Well, it's been one week, time for an update! I'll go the things I've found, comparing it to my old Sony s616 and my Cowon D2+ (which i no longer have). Here's a couple points I've found:
Playlists - the good: yes it supports playlists on the go. the bad: it only lets you add one song at a time. stupid? yes. I never use it, why even bother implementing it if you're not going to do it right! Cowon and ipod have some of the best on the go playlist generating, i used it a bit on both my ipod and my old d2.
The interface - although it's pretty, high-res and transitions are smooth, it is a tiny bit slower than the s616 to navigate. i take the good with the bad, it's still very nice. Album art just looks awesome, and finding music is quick and easy!
Random - I always use the random "shuffle all" functions on my mp3 players. On the old s616, if you hit random and found something you like, you could just press down a couple of times and then play everything by that artist or album. The removed that function from this new interface, which is a shame. The intelligent shuffle function is the thing that makes this player, it is how i listen to music every day. It's very intuitive, and the "morning, daytime, evening, night" function is fricken awesome!
Battery life - Amazing. I didn't charge it for an entire week and it was only down to half bars. Very similar to my s616 in terms of life, it keeps going and going. I estimate I had it running for about 30 hours through that week. A lot better than my old Cowon D2+.
Sound quality - I did a couple more side-by-sides with my old s616 and my ipod classic. It's nearly identical to my s616 in terms of tone, but with a clearer bottom end and slightly more detailed top end. But only marginally. The s616 is slightly warmer. Still has that great Sony sound. I have a feeling it doesn't play nice with the M50s because they have quite a V shaped tone to them and so does the Sony, meaning the highs and lows get boosted a little too much. The bundled headphones are quite fun and amazing for stock buds. Plus they noise cancel. It's summer here, and the cicadas just kicked in, the headphones cancel them completely, which has made my day better
They can drive my DT880 to listenable volume at about 25/30 volume, but it's a bit floppy.
Is this player good value? A resounding yes for AU$199, it can't be beaten. I've got a LOD on the way, so I'm looking forward to that. Add proper playlisting, maybe a memory card slot and gapless and you might have the greatest player ever...