Panasonic already had the smallest MP3 player on the market. Now its flagship e.wear product is even smaller.
Hold me closer, tiny dancer
The first thing to say about the SV-SD80 is that it's tiny. Its predecessor, the SV-SD75, wasn't exactly huge, but the SV-SD80 isn't a great deal bigger than the Secure Digital cards it uses as its storage medium. Add in a battery, a small LCD and a few buttons, and there's really no wasted space in this unit.
Our only concern with the SV-SD80 unit itself is in the build quality of the latch for SD cards. Cards are kept in place with a very thin piece of plastic. Given the SV-SD80's size, there's really no alternative, but a slightly too keen opening hand could easily snap this casing off.
Panasonic's managed to get all the functionality of a full MP3 player into just five controls; two volume buttons, two skip track buttons and a combined start/stop button. The way it does this is by having a modification switch at the side that also acts as a hold switch. In normal position, the buttons perform their named function, but in option position, they control bass level, track repetition and playlists -- although playlists aren't actually supported in the current firmware. It's a novel approach, and again somewhat necessary to make the player this small. It does, however, make some changes quite fiddly. We were also somewhat annoyed to discover that while the SV-SD80 has both repeat and random play functions, you can't set both simultaneously for a never-ending random song loop.
While most MP3 players come with a USB cable, generally accompanied by a proprietary but guaranteed to break connector, Panasonic's taken a different route with the SV-SD80. It comes with an independent USB SD card reader. It's a nice addition; if you have other SD/MMC card devices such as digital cameras, Windows should be able to recognise them as individual drives. A power charging unit is also supplied; without direct USB connectivity there's no other way to power the unit.
I've got the power
On the subject of power, Panasonic claims an impressive 18 hours of playback with the inbuilt NiMH battery. We used the unit over a weekend's gardening, and managed to listen for about sixteen hours before the music died. If your sound needs are more acute, the SV-SD80 also comes with a carry-case that doubles as a battery pack; slip an AAA battery in the base of the unit, and Panasonic claims you can get up to 50 hours playback. The only big drawback with the carry case is that it envelops the unit, but only supplies replacements for the front facing buttons. This means you can't access the option switch to change playback settings without taking it out of the carry case.
The SV-SD80 ships with a 64MB SD card, which is enough for around 60 odd minutes of reasonable quality audio, and a lot more if you're not terribly particular about sound quality. Song transfer is performed through RealJukebox, which is needed for the SD encoding needed to get the SV-SD80 to recognise MP3 or WMA files. Most security encoding features suck; they often crash and involve long overheads to the transfer rate. Panasonic seem to understand this; transfers to the SV-SD80 were essentially transparent. If SDMI is ever to take off, it's with simple operation like this.
As seems standard with MP3 players, bud headphones are supplied, along with a headphone extension cable. Much to our surprise, these didn't totally suck. We're still of the camp that prefers real headphones, but the supplied buds were amongst the best we've seen.
Totally addicted to bass
The output sound quality (with a pair of headphones) of the SV-SD80 is excellent. For those who like vibrating eardrums, the SV-SD80 supports two different high bass settings, as well as a low-bass 'Train' setting that might make fellow passengers think a little more kindly of you. The SV-SD80 doesn't take volumes to ludicrous levels, but should still have enough oomph to satisfy even the most jaded -- or sonically overstimulated -- ears.
Panasonic e.wear SV-SD80
Company: Panasonic Australia
Price: AU$799
Distributor: Selected resellers
Phone: 132 600
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