The NWZ-E454 came out in November last year, and after the A845 and the W252, our expectations for this were pretty high, but as good as it is,there’s something holding it back from being great.
The player is really well built, but that didn’t really come as a surprise. It has a glossy front panel with a matte fi nish at the back. The 2-inch QVGA LCD display accommodates 262,000 colors at a resolution of 240x320, but the screen is an absolute smudge magnet. The button layout is quite similar to that of the A845, i.e. a four-way rounded keypad with a play/pause button in the middle. Towards the top-left is the back/home button, while on the right is an option/power button. On the right side is a hold switch, with volume controls at the top.Finally, at the bottom, you’ll fi nd the 3.5 mm audio jack and Sony’s proprietary WM port.Strangely, the E454 doesn’t support FLAC or AVI formats, but others like MP3, WMA, AAC-LC for audio, and AVC (H.264/AVC), MPEG-4, WMV9 and AAC-LC are video are supported. The player has fi ve EQ presets and two custom presets, in addition to sound enhancement settings like dynamic equalizer,Virtualphones technology, etc. The player holds 8 GB of media and is bundled with a proprietary data cable, earphones and an attachment to support the player while it charges. The earphones are the standard ear buds and not in-ear monitors,and the build quality is average, with soft plastic wiring that gets entangled easily. With all those equalizer settings and more options for sound enhancement, the E454 is one PMP that sounds really good and manages to do so even on default.While the highs and lows are nice and clear, the mids are decent too. While it was easier to hear vocals, the bass felt a little low. Some subtle details tend to go unnoticed, but you can tweak those with the wide range of audio settings.
The E454’s video playback quality is average at best.Video playback lags a bit and there’s a certain amount of pixelation.One big positive for the E454 is its battery life. It can go for about 43 hours while playing audio, and 8 hours of video, which is very good. It may not be the best performer around, but asidefrom the average video quality, there really isn’t too much to complain about. At Rs 6,990, it’s not overpriced, but there are much better alternatives around, like the Zen X-Fi Style.
SPECIFICATION
Dimensions (WxHxD): 44.1x95x10.4 mm; Weight: 58 g;
Capacity: 8 GB; Display: 2 in 240x320; Music formats:
MP3, AAC, WMA; Video formats: H.264, DivX, WMV
www.sony.co.in
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