Sony NW-ZX300A review: The mini black brick has it all: sound quality and battery life

As a company that is admired, SONY has always given the impression of being a black technology company that has gone astray and is forced to make profits. It is also a company that has struck a balance between product aesthetics and functionality. The wide range of product areas it has involved demonstrates SONY's leading position in innovation and promotion.

As long as you are well-off, it is easy to buy all the Apple products, but it may be impossible to buy all the Sony products in your lifetime. This shows the wide range of areas covered by SONY products, and indirectly shows the high prices of SONY products. The NW-ZX300A high-resolution digital music player released by SONY this time is well-known. When it was released, it had the reputation of sound quality comparable to black bricks and the price of domestic bricks. If you can't afford to listen to gold bricks or play black bricks, then you have to try domestic bricks. So, we reluctantly invited the SONY NW-ZX300A priced at 2,999 yuan. Let's take a look at what innovations SONY has made on the road of excellence?

The outer packaging of NW-ZX300A is also a pure white paper box packaging of technology type, which is not very innovative. On the back are some product parameter descriptions, which I will not go into detail one by one. It is built into a dark hard paper box, and only the English LOGO of SONY is printed on the entire packaging, which is simple and elegant.

After unpacking, I was overwhelmed by the thick instruction manual. In this regard, Dafa is as "generous" as ever. Interested friends can read it in detail. A WM-Port cable dedicated to SONY Walkman. Dafa is also unique. If the interface is changed one day, I guess everyone will still be a little uncomfortable. In the middle is our protagonist this time, SONY NW-ZX300A high-resolution digital music player.

NW-ZX300A uses a front panel made of fully covered frosted glass, which can reduce touch fingerprints and make touch operation smoother. With the curved frosted body and the top brushed metal panel, there is no sense of seams, which is natural and forms a unified style appearance, low-key and exquisite, fashionable and charming. The right panel integrates all the buttons needed for daily operation, which are clear at a glance.

The left cover of the body is printed with microSD, which supports microSD/microSDHC/microSDXC memory expansion. After opening the cover, you will find MADE IN MALAYSIA printed below the SD interface, indicating the place of production of the product.

At the bottom of the body are the WM-Port interface, model and serial number logos, and there is also a lanyard hole on the left side.

NW-ZX300A puts the 3.5mm headphone jack and 4.4mm balanced jack on the top of the body. The newly added 4.4mm balanced jack supports the playback of native DSD format (11.2 MHz)*3 through balanced output. The improvement of the sound field can give you the auditory enjoyment of being in a large theater. The improvement of driving force can separate the signals of the left and right channels, which makes it easier to drive the left and right units separately, making it easier to give full play to the potential of the headphones and improving the dynamic performance and detail display of the sound. The top and bottom of the body are brushed, and it feels delicate to the touch.

There is an NFC logo printed in the middle of the back of the NW-ZX300A. This time, SONY used a large piece of plastic treated with imitation leather as the back panel, which feels much more delicate than metal or pure plastic.

As a SONY Walkman product, everyone pays more attention to the sound quality of NW-ZX300A. In order to maximize the sound quality, NW-ZX300A is composed of various high-quality sound parts and high-quality sound circuit components, metal aluminum ultra-thin back plate, reduced resistance, and transparent sound quality, reduced battery protection circuit resistance and OFC material as the back plate, all in order to achieve clear and powerful bass, bringing users a perfect music feast.

Official data shows that NW-ZX300A can play up to 384kHz/32bit PCM-encoded music and 11.2MHz/1bit DSD-encoded files. We decided to use Vivaldi: The Four Seasons (11.2MHz DSD) from Sony's Selected HI-RES Music Store for testing. The high-resolution sound source brings an unparalleled sense of speed and weight, allowing people to clearly capture the subtle ornamentation produced by musical instruments. The dual-channel effect undoubtedly brings a perfect and excellent auditory experience.

The second song used for the test was "Drum Poem". The drum sounds in the song were mostly short and powerful with a distinct sense of rhythm. The clear and bright sound expression of NW-ZX300A and the powerful bass performance in the low frequency all demonstrated its transparency and fullness in sound.

In general, the NW-ZX300A has been greatly improved in appearance, performance and sound quality, especially the newly added balanced port, which has greatly improved the sound quality. If you are not a music enthusiast and just want to listen to songs, the NW-ZX300A is not very suitable because it cannot install popular music apps. If you are a fanatic of Dafa or have a pure pursuit of music, you can pay attention to this NW-ZX300A. This product has guaranteed quality and the price is still considerable. You should also shout Sony Dafa is good!

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.