Sony Walkman NWZ-A726

To begin with, the NWZ-A726 takes the shortest time (as tested by Tech2.0) to start up — a scant fraction of a second. At first I felt as if I was unable to successfully power the device off. The truth, however, is that as soon as you push the hold slider, the player has switched on! Not only that, it resumes playback from the point where you left off, whether it's music or video.

The menus are pretty lively and clean, which means there’s little chance you'll get lost. Music formats include MP3, AAC, WMA and L-PCM. It’s all drag-and-drop. The music player is simple and comes with a 5-band EQ, with presets.

For effect junkies there are the surround modes — Studio, Live, Club, Arena, Matrix and Karaoke. The speed makes experimenting with effects a lot of fun. Let’s just say: if you're able and willing, you should find the right settings within a minute of playing a track.

The video player supports only AVC (H.264/AVC), AAC-LC, and MPEG-4. In most cases you'll need to run your videos through the conversion software before you transfer. The performance is good though; it supports 30 FPS. There were no visible framing problems, and certainly no clipping issues.