Sony Nw-A105 16GB Walkman Hi-Res Portable Digital Music Player with Android 9.0, 3.6″ Touch Screen, S-Master Hx, DSEE-Hx, Wi-Fi & Bluetooth and USB Type-C – Black

high quality device but i could have just purchased a new phone that is 10 times better.
hardly even use this device as its not a convenient as a phone.

This was an excellent purchase and I use it regularly both in the car and particularly around the garden with Bluetooth speaker. It holds a vast amount of my personal music and I much prefer this to paying a monthly bill for streaming music plus we have no Wifi or mobile coverage around our garden area. I would be happy to recommend this product and wish I had purchased it sooner rather than going for another cheaper product on the market first!

I like this mp3 player it is really good only think I not keen on is the sound it is low also battery takes long to charge but everything else on this mp3 player is brillia

I’ll preface this with the fact that I have adored my time with Sony DAPs. I remember when I ordered the NWZA845 to replace the E model I had before it and being absolutely enthralled with it. And then when Google Music came on the scene with the online music locker, I eventually moved away from dedicated DAPs as suddenly my phone had access to my entire library.

Then Google Music died.

The A105 is then the latest purchase having stepped back into the DAP market following the much loved A55. The difference between the two being Android is now the OS platform Sony are utilising to drive their hardware. This, comes at a cost though, but at the same time opens the small DAP to popular streaming service which the A55 and likewise brethren running Sony’s custom linux OS cannot support.

So what do you lose with the Android DAP? Well, the main pain point really of this unit is the battery life. Android bleeds it dry without trying. Seriously, out of the box, you will get maybe 5-6 hours of use before needing to recharge. There is some hope though, as some owners have persevered with their units, disabling/removing the Google bloat and services to a point where they practically double the battery life.

The other casualties are in the form of features within Sony’s music player app. If you are familiar with the Sony OS devices, then you may know of SensMe channels. And also enjoy the ability to edit playlists on the go without the need to use the computer. Well, with the Android port of the app, Sony have for some bizarre reason removed the playlist editor functionality, opting instead for “Bookmarks”. By default, there are 10 Bookmark list available, and non-removable. Bolstered with the ability to create additional Bookmark lists with custom names. There is no menu item to jump to your list of Bookmarks, leaving you only to access them with a left swipe on the now playing screen.

SensMe channels have also canned it in the Android version. This, actually hurts a bit because I really liked the feel of the channels on the A55 whereby switching between the moods would cut randomly into a song of that list as if you’d just tuned into a radio station. Effortless playlists at the ready based on the mood you’d feel at the time thanks to Sony’s 12 tone analysis tech, which is now pretty much binned.

What you do gain however, is the ability to use apps other than the Sony music player. YouTube, Tidal, Spotify etc, all available on your DAP. And if you’re still using locally stored music on the device, you can use your favourite Android music player to do that if you so wish. The Google Playstore, and by required, services, are present on the device so you can sign in with your account and start installing those apps.

I should mention though, the UK, and EU only get the NW-A105 variant being the 16GB. But Android and the preinstalled apps take up to 10GB of that already, so you will most definitely be wanting to pair this up with a microSD card. Why Sony didn’t bring the bigger sister, the A107 (64GB) to the Western market is beyond me.

Finally, there’s no proprietary port! Sony have gone with USB-C which means that you’re not having to take good care of the only cable you get with the device. Although the supplied USB-C cable is fairly decent. And the device still works on the premise of Drag and Drop, though you can use the Sony Media Centre if you wish (but with the loss of SensMe channels, is there really any point to? Musicbrainz Picard does a decent job of tagging music, highly recommend checking it out).

So to sum up. Sony are leaving behind their custom OS in favour of a platform that supports popular streaming services to hopefully keep their DAPs relevant. But, this does come at a cost with the Android subsystem being incredibly power and storage hungry that you’re pretty much robbed of what should otherwise be a premium feeling DAP. And the inability to manage playlists on the go, or make use of the 12 tone analysis data via SensMe only sours the deal. Okay, you could probably find an app that can modify M3U8 files for you, but I’ve not looked at that.

Just one final note. EU volume limit, and the enforced warnings are a complete nuisance and definitely need to be allowed to opt out once and for all. JP imports don’t have this issue 😉

I bought these due to being unable to use my phone at work, but I need music to help me concentrate. I was very tempted to go for something cheaper and live with worse quality but I’m glad I did not. Overall the device has good sound quality, especially when paired with decent headphones. Of course it’s not audiophile sound quality, rather this is more for convenience, so don’t go looking for professional audio quality. A friend of mine has a much older version of the same device, and seeing the quality of life improvements sold me on it immediately.

There’s things I don’t like very much though. Battery life is mediocre. This is due to a combination of a few things, it’s very small, Android isn’t particularly efficient with battery usage and it’s very much dependant on what features you’re using. Personally I use wires in ear monitors, no WiFi or Bluetooth and on one charge I can get 6-7.5 hours. However I have used wireless headphones, and with using Bluetooth it drops quite a bit. I got around this by using a power bank, making the device’s battery redundant, with a 10000mah power I get 4 days of continuous use.

In summary; small, well built and very convenient, with a minor let down from its battery life. Don’t expect professional level sound, for that you need to spend a lot more money.

My FiiO died and I wanted a player with the ability to store all my music as FLAC (uncompressed) files. This little beauty takes a 1Tb SD card and sounds terrific. If you’re allergic to Android technology, that’ll bother you. Otherwise, this is a beautifully-engineered little player that doesn’t have lots of frills and frippery. It just plays music lots of it really well.

I bought this for the sound quality and having an expandable storage card slot. I am delighted with both, but a little disappointed with the internal storage as a huge amount is taken up with the pre-installed apps and a recommendation to leave another 2Gb free for their updates, so it would be useless without the external storage. If you sell something with 16Gb internal storage, it should be USABLE storage. Battery life is OK for me, as I rarely stream music, but it’s nowhere near what I expected, probably due to the apps. As I said earlier, the sound quality of this player is very good, if I was basing it on that alone I’d give 5 stars.

1. Plays Audible books no problem.
2 With the S D card, I’ve now an always there (large) music source.
3. It’s basically a “dinky” android tablet.

The only problems were:

1. There’s only 2gb of main memory spare, you have to get everything initially onto the SD card.
2. The initial Android update failed due to insufficient free memory. I had to unload everything that I’d downloaded to free up space.
3. Beware, The initial Audible/Amazon login is to Amazon.com, not co.uk. It never presents the UK screen, you’ve got to realise this before login. Else, you spend an hour onto Amazon help desk, trying to find why you can’t log on.

Other than that, I’m pleased I bought it.

Needs time to get to grips with this device but worth persevering. Niggles are battery life not good at all, on board storage most seems to be taken up with initial installations and that leaves about 4GBs internal storage of 16GBs so it does need a Micro SD, loading tunes up is or seems longwinded getting them to display unlike the A55, but they appear eventually but I am still working my way thru the manual – but apart from that its an amazing bit of kit the SD is not expensive for a massive amount of storage – for me on cycle rides battery life lasts I would say maybe 6 hrs..ish, the wifi working off a personal hot spot allows various apps for blue tooth earphones and I still have more to learn – just brilliant – don’t think its waterproof though, I need to check but really looking forward to learn more about the device.

Pro’s – Lovely look and feel, smooth Android OS, sound quality (with some Sennheiser Momentum in ears) is fantastic, decent battery life when you play your own downloaded FLAC 24bit high-res files.

Con’s – battery life when streaming TIDAL is dreadful. You’ll get 2 hrs, tops. The 16GB internal memory is too little – the OS takes up most of that, and when you stream you have to delete the cache regularly or you get warnings over the memory limit.

Overall – it’s a nice little player. V small, great sound if you have a good library of high-res audio or indeed normal 16bit audio files. It not a streamer, and the internal memory and battery life need to be improved. A balanced 2.5mm output would also be nice!

I already have high definition players from Sony but I wanted to use my Amazon HD music account on this device. Having read the revues I was not sure whether to purchase or not. At over 300 pounds it was a gamble. Fortunately the Walkman was reduced on Amazon to just under 200. Having purchased I looked forward to setting the device up and giving it a try. Set-up was fairly straight forward, once I got the Amazon music app. I gave the unit a try and was impressed with the quality of sound and the overall functionality of the device. Yes the weak spot is the batteries ,they don’t last long between charges but you can live with this. I am still working through the settings of the device but generally I am very pleased with it. Sony has provided an update to help prolong battery life so at least they are trying to improve things.

I purchased this device to replace a worn out Apple Ipod Nano 7. I was more than a little worried concerning the very mixed reviews. Seems a bit like Marmite people either love it or hate it.

Heres what I personally discovered in relation to my experience verses some of the reviews.

Battery Life – If your migrating from a Nano like I did or other small MP3 player with small battery then the Battery life is actually above average for this type of small tech toy. You will have to update the Firmware however to get a better battery life (also to enable sound control over bluetooth). My device holds enough battery with a full charge to play music over bluetooth for 4 to 5 hours of continuous use which I feel is more than adequate for my 3 hour cycling trips. However, the stated battery life from Sony is definitly wrong. If your comparing this to a standard smart phone such as Samsung or Iphone then you will probably be disappointed concerning the battery life. Can’t help thinking Sony did themselves no favours by putting out incorrect information concerning the devices battery life.

Volume Issues – I used an android hack to remove any volume limits on my device, also set this up as English USA not UK. Other than these tweaks which may or may not have achieved anything (I did this straight out of the box) the device booms out volume more than adequately and I love to listen to music at higher volumes. The choice of earphones and headphones does however impact the sound volume. I find headphones suffer volume issues over earphones which seem much louder and wired louder than bluetooth wireless. Interestingly I used Sony Wireless Bluetooth Extra Bass earphones on this device and I swapped for Betron wired and the sound volume markedly increased!

Android Over Sony Operating – Yes the startup is slower than the proprietory Sony operating system, but I have found this to be only a minor inconvienience. I personally prefer to custumise my tech toys and like the fact your able to use any music app / player on google store. You get more customisation concerning screen appearance and screensaver (theres a fantastic Sony Cassette deck saver included). Overall I think this is a massive advantage. Remember your details are stored on the device if lost or stolen. You can always setup a bare bones google account to mitigate against potential security issues. I dont stream music but using Android allows users to stream over wifi.

Internal Memory – 16gb is very small – and even smaller if you take away the space of the Android operating system. I paid 20 for a 128gb SD card to expand. Not a great deal to spend considering the cost of the player.

Overall Very Pleased with my Sony NW-A105 walkman! Would buy again!

I bought this mainly to use in my car, attached to the car stereo by Bluetooth (or can be plugged in via USB or ext in) but I also play it through my Bluetooth buds and Sony WH-1000XM3 headphones. It’s a great wee music player, you can stream using various apps or load it up full of various media files, either way it plays tunes and has given me zero problems… Obviously it would be better if the battery lasted longer per charge but that goes for all mobile devices and I’ve always got a suitable lead on me.

Love the sound paired with Sony 1000×3 wireless Bluetooth headset the sound is amazing

I remember the days when I used to sit on car journeys content with listening to cassettes on my dad’s walkman! It brings back memories and for Sony to make a modern, electronic version – I just had to give it a shot!

My expectations were set very high, especially since it was Sony who are the manufacturers.
This somewhat lived up to my expectations but there are niggles that need to be worked out.

My first impression was that it definitely looked very modern and sleek, looking like a very small android phone. It had a nice metallic build to it which gave it a bit of weight but it meant that it would be sturdy and not get damaged if dropped. Only concern in that front is the screen as I have no idea how strong that would be nor do I want to test that just yet.

Setting up was the same as setting up a new android phone – quick and easy to connect it to wifi and download apps. Spotify works great with this!

Sound is maxed to 120 on this – not sure if that is the case with any other models but it is still a very solid level of volume. There are options to put noise cancelling mode on as well as ambient sound mode.
However, these do not work at the same time for some reason – it’s either one or the other.

To test the sound quality – I used both wired and wireless earphones to see if there was any noticeable difference – I usually find issues with wireless more often than wired.
The wired earphones worked well with the walkman – the sound output was very clear with no static or crackling.
The wireless earphones didn’t work as well as I thought they would – they kept disconnecting every 20 mins or so.

The battery life is great – lasts for a long time, especially if you turn off the wifi and bluetooth to just use wired earphones and listen to songs. Easily goes an entire day without needing a charge if used constantly.
This charges through a type-C port which can be found at the bottom of the walkman, next to the 3.5mm audio jack.

The storage is not bad, it has 16gb internal memory but over half of it is used up by the system. For an item at this cost, I would have expected this to have at least 32gb at the very minimum.
However, the great thing is that it does have a micro-sd card slot at the bottom of the walkman – this will allow you to store as many songs as you can fit in there.
For now, I have a 64gb micro-SD card in there which seems to work fine – no issues and the music can be read instantly.

The touch screen is extremely responsive. There are very little, if any, delays when pressing an icon on screen.

The controls on the right side of the walkman consist of, from the top to the bottom, the power button, the volume up/down buttons, skip forward, play/pause, skip backwards and the hold button.
The hold button, when active, stops any buttons performing the action if accidentally pressed, e.g. stops the volume from increasing if the volume up button is accidentally held for too long.

Overall, it seems to be a lovely electronic version of the walkman but I don’t think the price can be justified given other models are almost half the price and offering near enough the same thing.

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An almost perfect music player, but for twice the price of the a45, how much do you care about Android, battery life and USB C?

The build of the a105 is really nice to the touch with the aluminium feel and curved edges.
The a45 is all plastic, but quality plastic.. though the edges aren’t as curved, so it doesn’t feel as great to hold like the a105 does.

The a45 has a battery life of up to 45 hours; hence the name a45. Not being Android based, it’s much more consistent, so it is very achievable.
The a105 is not nearly as good in this aspect, because it will vary a lot, especially if you use 3rd party applications for your music instead of Sony’s app.
But with the Wi-Fi turned off, it can definitely achieve a very long battery life, and will last for days on idle.

Having a USB C port is just so much better than a proprietary port that requires a specific connector. This is what drove me to not use my a45 a massive amount, because I can’t just use the same cable as I do for my phone or headphones.
I can forgive the half as good battery life for the ease of just using the same cable, because it doesn’t even take 1.5hrs to fully charge, so unless you are away from a source of power for over a day, having a universal port is worth the loss of another day of battery life.

Music quality wise: I was blown away at the quality of the a45 when I first got it.
I can definitely hear a noticeable improvement with the a105. But if you are using wired headphones, go with the a45, as that pumps out more volume than this.
This is the same situation with the higher end zx507, though it is also the case with most phones nowadays aswel, because there is such limited space in these compact devices to enable more capable AUX ports to be used. So don’t expect it to make your headphones a boombox like your laptop may.

Using Bluetooth though, the above volume issue doesn’t apply. I can really feel the headphones moving with the bass at high volume. Compared to the a45, that is really noticable and is beyond amazing!

The buttons on the side are lovely to have, though you also have them on the a45 and higher end models such as the zx507.
The hold switch is really useful b’cs it allows you to disable all the buttons other than the power button. The way the a45’s buttons differ for each definitely is that much more easy to find by touch though as it’s so easy on the a105 to press one of the volume buttons thinking it’s the power and same for the opposite.

The AUX port being right next to the wrist strap hole makes finding the port a bit of a pain when you want to plug your headphones in at night, as it’s easy to mistake that hole for the port, but it’s a nicer size hole to the a45’s tiny one, making threading a wrist strap loop through much easier.

The SD slot is in a much nicer place than the a45, and it’s not as difficult to get the card out when you’ve put it in, as the a45’s card slot is quite deep. But that’s still better than a hybrid sim/sd tray where you need a pin.

For the price gap of the a105 and the zx507, I can’t even think of what can justify that price when it’s not any different quality wise to this.
The price gap of the a105 and the a45 though, the USB C, upgrade in build and sound quality, and being a whole Android device, it does justify the cost much more so.
Personally I’d of given this a miss at this price point as I’ve got a phone with an SD card slot, and I have the a45 that is half the price and has twice the battery. But if you can justify it, it’s a great device, definitely a lot nicer than an iPod.

Let’s get one thing straight. The only reason you will consider this product is for the sound quality. As we all know, any old smartphone can play audio with decent sound quality, and if you want an MP3 player, you can find much cheaper ones. So if you are not after something special in audio quality, look elsewhere.

With that out of the way, here is a look at what Sony has come up with. What you get is a small Android 9.0 device with a 3.6″/9.1cm 1280 720 pixel touch display. It also has hardware buttons on the side for basic music player functions: play/pause, volume up/down, skip back and forward, on/off.

On the plus side, the sound quality is superb. I tried it with a couple of high quality earbuds (one Shure, the other a noise-cancelling set from Digital Silence) and was delighted with almost uncanny realism on well recorded material. I am not sure if there is a characteristic Sony sound, but if there is, it is about clarity and imaging and sweet treble. Bass is good but very clean; you might mis-interpret this as being bass-light, but I love being able to follow every instrument in jazz, for example, without the bass bloat that often makes this difficult.

There are also some annoyances. Using Android is great for the ability to install other apps like Spotify but also uses a lot of storage space. As a result, of the 16GB on board, less than 7GB is available for music. If you want to take advantage of things like high-res DSD, you will soon run out of space. Plan to get a large micro-SDHC or micro-SDXC card, you will need it. Luckily you can buy a large capacity card for not much; I fitted a 200GB card. Android also means shorter battery life than with the non-Android Sony players.

Another issue is that there is a built-in noise-cancelling feature, and another for ambient sound, hearing external sounds, but these features only work (according to the docs) with the Sony IER-NW510N earbuds which are neither supplied nor all that easy to find on sale.

Third, there is this remark in the docs. “When using a music application other than ‘Music player’, High-Resolution Audio is down-converted to 48 kHz/16 bit for playback.” This means Sony’s own Music Player. You can argue about whether the difference is audible, but it seems an unnecessary limitation.

Fourth, the maximum volume level is not that high. This could be an issue with inefficient headphones. It is not a problem for me. I used the player on a bus and on a train and it was more than loud enough; I never turned it up over 110 out of a maximum of 120.

With that out of the way, a quick look at the good stuff. This gadget excels at supporting high resolution formats, PCM up to 24-bit/384 kHz and DSD up to 11.2896 MHz (four times SACD resolution). It also supports Meridian’s MQA format. Whether these ultra-high resolution formats are really needed you can debate elsewhere; all I can say is that the high-res files I have sounded wonderful. I tried the player with MQA, double DSD, and DSF sourced from SACD, as well as with 16-bit 44.1 kHz CD quality.

Operation is pretty easy. I simply connected to a PC and copied tracks to the Music folder on the device. Bluetooth with NFC connectivity is supported, including aptX, aptX HD and Sony’s LDAC which claims hi-res 24-bit/96kHz over Bluetooth in optimum conditions, though personally I’m a fan of wired connections with a device of this quality; you get longer battery life that way too. I found the quality over Bluetooth noticeably inferior.

It is also worth noting that device works a bit differently depending on whether you are using the Sony Music Player app or another Android app. Using the Sony app you just get music and you get the best quality as mentioned above. Using any other app, the audio goes through the normal Android sound system using the system volume control and by default including system sounds like taps and notifications. You can turn these off but it is another factor reducing the sound quality if you go this route.

The software is fast and responsive, thanks to 4GB RAM and a 4-core ARM 1.8 GHz chipset.

The supplied leaflets are not much use but there is a “Help guide” icon on the home page which links to a detailed on-line manual.

Can you use this as a USB DAC to get better quality from your PC or Mac? This is a puzzle. Some of Sony’s models support this but not this one, though the feature is referenced in some tables with a blank next to it. Maybe in a future firmware update?

In the end I love this music player, despite the annoyances mentioned above, mainly for the great sound quality. Running Android is also a considerable advantage, letting you sign into public wifi, play videos and use other music apps, even if it is bit less efficient than dedicated firmware. A very enjoyable device.