A slight update to the A10 series, feels like going back in time.
Since this player is not available in the US, I had to purchase it from Japan. A20 turns out to be a slight update to the A10 series with a quieter background. General: The Japanese version does have volume limiter and noise cancellation (NC) in contrary to the online comments. Its only display language is Japanese. The A25 comes with the original Walkman NC headphones. Only the models with HN at the end of model number has the new "High-Res" noise cancellation headphones. The NC has many useful settings (environment, aggressiveness, and silent mode) to make it a really good NC solution. The player is about 1.5 times the size of an ipod nano, very light and small, also very comfortable to hold. The front panel is aluminum and the back is plastic. The green-ish color with the texture on the front looks premium. User Experience: Upgrading from the F800, the experience is well, different. Moving from touch screen Walkman to a push button one really feels like going back in time. No touching the screen (meaning one tap is now 4-5 pushes on the buttons), no Wifi, no high resolution screen, no way to turn off the screen manually (can turn off only through a timer), it keeps playing music even the headphone is unplugged, and of course no apps. Doesn't mean its a bad thing to loose these features, it seems the battery life is very very good and the background noise likely a byproduct of running android is gone as well. Again, feels like going back in time. Especially the non-touch screen part, it is painful to navigate through a song without the touch screen... Extensibility: On the plus side, it does support LDAC if you want to stream "High-Res" music through Bluetooth. It supports "High-Res" audio files. It has a microSD card slot for expansion, however to put files in the SD card, you need to first change the settings and restart. One thing I heard from a Japanese reviewer about the SD card expansion is that playing music on the SD card produces a electro noise (haven't tried yet my self but kind of worrying, weirdly enough Sony sells premium sound microSD cards...will update after trying it myself). It has NFC, so you can use it to pair with other devices and never use it again. Competition: The price of this is on par with the ipod touch 16GB, but it just feels harder to use without the touch screen. By comparison, to use an external DAC, you need to buy a $30 Walkman cable (except for PHA-1A and PHA-3) where the ipod supports it with its charging USB cable. Sound: The sound quality of this Walkman is very good, detailed and punchy. Sound stage is great too. The background noise is gone and this point only makes it better than most smartphones. It again feels like going back in time, to the age when Walkman sounds better than most cellphones. Overall: For the price of $200, I would say it's worth it for the sound, form factor and the excellent noise cancellation. Just hope the user experience was better. Read more
