With a sturdy battery and a lyric sync facility,Sonys NWZ-E454 is a neat little gadget. The story of the Walkman began in 1979,when somebody in Sony Corporation decided that the next generation needed a more personal not to mention handy device for listening to music. Lugging along giant battery-powered tape players was no longer in fashion. And hard as they tried,the yuppies couldnt hear their Hendrix loud enough and keep the older folk at bay. The answer was found in an electronic device,a little bigger than an audio cassette and just right for the average bell-bottom pocket. Music didnt have to blare through external speakers; now neat little cables transported it directly to the ears giving listeners the perfect stereophonic experience without waking up the entire neighbourhood. The first Sony Walkman was the metal-cased blue-and-silver TPS-L2,the very device that laid the seed for the short-lived Discman,the MP3 revolution and,ultimately,the phenomenon called the iPod. Then,30 years later and long after the world had forgotten about music cassettes,Sony declared that it will no longer make the conventional Walkman. Times had changed,and the old had to make way for the new. The Walkman legacy,nevertheless,carries on in a new avatar. And one of the latest Walkmans to hit the stores from Sonys E-series stable is the NWZ-E454. A portable media player that barely occupies the palm of your hand,the E454 sports a 2-inch QVGA LCD display and supports up to 8 GB of storage space. Its sturdy battery provides users with up to 50 hours of music playback (and 10 hours of video),which ensures you do not have to go hunting for a computer every alternate hour,just because its power icon is blinking red. The lyric sync facility in the E454 ensures that you never miss a single phrase in a song because it simultaneously gets translated into words on the screen. The quality of the sound is as good as only Sony can make it and the graphic equaliser,which lets you choose between heavy,pop,jazz and two customisable modes,helps you change the tone of the music to suit the mood of the moment. This is not a unique feature but it is pleasing nonetheless. Moving on,the DPC (speed control) function,which allows you to fool around with the song tempo,is admittedly an interesting feature. But then,one cant really see what an average person would want to do with it,unless he happens to have a fetish for listening to Bob Dylan singing like Alvin and the Chipmunks,once in a while. The E454 supports audio formats such as MP3,WMA,AAC and Linear PCM/AAC,and plays MPEG-4 and WMV video files. Besides this,it has all the usual features FM radio,voice recorder and an alarm. Though not something that stands significantly above the competition,the NWZ-E454 is a neat little gadget. And,with a price tag of Rs 6,990,it does not demand too much from your wallet either.
