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

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.

I have been looking for Digital Audio Player which can play my Apple Lossless music collection and also have an option for Spotify. I tried a FiiO M9 but it didn’t run Spotify very well at all, so sadly it was returned. This Sony is much better. It runs Spotify just as well as my iPhone and its built in Music Player (Walkman) is also excellent for playing my Apple Lossless files. It is also currently on offer here for £199 which makes it quite good value. The Sound Quality is excellent, it’s a very convenient size, and once you have installed Spotify (and and any other streaming app you might want) from the Google Play Store you can effectively remove every link with Google (including removing your account details) so you are left with a very pure, music only device. Perfect for those of us who don’t want to be tied to a smartphone and all the distractions they run with and just want to listen to music - either from files or streamed from The Internet in the best quality available. A few things prevents this model earning a full 5 stars: 1. Battery Life. It’s not great. Keeping WiFi off and upgrading to the latest firmware helps. Once you’ve downloaded all your music you should also find you don’t have the screen on much - that also helps. It’s not a show stopper but it would have been nice if the battery was longer lasting. 2. Volume controls when using Bluetooth: The volume buttons don’t seem to work if you are listening on a Bluetooth device (headphones or speakers). You can still adjust the volume from within Spotify or, of course, the headphones themselves if they have a volume control - so, once again, not a show stopper but would have been nice if the volume buttons worked for Bluetooth devices. 3. You will need a micro SD card: Forget about the 16GB of internal memory. It’s nearly all gone with operating system and any apps you install. Add a 128GB card (around £20) and you’re sorted. No big deal, but you need to factor this into the cost. Not much more to add - it’s all been said in other reviews. Of the points above, 1&2 could well be fixed in a future firmware upgrade - if so, this would be a sublime player - as it stands it is still excellent and is much, much nicer than using a smartphone for music in terms of sound quality, lack of distractions, size and ergonomics. Nice one Sony! - - - Update - - - I've been using my Sony NW-A105 for a bit now so I thought I would update my review here. The battery life really does vary a lot depending on what you are doing. - Playing downloaded tracks on Spotify (320kbps), so no Wifi through and using wired headphones (no bluetooth) seems to be the most efficient - After 2 hours the battery had dropped about 10%, so potentially 20 hours of playback here. (no use of screen, volume at about 80) - Lossless music files on the built in Walkman app works out with around 8-10 hours total. If you do the same using a third part app (e.g. Rocket) this drops to about 6 hours, so I'd stick with the built in app. (no use of screen, volume at about 80) - Switch on Wifi and Bluetooth and things do go downhill somewhat. 6 hours maybe at most no matter what app you are using. Just Bluetooth is not as bad - I think Wifi is the biggest drain but if you are listening to local files or downloads on Spotify or similar, keeping wifi off most of the time is not an issue. If you are technically minded, I'd also consider replacing the launcher using the Nova Launcher app. This way you can remove the annoying google search bar, the app drawer, the app dock and leave just your audio apps visible - I have also disabled all google apps and android apps, removed my google account (once I downloaded the few apps I wanted from the play store). You can see in the pic how my screen looks now - much neater, much more music orientated and no non-audio apps to distract and potentially drain the battery. I also added a few utilities held in a system folder on my modified main-screen for efficiency - one for quickly tuning on and off wifi, one for quickly turning on and off bluetooth for example. Finally, there is an app you can buy called Tasker. Again, if you are technically minded this can also help save battery life. Tasker automates things depending on the state of your device. So I have it turn automatically turn off bluetooth should I plug in wired headphones for example. It also enables wifi if the device is plugged into power (and off when unplugging).... A lot of work involved admittedly - but for me, worth the effort - I am left with a player which seems to be so much more useable than it was at first.

I have been using Sony walkmans since the A15 2014, the a35 and a45, and now the a105. So far been very impressed, I mainly stream music via Bluetooth, the sound quality when compared to the a45 is a step up , I can notice the difference, the sound seems more detailed and rich. The display and touch screen is very bright, colours seem richer then a45, touch sensitivity is good. I have loaded this with a 128gb sd card, the walkman app is sufficient and works well. The build quality is excellent very sleek design. This player comes with android 9, its fully fledged version allowing you to download apps from the play store. My conclusion is that this offers more then the a45, its adds a few extras, like vinyl procceessor, but more importantly its give you android OS, for me Evan tho I have 70 gb music stored, it's nice to have Spottily, YouTube music, dezzer, and the upcoming amazon HD streaming service available on this device. Overall very Happy, only gripes battery could have been better, to improve this I have switched off WiFi and Bluetooth and activated battery care. Forgot to mention this is charged with USB C making life lot easier compared to the A45 specific cable. Update 16/8/2020 Having had this since January 2020 ,the A105 has improved in certain areas , the most likely and important area is battery life, with recent firmware updates this has allowed extra hours of playback , a auto device switch off is now implemented, when unit is not used . I found by switching WiFi of this also extends battery life, i mainly use this as a Bluetooth streamer and battery life has improved. The problem is this device is not perfect but by god you will not get a Hi Res audio player with the quality like this, if you use LDAC then you cannot beat the audio quality the A105 produces ,its so crisp. I use this as my main daily music player ,from streaming to headphones i am more then happy . This is quality not quantity ,but not perfect its sits in between.

Won’t copy the same std information about the product, search ‘nw-a105 reviews’ it is actually superficially excellent, looks v good, feels good, is the right size and the screen is crisp and sharp. This had potential to hit the sweet spot but fell woefully short. It seems Sony have made a major mistake with this one,their first android based MP3 player. Even at the now reduced prices being offered by amazon, it’s not worth the pain. This unit is a compromise of trying to be an MP3 player and an android device, and thus, features that you would or should be drawn to, that are typically selling points in each world, are inexcusably lacking, in both, in this hybrid, with the result that both types of user will be disappointed. Considering this has evolved from the old style Walkman models, 20-30 hours between charges is the norm, mindset is charge it occasionally, not charge it everyday just in case you need it, so this model is definitely a step back, as it offers the worst of both worlds. People drawn to the MP3 player side of things, want clear sound and good battery life. The screen and Sony music Center transfer app, cassette screensaver, are just window dressing. This checks the box for clear sound, but it will not drive full sized headphones (Bose nc700s for example, as it doesn’t have a strong enough amplifier). So, ok if it’s just ear buds or small headphones....which is a major fail. Sony state, amongst all their small print, battery life is about 16 hours, rising to 26 hours under some conditions which makes you feel more comfortable about that, but it is about half of the time the nw-a55s can manage, and the reality is that no matter what I tried, under a variety of different real world test situations, I could not get get more than 8 hours from a single charge, and if I was to use the marketed sound processing options, and turn the volume up (because you have to, as it it incredibly quiet, being underpowered), then expect 4-6 hours out of it. The battery life can be extended a few more hours by switching off all the sound processing and wireless functions (WiFi, Bluetooth etc), which seems a bit pointless, as it’s all those high res sound processing functions that you are probably locking in on, to buy this in the first place. So, switch it all off, put in in battery saver mode, switch airplane mode on, turn the brightness down, and only play MP3 from the on board storage, and it will sound good, for 8-10 hours or so max. But there’s no point having this model, in that case. From full charge, leave wifi on, let it go to standby, and it will be dead-20% charge in the morning, WITHOUT even using it. But if you purchased this for the Spotify, streaming apps etc which will tempt you, because of the android set up, then you basically can have them, but then you are only buying yourself the equivalent of a budget phone, as the 4gb ram and chipset is focussed on keeping the minimum of android functions going, and does not have much more power to give other apps from the playstore. Nearly forgot to mention that from the 16gb storage you think the player would have for your tracks, about 7gb is consumed by the power and memory intensive android, so out of the gate, it’ll be about 5-7 useable ram, enough for only a handful of flac albums, so add the cost of a bigger memory card also. Who in their right mind would design a Walkman that, for one market was so underpowered it cannot drive normal high street headphones, and for the other market, makes it look and feel like an android phone (that’s ok), but only gives it the equivalent of 4-5 hours before needing to charge it. I didn’t get a freebie for testing like some do (who are thee people and how do they set that up!!!!), this was my hard earned cash, so I can assure that this battery issue and compromised feature set is real, not toned down at all. I am willing to include positive things here, This could nearly have been the best MP3 out there but Sony have fallen short with 2-3 absolute deal breakers, so bad in fact, that it is worth considering the lower a55 model, or waiting until Sony fix this. My bet is they release a new model, because my observations above, were based on the LATEST firmware update, with only one test album loaded into memory, and absolutely no android app junk slowing things down, firmware was from Nov 2020, and release notes show it attempted to play down the accumulated issues, so I can only imagine that at launch of this unit initially, at about £100-150 more than it is today, it would have been so bad, that it only received sales, by trading on the Sony brand name. This unit will have, and still does erode the brand image. As much as I wanted to keep it, had to return it as faulty, for not even coming close to manufactures stated specifications. Could have been a lemon, but from the other reviews, they made a big batch of lemons. Nice idea, but this one isn’t the next iPod moment.

TL;DR - Sound quality is pretty good, but is held back by it's poor battery life, mediocre out of the box software and it struggling to handle higher impedance headphones that most phones/tablets/laptops can handle. I used the player with these headphones Wired - Beyerdynamic DT770 Pro (80 ohm model) Wireless - Grado GW100 (Usb C model) *Pros and cons* Pros +Good sound quality. +Amazing build quality, nice buttons and feels great in your hand. +Good stock mp3/wav/flac app (one of the only good pre-installed apps). Cons -Poor battery life (even worse if you are using wireless headphones or if you are streaming music via wifi). -Useless pre installed google apps and services. (That probably heavily contribute to the bad battery life.) -Struggles to drive any sort of higher impedance headphone. (80 ohms is barely doable if you crank the volume. Forget about anything higher unless you have a usb-c DAC) -bluetooth is a bit awkward to set up. *Recommended accessories* -128gb or greater micro sd card (unless you will be exclusively streaming your music) - A good usb-c DAC (if you are going to be using 80 ohm+ headphones.) *Recommended software* Nova launcher (the free version is fine.) (Allows you to remove the annoying google search bar and set up a home page that is just your music apps.) *Hardware overview* The player itself is built well. Nice and small, Sturdy, the buttons have a nice subtle click to them. Absolutely zero complaints when it comes to the physical thing itself. *Software overview* The pre-installed software, for the most part, is nothing but unnecessary bloat. It's a bunch of pre-installed google stuff that have basically zero relevance to it's music playing focus, nothing but wasted battery and storage. The only exceptions i would say are the pre-installed walkman music player and the EQ app, which both function well and as expected. Third party apps ran as well as they do on other android devices. Spotify, Bandcamp, Youtube and even more obscure third party apps like newpipe all ran with no issues (except for Spotify being slightly slower in offline mode, but this is something I've observed with my phone and spotify so i doubt it's the player's fault.) Bluetooth had initial issues pairing to my GW100's, but it worked eventually and i had no connectivity issues since. The homepage also has this annoying google search bar (why is their a google search bar on a primarily offline music player!?) Which can be removed by using nova launcher, which i highly recommend if you want to have the best UI experience using this device. *Sound quality - Wired* Despite the player having to give it's all to even power my dt770's, they sounded mostly as they should, i noticed the bass is a little weaker than usual but it's nothing major, mids and tops are as they should be. I am disappointed in the players inability to drive my dt770's. My Sony xperia zx3 phone can run them with just a usb-c to 3.5 converter and even my Sony PSP from 2010 can run them no bother. It kinda boggles my mind that sony's non audio gear can run higher impedance headphones louder and with no issues while their dedicated music player needs to use all it's got just to get reasonable levels of volume out of the same headphones. *Sound quality - Wireless* My GW100's sound the same as they do out of my phone (both using Aptx), but sound better than bluetooth devices that don't have Aptx. I would only recommend this player for wireless use if you don't have a device that can use Aptx but you have headphones that can. I should note that the majority of your audio settings are unavailable if you use wireless headphones. You will only have your EQ and the ability to use Clearaudio+. *Battery life* I haven't done any exact tests, but i know for a fact this device has pretty godawful battery life. I get roughly 5-6 hours of listen time wired with WiFi and Bluetooth disabled, you can axe about an hour off that if you are using Bluetooth headphones. This is at minimum brightness and with the screen off. I strongly advise you enable the option to have your player go into full shutdown if not used in 1 hour as it will greatly increase how much battery life you can get out of the thing. Additional you can squeeze a little more battery life out of it by playing exclusively local files on the pre-built walkman player. Using streaming services or 3rd party players drains that little bit extra. One last thing of note is that this thing charges rather slow and struggles to charge and be used at the same time. *in conclusion* At RRP, i can't recommend this to anyone. At it's common sale price, it's a hard sell, but i can recommend it to people who want a good sounding FLAC player that don't use high impedance headphones and can put up with the poor battery life. The player has some serious strengths, but it's incredibly hard to recommend with it's substantial downsides and high price point. It's biggest weakness in my eyes is that it couldn't fully drive my 80 ohm dt770's, a very common and praised headphone that a lot of music nerds (the type of people buying dedicated music players) are going to either be using or are going to have something comparable to it. I wasn't expecting it to drive 300 ohm studio stuff or hell even 120 ohm headphones, but not being able to do 80 when even your average phone can is a massive let down. I wanted to absolutely love this thing and it's still my personal FLAC player but if you asked me for recommendations, i probably wouldn't bring this player up. Build quality - 5 out of 5 Sound quality - 4 out of 5 Software - 2 out of 5 Battery life - 1 out of 5 Overall - 3 out of 5

I have been searching for a replacement for my ipod 180GB for a long time ... I started with an Astell&Kern AK70 MK II in April 2018 . It was fine but I lost all my playlists and track count ... I couldnt use last.fm either because it wasnt a proper Android OS. Sadly after 15months it stopped working and I wasnt able to get it replaced ... Amazon were fantastic and gave me a refund. Next Hiby R6 Pro ... with the Ak I had enjoyed Hi Res music and transfered my SD car to the Hiby. I have had two fairly good years with the Hiby - I enjoyed it. There were some niggles but it was easy to transfer music and I still had Itunes music match for my playlists. But after two years the battery kept running out and shutting down. it was finished. A shame for such an expensive item. I tried the Sony knowing that it had Android 9 .... I have synced all my itunes music (390GB and playlists ) via monkeymedia. My Sony walkman syncs with my pc libray - keeps a track of plays, play lists etc. Its brought back the magic of those early ipods... There's a lot of hype around Hi Res - but for me an MP3 player that takes a 512gb micro sd card is what I need ... This is brilliant! The sound quality superb The build quality excellent my best music machine since my first ipod in 2005!

SONY NW-A105 using Amazon Music HD is the most cost-effective way to replace an existing standard mp3 catalogue purchased or ripped from an existing CD collection! Very frustrated with the acoustic and Bluetooth limits on my £1300 iPhone X which doesn’t support the highest Hi-res settings – typical Apple, however my 5 year old SONY notebook does so I decided to give the SONY NW-A105 a try!!! To purchase Hi-Res album replacements would give flexibility to create playlists on a PC and then copy to the NW-A105, however, the cost would be prohibitive. Streaming is only a valid option when you have a WiFi connection and little use on plane flights, beach locations, on piste etc. where I tend to listen to music. With microSDXC cards so cheap downloading full Hi-Res files seems the best option. I tested a Samsung EVOPlus 512GB card but had a few issues with the card not always being recognised – it was also too big for my needs. I am now using a SANDISK Ultra 256GB card with read speeds up to 100 MB/s and only cost £27 – this will store around 200 albums and is working very smoothly! I have used Tidal which is good but very expensive compared to Amazon Music HD which is only £129 on an annual subscription and has a very large Hi-res catalogue with daily new releases. Tracks up to 24bit 192 KHz can be downloaded and played back using bluetooth to my BOSE QuietComfort 35 (Series II) or SONY WH-1000XM3 Noise Cancelling Headphones or my STR DN1080 Receiver in my HiFi system at amazing quality. Battery life is surprisingly limited, however, 5+ hours playing back Hi-res tracks via bluetooth with downloaded files and WiFi off is not an issue for me. An old SAMSUNG charger recharges the SONY in less than 1.5 Hours, Apple chargers take 4+ hours! I did test my SONY, BOSE and Sennheiser HD595 headphones using a wired connection and as other reviewers have noted you do need to have the volume close to maximum – not a problem for me as I don’t want to go deaf and I will always use the excellent LDAC SONY bluetooth connection where there are no volume issues and full Hi-res output is retained. Picture shows Hi-res 24bit / 192KHz Amazon Music downloaded track playing back via bluetooth - can't do this on my iPhone - well done SONY!

Well I only had this for a day and I've returned it. It's a real shame as there's so much to like about it, however with a battery this poor it's not really fit for purpose. I'd decided to upgrade from my trusty Walkman NWZ A15, which is approaching it's 5th birthday. I searched around and decided on the NW-A105. It had all the features I wanted in an upgrade, touch screen, Wi-Fi Android 9 , access to Amazon Music, BBC sounds apps. I was a little put off by the poor battery reviews but I noticed that Sony had addressed this in a new firmware update. First impressions it's small lightweight and has a nice premium product feel to it. The battery was completely dead so I had to fully charge it which took about 4.5 hours. Once complete I connected to my home Wi-Fi started it up and changed the settings to display Battery %, I then noticed the battery had dropped to 90% already. Not a problem I thought I just need to complete that firmware update. So I plugged the charger back in (you only get a very short USB C Cable) so make sure you have your own one to hand. It took about 20 - 30 minutes to download and install the new firmware. Once complete I Ieft it on charge and installed both Amazon Music and BBC sounds and connected to all my Bluetooth devices with ease and played a couple of tracks. I was then down to 80% on battery. I then set it to battery saver mode and dropped the brightness down to 30%, I set the screen timeout to 15 seconds and auto power off after 1 hour of non-use. I charged it 100% and then powered it off ready for the morning commute into work. I left it in battery saver mode and switched off the Wi-Fi. Through the day I probably played about 25 - 30 tracks, a mixture of MP3's, Flac's and Wav's and charged it back to at one point when it was down at 75%. Just re-booting takes 2% of the battery. By the time I got home it was on 50% this is just not acceptable. Let’s face it I wasn't even connected to Wi-Fi, so one of its biggest features is not even in use. I also read on the Sony Support page if you power it off at 30% or less it's unlikely to power back on without a full charge. Well that was the final nail in the coffin. Sadly I contacted Amazon for a return. On the positive side the audio quality was great especially on some of my Hi-Res 24 bit tracks. However if you need to charge a portable music device multiple times a day without even using most of its features then there's a big problem. So either this unit was faulty or Sony have rushed this onto the market without the extensive user acceptance testing. I'd also like to point out you need to buy a screen protector and a case so that's an additional £15 at least. Come Sony could you not bundle these in at this price point? So purchase with caution. I'm still in the market for a new media player and am considering the Fiio M9, any recommendations are welcome.

The Sony NW-A105 comes with a full Android operating software baked in, it works just like app-heavy Android smartphone. Which is exactly what I wanted to get away from when looking for an iPhone alternative with a dedicated music player. The hardware is very good. The quality of the sound is better than iPhone 14. We can add SD card to the player: we can substantially extend the storage. No need to buy expensive version with more internal storage. The supplied Music Centre software intended to manage the player content is not efficient. It was not possible to create playlist in a normal way: usually we select the tracks. drop it in the list folder. It is not working this way. A way to solve this issue: In iTunes artists are arranged as folders: using Windows Explorer I dropped the files made by iTunes in the SD card Music folder. Or in the internal storage Music folder. When playing ,select a folder you want (artist) from the playing menu, start the first track - it will play all tracks in artist folder , in the sequence made by iTunes. So, no need to create Playlist- arrange a folder, drop inside what you want. Seems Sony limited the charging current to be safer for the device, but it is taking long time to charge. Probably was possible to make the device with larger screen, larger battery, longer playing time. My fingers are normal, but still I need to be very careful how I hit the buttons. The larger screen should be better. As a music player it is really good. I tried with several different high end Hi-Res Audio headphones: works fine. Can adjust the volume and the sound is really good.

Hatte zuvor den FiiO X5 MK3, dieser ist nun in die Jahre gekommen, Android 5.x wurde auch elendiglich langsam. Der NW-A105 macht vieles besser, hat zwar keinen Balanced Ausgang für Kopfhörer, stört mich aber nicht, da der Unterschied nicht wirklich groß ist (zwischen Balanced in-Ear und normalen in-Ear kopfhörern). Klangmäßig kein Abstrich, daher volle Punktzahl. Bedienung und Haptik sehr gut, Sony-Kopfhörer sind dank LDAC im Vorteil. Einziger Nachteil, der Akku. Dieser hält vermutlich maximal 6 Stunden, dies könnte besser sein. Der Player wird beim Betrieb ziemlich warm, für die Wintermonate ideal. Die P/L bezieht sich auf den Aktionspreis vom Black Friday, für 200 € uneingeschränkt empfehlbar, eine gute Powerbank sollte man sich dazu auch gönnen, wenn man länger hören möchte, oder auf Reisen geht.

Possesseur d'un portable Sony XZ3, je me demandais si ça valait le coup de mettre un tel prix dans un Walkman qui a des modes et ampli de son identique à se modèle hormis de pouvoir lire des fichiers DSD, et bien... Quel surprise, la qualité de son est vraiment encore 10 x mieux, quel précision, quel puissance, musicalité, j'étais scotché pourtant la qualité de son de mon XZ3 est déjà vraiment surprenantes sur un casque, mais la c'est un autre monde, en plus ont peu y mettre tout ce qui existe comme type de fichiers de son, les DSD donc en haute résolution c'est juste bluffant, je suis en train de tout numériser mes CD en fichier FLAC, du coup il ne s'abîmeront plus, j'ai prit une carte de 256 go pas cher sur Amazon qui fait le taf et bien sûr la coque transparente qui va bien sur ce même site et adapter à mon modèle le nwa105, indispensable pour le protéger, c'est un vrai bijou, tout en métal, je l'est prit en rouge pour changer, magnifique ! Je l'utilise avec un Sony WH-1000XM3, et un bowers and wilkins P7 une tuerie, contrairement à un autre commentaire, le son avec le WH-1000XM3 est juste merveilleux, il se plaignait de pas pouvoir accéder au réglages du casque sur le Walkman, mais il suffit de mettre l'application du casque sur le nwa105.... qui a le WiFi et l'accès évidement au play store, et ont peu y mettre toutes les appli que vous voudrez, l'alliance de ce Walkman et du casque de Sony donne un résultat absolument fou, si vous le pouvez, foncer !

Bonito, buen tamaño y buena usabilidad. Soporta muchos formatos, y el que sea Android, permite usar también Qobuz y Tidal. Por contra, se calienta bastante, y la calidad del sonido es inferior a la que da un iPhone con el adaptador estándar lightning-jack. Le falta potencia. Mucha. Incluso con auriculares de alta sensibilidad se queda corto (en volumen, y, sobre todo, en control)

The build quality and the ergonomic are fantastic. To the point you'd just wonder why to pay more when this one does the trick. Of course, there are major known cons such a the battery life (4 to 5 hours at best if you leave the bluetooth or wifi on), or the Android OS which hasn't been customized for Audio. I guess (YMMV) it is possible to cope with them with workarounds and habit. Unfortunately I have found another major flaw when you listen to streaming services. This device won't be able to sound that great unless you use something like UAPP. This is something you only realize if you have good iem by the way. UAPP is great but do have all the bells and whistles of the service app (Tidal, Qobuz,...). For instance you can't view the lyrics or listen to downloaded content. If you only use local files from your SD card then I believe this walkman is a great value at the current discount price if you don't mind the poor battery life and the average UI Android experience.