Update: if you need to copy videos to your device with Linux, follow my transcoding howto post.
So I ended up having to purchase a new portable media player. I’d been used to my aged Samsung YP-Z MP3 player for a while with a broken screen; memorising the various menu selections to get where I needed to.
Sony have a mixed history with portable media — from MiniDisc to their Sonicstage software — so I was skeptical about choosing something from them again.
In short, the Sony NWZ-X1060 (X series) portable media player is outstanding. The OLED 3″ screen is stunning and vidid and the sound quality is unbelievable. I have Denon C751 earphones and combined with the X series I am hearing new things in tracks I’ve listened to for a while. It’s all very, very impressive.
The touch screen is great too. It’s quick, forgiving, responsive and very thumb friendly. If you’re unsure about buying it: drop your doubts and go purchase it. I got the 32 GB version and I’m really happy.
Enough of the propoganda though, there’s a point to this post. I’m an avid fan of Linux and this was my main concern when purchasing anything like this. “Will it work on Linux?!”.
In short, yes it works with Linux. It will mount just like any other mass-storage device. Good job Sony!
There are some caveats: mass copying can be a little flaky and I haven’t found anything to transcode to the WMV + Codec it requires for video (though I’ve only been look a day as of writing this).
I’ll keep looking for something that will work with regards to transcoding video.
3 Comments
Hi,
Thanks for that post, it was what finally made me order the X walkman and I’m very happy with it. Previously had other Sony players but they all required Sonic Stage so it’s very liberating not having to use other people’s computers when I want to transfer music to my player.
What I wanted to know is whether you found a way to create playlists for the device? I’m slightly disappointed that Sony dropped their on-the-fly playlists creation. Oh well, you can’t have it all I guess…
Hi,
I was annoyed about the lack of dynamic playlists. Unfortunately it doesn’t get much better with ordinary playlists – you *have* to use Windows Media Player to create them, as it only supports some bizarre WMP-only playlist format.
Time to fire up that VM…
Sony can be very frustrating. They always seem to be doing one step forward and one step backwards at the same time. They got rid of SonicStage and we all have to pay the price of losing gapless playing. They make their players Linux enabled (even if they don’t admit it) but remove on the fly playlists.
To me the hassle is too big to care about playlists, but perhaps you can try running WMP in wine rather than in a virtual machine, should at least be quicker.
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