Sony NW-ZX300

48-72 hours is a typical total burn-in time, but the output needs to be high or it's not effective. Personally I'm not convinced about effectiveness of burn-in in making a major difference to audio quality (some say it's more about the listener becoming more accustomed to the sound) but there have been tests that claim a difference. I do it because it's easy to do - I just left mine running on external power with earbuds plugged in and audio output turned up high.

 

Sony themselves inside the instructions stated 200 hours per mode (SE/BAL) for burn-in of their POSCAPs.

Which is funny, because one of the touted benefits of POSCAPs over aluminium caps are stability over time. -shrug-

 

Maybe that means that it's stable after the burn in period? would explain why the sound stops "changing" after those 200 hours, i might be wrong tho, that's pure assumption on my end.

 

-shrug-

Well, either way not my problem as I've already clocked 1,000 hours. And I've only had it for 3 months!

 

It’s great to see how long these DAPs have been in use. I’m still figuring out how best to protect / travel with mine. The design of the unit makes it easy to pack - or protect.

One detail I noticed is the plastic surround on the power port can get a few marks or blemishes from inserting the plug. Does everyone have this question? Interesting it wasn’t metal (like a phone) or something that wouldn’t show marks.

 

I have had mine for almost 2 years and is still going strong!

 

How long have you guys owned the ZX300, and how many hours do you guys have? I've had mine for about 8 months now and currently at around 1600 hours of playback which at this point I'm pretty sure the sound hasn't been changing. Not like it matters though given it sounds splendid out of my Z7M2s

 

Had mine over a year, with probably a couple of thousand hours playback time.

 

Had mine since mid-January this year - about 10 months with almost 1,500 hours.. You are right - the sound is more stable now.. No change except after firmware 2.02 update..

 

the oem leather case is perfect and as high quality as the unit itself

 

Hello! So, the never ending search for the perfect first DAP (and only DAP for a looong while) continues. I was so sold on the FiiO M11 but, to be honest, I don't really need all the WiFi and apps and all those things since I have a phone that can do that. I just want something to play music! Nothing else, no pictures, no video, nothing, just a better sounding device to replace my iPod Video. I've been watching so many videos about the NW-ZX300 and reading so many reviews but I still have a few questions, hope you guys don't mind dropping them here.

1) The only difference between the NW-ZX300 and the A version is the internal storage? I've found the A version to be much much cheaper (unfortunately the store doesn't ship to Spain, I'll have to look for a solution on that, maybe I can ask my american friends to buy me one and then ship it to me...)
2) Is it true that I can use up to 1tb SD cards with it? I've consulted Sony's website and looks like it can handle up to 2tb, not something practical right now since the market is non existent for those cards yet. (link here: https://www.sonylatvija.com/electronics/support/articles/00171492)
3) I'm worried about how snappy the interface is with a ton of music. Granted, the speed of the device will be determined by the type of SD card used, I plan on using a very high capacity SD card Class 10 (minimum 512GBs) to hold all my music there. How good does the device work with tons of music on it?
4) Also, how easy is to change the battery? As far as I know, Sony doesn't sell battery replacements right now, but I'm wondering if it would be doable to open the device and if it's non invasive or complicated to do so if I end up needing to upgrade something like the battery. This doesn't bother me at all, but it's something I look forward since I plan on using this device for a very very long time (5 years minimum).

Thanks for the responses!

 

Hi Geisterfaust
1. As far as I know the only difference is the storage. It may come with the default language set to something other than English but it must be easy enough to change if it does, since plenty of people here have the A model and are happy with it.
3. I don't have a ton of music on mine yet and I don't use an SD card, but I haven't noticed any slowing down with increasing storage use.
4. I haven't seen any guides for how to change the battery yourself. Sony will do it for you, for a price, so I figured I'd worry about that when my battery wears out, if I haven't upgraded by then. There is an optimise battery setting, so turn that on if you buy a ZX300.

 

1. Correct, and that the A version also has different legal text on the back of it.
2. You can use any SD card that's out in existence right now. It supports SDXC, which is what it really means when it can handle up to 2TB. As long as your SD card is an SD, SDHC or SDXC (i.e. literally every SD card out there right now), it'll work. When SDUC becomes a thing, the ZX300 won't support it.
3. Works fine. Album art has a little bit of lag when scrolling through the album list (<1s); otherwise, no real impact.
4. Can't say unfortunately. I do know that Sony offers to swap out the battery for a rather reasonable fee though.

 

1) Yes you're correct, the only difference is the internal storage. Not sure if the 300A is actually still available - the only online stores I can see it listed on are the type of site I wouldn't buy from.
2) I'm not aware of any published limitation on SD card capacity. I currently have a 128Gb card with about 80Gb of data (about 760 albums/10,000 tracks).
3) I haven't experienced any lag on the device compared to when I first loaded up a couple of albums to try it out. I have seen users comments that they get some lag when scrolling through albums; I haven't experienced this but I do try to keep album artwork files as small as possible (and note that larger files may not display on the Sony) - I use Tag Editor to change out the artwork if necessary. Each time you power up the device (i.e. not from standby) it rebuilds the music database, so it's only really manipulating metadata rather than entire MP3 files. Sony state that the music database rebuild can take up to 10 minutes. With the card and files loaded as 2) above it used to take 3-4 minutes, but I I recently updated firmware to Version 2.02 and the rebuild time has come down to about 20 seconds. Obviously if you leave it in standby mode it's up and running instantly but I found that battery drain in standby was a bit excessive.
4)