZ-B100F design features is the built-in USB plug that lets you connect the player to any computer's USB port without a cable. A removable cap hides the USB connector and although it's easy to misplace, the cap stays firmly on, thanks to internal metal reinforcement. Our least favorite design feature is the squinty, 1-inch by 0.25-inch OLED screen, which displays three lines of microscopic blue text on a black background. The text is crisp and uncluttered, but it's nowhere near as legible as text on the iPod Nano or the Creative Zen V Plus. Fortunately, Sony's ergonomic controls make operating the NWZ-B100F a cinch, without having to reference the screen for navigation cues.

Features
The Sony NWZ-B100F is the Cadillac of under-$80 fitness MP3 players. While workout-worthy competitors such as the SanDisk Sansa Express or the Creative Zen Nano Plus deliver similar features for less, the NWZ-B100F serves up a feast of features, design, and sound quality.

Until recently, all Sony MP3 players suffered the fatal flaw of Sony's miserably unusable SonicStage software. But Sony has unshackled its latest batch of MP3 players, including the NWZ-S610 and NWZ-A810, allowing customers to use popular software options such as Windows Media Player or Rhapsody to organize and transfer music. Because you can connect the NWZ-B100F to a computer using a generic UMS mode for dragging and dropping files, even Mac and Linux users can take advantage of this little dynamo.

While the NWZ-B100F's microscopic screen doesn't offer photo or video support, its audio playback, FM tuner, FM recorder, and voice recorder still provide great value. Audio playback supports MP3 and WMA, as well as purchased and subscription WMA files from Rhapsody, Napster, or Yahoo Music Unlimited.

Compared to other Sony MP3 players, the NWZ-B100F doesn't offer many bells and whistles. The main menu presents four icons: voice recording; music library; FM; and settings. The settings menu is similarly sparse, allowing you to tweak music playback modes, add EQ, automatically populate the 30 FM radio presets, alter recording quality (all recordings are made as MP3 files up to 192Kbps), and set a maximum volume limit. While Sony MP3 players are usually an EQ-twiddlers playground, the NWZ-B100F is light on audio enhancement options, but does offer five useful presets and an editable 5-band EQ with three degrees of cut or boost control.

After scratching the surface, we were happy to find that the NWZ-B100F's music player offers more than meets the eye. For instance, the music library menu makes liberal use of the ID3 tag information embedded in your music collection, allowing you to sort your music not just by artist, album, song, or genre, but by release date as well. (Hello instant '80s mix!) For those who prefer to sort their music into their own methodically organized series of folders, the Sony NWZ-B100F lets you bypass ID3 tag sorting (which can wreak havoc on classical music collections) and instead browse by folder. The NWZ-B100F also supports playlists, although there's no ability to create playlists on the go. Podcast fans will be disappointed that the NWZ-B100F does not offer support for bookmarking long files or automatically resuming playback on files such as audiobooks, which often need to be digested in small doses.

Having seen what features Sony was able to cram into their similarly sized NW-S700F MP3 player, we were a little disappointed that the NWZ-B100F leaves out additional gym-friendly features such as a stopwatch, alarm, or countdown timer. At this price, however, we're willing to look past the omissions.

Performance
The NWZ-B100F may be one of Sony's least expensive MP3 players, but it's no slouch on sound quality. In fact, the only MP3 player in this price range that can match the NWZ-B100F's sound quality is the Creative Zen V Plus. While the NWZ-B100F lacks many of the audio enhancement features found on higher-end models such as the NWZ-S610 or NWZ-A810, its out-of-the-box fidelity is much better and more adaptable than players like the SanDisk Sansa m200 or SanDisk Sansa Express, which are comparable in price and features.

The NWZ-B100F's FM radio is easy to use and capable of picking up all the major stations we typically receive at our office. The automatic preset function is disappointing, however, because it populated 20 of our 30 station presets with transmissions that were mostly static. Fortunately, manually adding presets is as easy as pressing and holding the play button once you've located a station worth saving. Making recordings from the NWZ-B100F's FM radio is equally simple: just find an FM transmission you want to save and then press the red record button on the top-left edge of the player to save recordings as MP3 files. The FM recording sounds excellent, provided that the incoming station is clear and the recording resolution is set to at least 128Kbps. The NWZ-B100F's built-in voice recorder is also easy to use and provides decent results when kept within arm's length; otherwise the recording tends to get noisy.

Battery life, usually a strong suit for Sony, is surprisingly average on the B100. Sony rates the NWZ-B100F's battery life at around 12 hours. Our CNET lab tests nearly matched Sony's claim, with a result of 11.5 hours. Regardless, the NWZ-B100F should be able to get you through a week's worth of workouts without any problem.

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User reviews

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Average user rating: 3.5 stars out of 7 reviews
My rating: 0 stars

Showing opinion 1 to 7 out of 7

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8 stars

very handy USB MP3 player which sounds great

by amanning on January 8, 2008

Pros: stunning sound; charges from my PC; small size; starts very very quickly; handy as a pen drive for my PC; can wear it round my neck

Cons: I'm going to loose the cap one day when I'm charging this player; can't delete files so not good for podcasts; can't drag and drop music files to this (have to use Sonic stage);

Summary: (I have the 4GB version)
I've had a few MP3 players and using loseless ATTRAC files on this player sound better than Lame MP3 and OGG files (ok not
...

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Summary: (I have the 4GB version)
I've had a few MP3 players and using loseless ATTRAC files on this player sound better than Lame MP3 and OGG files (ok not quite fair as they aren't loseless). However, the loseless ATTRAC files don't seem to take up that much room (compared to WAV!). I got this player for a very cheap price. I read the reviews and I was dreading using Sonic Stage. However, I didn't find it that hard - insert CD or select folder to import; import; transfer files!

The small size of the player means a small screen so it's hard to see everything that's on the player (Quite often I use the cover flow option to view album covers and select based on the album cover). Also, you can't view the players contents without changing the file you are listening to.

I find this player ideal for albums/tracks that I listen to on a regular basis. I have a couple of players and this is the one I always have with me. The sound quality is better than the iRiver Clix 2 and Creative Zen Nano V plus (admittedly differnt file formats and compression options). It's a great pen drive; I can charge from my laptop directly and I've installed a couple of applications on this player, which I can run directly from any PC.

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2 out of 2 users found this user opinion helpful.
8 stars

A great little MP3 player!

by stevie511 on June 24, 2008

Pros: Seamlessly syncs with Windows Media Player, built-in USB plug, no dreaded iTunes-like software required!

Cons: Supplied headphones are only average, as is the battery life

Summary: After repeated problems with two Apple iPod Nanos (first and second generations), and software problems with iTunes, I was ready to ditch Apple altogether and find a small, simple MP3 ...

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Summary: After repeated problems with two Apple iPod Nanos (first and second generations), and software problems with iTunes, I was ready to ditch Apple altogether and find a small, simple MP3 player that had drag-and-drop music management. I didn't need games or photo capability, just something that played music.

Having never been disappointed with a Sony product, the B105F seemed like a good choice, and it has been. It's quick to charge (which is lucky because the battery seems to last 8hrs max), easy to manage music via WMP, small and lightweight. The sound quality for such a small unit is AMAZING!

The only niggles are the battery life, as mentioned, the power-up time (takes about 20 seconds) and the supplied headphones which are terrible. I highly recommend you buy some decent headphones. Oh, and after 9 months constant use (gym, in-car, at work) the unit gave up all together. Luckily it was replaced under warranty.

It's been the best MP3 player I've ever owned.

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7 stars

Excellent NO Video or NO Photo MP3 Player

by Erack32 on May 11, 2008

Pros: Small/Compact. Great for workout or commute

Cons: shuffle feature is troublesome/ radio presets don't stick

Summary: I purchased this unit for my daily workout and commute. I didn't need photos or video support. The Sony SonicStage software is problematic, so don't download it on ...

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Summary: I purchased this unit for my daily workout and commute. I didn't need photos or video support. The Sony SonicStage software is problematic, so don't download it on your computer or you'll have to use it with the player...just use your Windows Media Player instead. FM radio work very well, but my preset keep getting lost somehow...hmm. The microphone/voice recorder feature is really kewl. Although, I wouldn't use it for class lectures or meetings. I don't think the range is strong enough. For that, I'd purchase a separate voice recorder.

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10 stars

Just what I need, the basics!

by rose.johnp on March 17, 2008

Pros: Small, Light, Easy

Cons: The cap could be lost.

Summary: I like this little peice of gear, and for $65 the price is right! It has just what I need when going for a run, music. I don't need ...

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Summary: I like this little peice of gear, and for $65 the price is right! It has just what I need when going for a run, music. I don't need pictures and videos when I'm out beating feet. It's light weight, fits easy in my pocket. Drop and drag the music I want, and I'm out the door.

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5 stars

cool but disapponting

by rlm4040 on March 13, 2008

Pros: easy to load & charge, clean display, battery life, compact

Cons: controls are awkwardly placed, forward button often forwards thru song instead of skipping to next song, shuffle feature not very smart

Summary: I guess I just expected a little more from Sony...

Summary: I guess I just expected a little more from Sony...
8 stars

"the Cadillac of under-$80 fitness MP3 players".

by mohammadlue on March 6, 2008

Pros: Solid design, Great sound quality,

Cons: Line-input recording, Battery life is ok!

Summary: Easy to use and you can connect the player to any computer's USB port without a cable.
Recording quality is completely usable.

Summary: Easy to use and you can connect the player to any computer's USB port without a cable.
Recording quality is completely usable.
6 stars

Its O.K...but Sony needs to look back to the NW-E507

by mporter88 on January 9, 2008

Pros: No Sonicstage...Sounds Great...Rugged...No Cables

Cons: Odd control setup...no resume...only ok batt life.

Summary: I love Sony products. I buy them whenever I can. I like my elecronics to be dedicated devices that do one thing very well. My old NW-E507 was perfect except ...

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Summary: I love Sony products. I buy them whenever I can. I like my elecronics to be dedicated devices that do one thing very well. My old NW-E507 was perfect except for the requirement that you either use the Sonic Stage software OR the embedded file manager that would do the transcoding needed for the player to play a track. I got used to the embedded player. I learned how to rip so that the filemanager would work. But all players die eventually so when mine finally did I was glad to try this new NWZ. When compared to my old player it is lesser in all but the ability to drag and drop...and the color display. My old player had 40 to 50 hours of battery life! Amazing. It was incredibly durable and sounded great. If I paused in the middle of a long recording it would return exactly to that point. Also...It had a cntrol arrangement that was oriented around one end of the player. Everything was at that end so it was easy to use with one thumb and forefinger of one hand. Beautiful "Form Follows Function" design. So....After using this NWZ-B105F for a few weeks I have decide to purchase a refurbished NW-E507 on ebay. Maybe someone at Sony will read this and make a change in the next generation. Sometimes..the longest battery life IS the most important feature.

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Specifications

Manufacturer: Sony
Part number: NWZ-B105FBLK
Description: The NWZ-B105FBLK Walkman MP3 player may be a featherweight, but it's packed with clever features that make it easy to manage and enjoy your music. An integrated USB plug lets you quickly fill the player's 2GB storage capacity with up to 950 MP3 or WMA music files, including music from Windows Media PlaysForSure subscription services. A built-in FM tuner lets you listen to your favorite radio stations, and the on-board microphone allows the player to double as a handy voice recorder. And as you expect from Sony, audio quality is superbly crisp, clear, and dynamic.

General
Product type Digital player / radio
PC interface(s) supported Hi-Speed USB
Amplifier total output power 10 mW
Color Black
Available body colors White
Flash memory installed 2 GB Integrated
Digital storage None
Voice recording capable Yes
Included accessories Headphones, MP3 conversion tool
Packaged quantity 1
Software type Drivers & Utilities
Digital storage media type None
Radio
Tuner frequency range FM: 87.5 - 108 MHz
Tuner type Built-in FM tuner Radio tuner
Station preset qty 30
Tuner bands FM
Antenna form factor Headphone cord FM
Digital Player / Recorder
Digital player supported digital audio standards WMA, MP3
Digital player additional features Variable bit-rate compatible
Carrying Case
Case type None
Battery
Rechargeable Battery Rechargeable
Battery Enclosure Type Integrated
Recharge Time 2 hour(s)
Battery Rechargeable Player batteryIntegrated
Mfr estimated battery life 12 hour(s)
Audio System
Sound output mode Stereo
System Requirements
Peripheral / Interface devices USB port
Min Operating system Microsoft Windows XP SP2 or later
Connections
Connector type 1 x Headphones Mini-phone stereo 3.5 mm, 1 x USB 4 pin USB Type A
Built-in Display
Audio system built-in display LCD
Backlight display Yes

Power
Power Supply / Device None
Audio Features
Amplifier output channel qty 2
Amplifier response bandwidth 20 - 20000 Hz
CD System
CD system type None
Digital audio standards supported WMA, MP3
Equalizer
Equalizer type Built-in
Equalizer factory preset qty 5
Equalizer factory presets Classic, Heavy, Custom, Rock, Jazz, Pop
Equalizer band qty 5 bands
Remote Control
Remote control None
Microphone
Microphone type Built-in
Microphone operation mode Mono
Headphones
Headphones type Binaural
Sound output mode Stereo
Connectivity technology Wired
Battery / Power
Power device type None

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Sony NWZ-B105F (2GB, black)

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Specifications

General

Radio

Digital Player / Recorder

Carrying Case

Battery

Audio System

System Requirements

Connections

Built-in Display

Power

Audio Features

CD System

Equalizer

Remote Control

Microphone

Headphones

Battery / Power

Product series

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