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Sony’s Walkman NWZ-S544 looks and feels classy thanks to its shiny red metal design. It has a slightly bigger screen than the NWZ-E443 and built-in speakers, which are activated using a dedicated switch. As expected, they sound weedy and distort easily. Vocals sound clear on the included earphones, but audio quality is otherwise disappointing. Instruments are bright and harsh, with not enough bass, but there was no distortion when we boosted the bass using the equaliser. Audio quality improved dramatically with a third-party set of earphones, although the bass still wasn’t as thumping as we’d like. The battery lasted an impressive 30 hours and 38 minutes when playing music. Browsing for tracks is easy thanks to the logical menus and the ability to navigate quickly through long lists of tracks alphabetically. The option button gives easy access to the equaliser and playback modes, including shuffle and repeat. If you tire of your own music there’s a built-in FM receiver, which sounded reasonably clear when used in our central London offices. This Walkman, like all the others we’ve seen recently, is very picky about the video files it will play. The only videos we could get it to play consistently were H.264 files encoded in a very specific way at a resolution of 320×240 pixels at a jerky 15fps. Videos looked very bright, but also quite grainy, on the 2.4in screen. If you want to watch films on the S544, you can expect its battery to last for just over four-and-a-half hours.
If the NWZ-S544 appears similar to the cheaper NWZ-E443, that’s because it is. Setting aside the awful integrated speakers and a slightly larger screen, the only meaningful advantage the S544 has over the E443 is that it has 8GB of storage instead of 4GB. IRiver’s E200 8GB is a better choice if you want decent movie playback. If you want more music storage, however, Apple’s 16GB iPod Nano is better value, with double the storage capacity for only £25 more than the S544 costs.
