The Sony NWZ-B142F is a Walkman in the B series range and measures 86mm x 23.6mm x 14.5mm making it quite small (about the size of a chunky flash drive). It has a small 3 line display screen that allows you to navigate around the features of the MP3 player as well as showing track details. The Sony B series Walkman has 2GB of memory to store your tracks on and also features an FM receiver to let you listen to the radio. It's similar to a flash drive in that it has a USB connector kept inside a cap that pulls off the end of the device and once inserted in a USB port on a PC the device charges and allows music to be transferred to and from the PC.
Features of the B Series Walkman include a 5 band graphic equalizer, Bass Boost, Voice recording, power light, AVLS, repeat, shuffle and can play MP3 and WMA files (non-DRM).
The B series walkman has a battery capacity that lets it play music for 18 hours and takes just 1 hour 10 minutes to fully charge. If the Walkman battery is completely discharged and you need to go out then a quick 3 minute charge will see it play music for up to 90 minutes if you switch it to powersave mode. It's a handy feature should you forget to charge it before leaving home.
Sony B Series Walkman
On the left side of the device there is a 3.5mm headphone connector. On the right side there is a cap that can be removed to reveal the USB connector. On the bottom side of the device is a hold switch to prevent you accidentally pressing buttons while it's in your pocket, and on the top side of the device you will find volume up and down buttons along with a Bass boost button.
The front of the device has a Home button/back button which takes you back to the home screen. Above that is a Zap button which helps you find tracks by playing a few seconds of the middle of the track so you don't have to look at the screen. The silver section on the front houses the Play/Pause button in the middle with the top side of the circle skipping forwards a track and the lower side skipping back a track. The controls are very basic but do exactly what they need to do.
Sony B Series Walkman Sound Quality
Sound quality was just fine on the B Series Walkman and as with any MP3 player, you just need to make sure you feed it some decent quality MP3's and all will be good.
Sony B Series Walkman Final Thoughts
Although the B Series Walkman has a small screen and lacks the video capabilities you really need to weigh up what you will use it for. If you want to buy a Walkman for just listening to music and perhaps the radio then this is for you as it does exactly what it needs to in these areas. So overall, simple but does exactly what it needs to do... play music.
More details over at Sony.
