Sony Walkman S2 Sports NW-S203F (1GB)

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Sony Walkman S2 Sports NW-S203F (1GB)

Frazier Barretto, Jan 15, 2007 1700 hrs IST

Today, we have the Sony Walkman S2 Sports, which is a flash-based DAP.

Sports features, G-Sensor, Water resistant, FM tuner, Good sound quality, Good earphones, Neat interface, Great build, USB v2.0

Poor music management software, No Drag-n-Drop, Expensive

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The Interface

The S2 Sports has a neat interface. The interface is made very simple-to-use with the knob. The knob has 3 levels; at one level it's "hold"; at the second level, it lets you scroll through the songs, and in the third level you can browse through Albums (or which ever sorting method you choose.) The reason why I earlier called the player a thermometer was because of the G-Sensor feature. This feature enables you turn shuffle ON/OFF by just shacking/flicking the player to and fro 3 times (each.) Remember the times when your doc used to flick the thermometer to get the mercury down before taking a reading?

Anyways, this is a neat feature and comes in very handy while jogging keeping in mind the player is strapped to your arm. So instead of actually reaching out to the player to change the track all you have to do is hammer the air 3 times and the song will change with the shuffle turning ON. If Shuffle is already ON then you'd have to hammer the air 6 times; 3 to turn it Off and then 3 again to turn it ON (considering you have enough strength to do that.)

The player controls are towards the right of the player, but S2 Sports doesn't discriminate between leftties and righties. A rotation of the display under Settings, Advanced Options makes it possible for the left-oriented to use the player with utmost ease though the button naming in paint/impression doesn't rotate.

The tiny Disp button lets you switch between different displays, like you can get info on the song, check the number of steps you took, calories burnt, the time/date, and even keep a visualization running.

On keeping the Disp pressed, you can see the list of modes offered by the player.
First up is the search mode. You can search for tracks by Artist, Song, and Album. This is apart from the browsing mode by the knob.

Next up is the Sports Mode, which I'll take up separately.
Then there is Stopwatch mode that is a stopwatch, should I even explain further? The only thing worth mentioning is that the music still continues to play even with in the Stopwatch mode.
Next is the Music mode followed by an FM.
Then there is a Playlist mode to browse playlists or make a Playlist.
Last in the mode list is the Settings option. Play mode, track sorting, Equalizer, etc, is under Settings; the options under Settings change with the mode you're using the player in.

Sports Mode

The Sport mode just lets you keep track of a particular workout for example something like you plan on burning a couple of calories before you go back home. Then you can set the amount of calories or the amount of time you wish to workout or for that matter how many Km/miles you wish to run/walk. Make sure to set the values like your height, weight, avg. footstep, and avg. run/jog stride under Settings, Advanced Options; else you'll have misguiding results.