Sony Net MD Walkman MZ-NE410 Personal MiniDisc Player

Pros: Small, cheap, sound quality, portability, light weight, cheap media, tremendous battery life
Cons: Software, hard to diddle with while running, display dark, cheapo headphones, no bullet or radio

A Little Background If you know all about MD already, skip this first section. MD was bo ...

Pros: No skip, decent amount of space, CD music straight to player - no middleman!
Cons: So-so headphones, software can be hard to navigate

While I was still listening to my walkman and fighting skippage while jogging, my dad finally decided it was time to get himself an MP3 player. He came up with this, the Sony Net MD Walkman. MD stands for MiniDisc. Ok, close, but no cigar. All right, ...

Pros: Small, quite skip-proof, long battery life.
Cons: Supporting software, no backlight, DRM limitations, lack of actual MP3 support, Sony's attitude...

Sony’s MiniDisc (MD) format was, at one time, almost a good idea. The now largely orphaned format was brought about ten years after the advent of the Compact Disc (CD) format and was touted as a better, smaller replacement for the cassette tape. The ...

Pros: Great sound quality; solid construction.
Cons: Atrocious software; long song transfer times; poor ergonomics.

I was a complete newcomer to minidisks when I bought Sony's MZ-NE410 minidisk player. I was looking for an MP3 player or an MP3 player replacement, and the minidisk player attracted me because it seemed to have all the features I was looking for: - ...

Pros: Small, lightweight, good battery life, easy to use, great media, great sound
Cons: Small Screen, Included Headphones are Cheap, Software SUCKS

Well, I should first start out by telling you that I am a Sony fan, and that is what influenced me into buying this in the first place. After having this device for about a week and using it at work, I have found this to be a great purchase. I know ...

Pros: CHEAP AND UH, CHEAP
Cons: DID I MENTION CHEAP?

Let me start off by saying I love the Minidisc. As such I jumped at the opportunity to get one for under $100 (brand new and it wasn’t those reconditioned ones typically found all over eBay). I already had many years of enjoyment and reliability with ...

Pros: High Storage 5HOURS MUSIC, Battery life, Ease of software
Cons: Hard to see display in the dark Cheap Headphones

I recently purchased this MD Player, and when I tried it for the first time, I was amazed at how much music this little baby can hold! A Single MD holds 5HOURS of music, sony says this is 600Tracks of about 5minutes each |NOT TRUE! I say mostly about ...

Pros: Software easy to use
Cons: Bulky, Battery Life too short, design

This was my first MD player and I was very excited to finally own one. The software that came with the player was very easy to use, drag and drop...pretty basic. What I didn't like was you were only able to copy a song 3 times onto MD. Once it was copied ...

Pros: Compact Size,Cheap Media,High Quality Sound,Long Battery Life, Equalizer
Cons: No Backlite,Small Display, No Remote, No DC input, Major = Software Sucks Big Time

First of all, The PLAYER is excellent it's amazing, so small sounds, so good.It looks really good bl ...

Pros: Removable discs, not limited by memory size, long battery life.
Cons: Software SUCKS, WILL NOT COPY MP3's, regardless of the advertising claims.

I bought this recorder/player at Sam's Club at a cost of $118.00. I was impressed with the fact that I could put up to 5 hours of music onto a single disc. Also liked the fact that a single battery will last for (something like) 56 hours.

...

Pros: Looooong battery life, compact size, cheap media price, durable
Cons: Case not included, a bullet remote would have been nice

I bought this as a replacement for a RCA Lyra 2 MP3 player. I must say after four months and five ba ...

Pros: Cheap media, excellent sound quality, small size, sturdy
Cons: No backlit display, no radio, no recording from multiple sources

Well, I won't bore you with all the technical details. The sound quality is excellent. The storage media is cheap, reusable and compact. I've had this for about a year. I like the CD burning software; it's very simple to use. I'm afraid I'll have to ...

Pros: Cheap, AWESOME battery life, has it's own little style to it
Cons: THE INITIAL SOFTWARE SUCKS! NO BACK LIGHT EITHER!

It's my first MD and have don't have many complaints. I decided to get this after being fed up with having to walk around with a CD player and a bunch of CDs. The battery life is really awesome, so if you actually care, max it out with a rechargeable ...

Pros: Affordable, great quality in sound, small in size, cheap MD, good looking
Cons: Not the same amount of memory of iPod

I bought my Sony NetMD in order to remplace my older MP3 player, which by that time did't work. The price was a big influencer in my buy, it is so affordable, the price is just, for less than $200.00 I get the NetMD and all the car kit. And for $2.00 ...

Pros: long battery life, sound quality, cost of media, never skips
Cons: no belt clip, slightly small screen

If you are deciding whether to get an MP3 player or a minidisc player, looking at the Sony MiniDisc players should make it easy to make your decision. This MD player outpreforms most equally or greater priced MP3 players in 3 areas. Sound quality, cost...

Pros: Battery Life,No skipping,software,portability, even smaller when you open it.
Cons: no clip on the unit(separate armband)small display shows text, track number

Hello to everyone reading this, I am writing this article to tell people that this units software is good I have just gotten done using it for the first time without instructions and everything ripped on the Minidisk perfect. I haven't messed with ...

Pros: Sound, battery life, portability, price
Cons: The supplied software sonicstage, USB 1.1 (not highspeed)

Mini disc players are the future of music technology. they are getting very popular nowadays. The good thing is that you don't have to buy expensive memory cards, the minidiscs are like 3-4 bucks CDN (that's pretty cheap). First of all, this minidisc ...

Pros: Battery, Very compact,sturdy and stylish, Great Sound, Very EASY to use
Cons: ATRAC3, ATRAC3, ATRAC3, THIS is the only CON

Has everything you can want in a portable player. I have been using MD's since I was 15 and now 7 years later i still love them. I must admit that I got rid of them for a while because who really wants to record in live time??? Spend 1 hour to record 1 ho ...

Pros: Cheap, durable media. Great sound and portability.
Cons: Must use provided software. Sometimes the battery runs low while burning = Error.

*** UPDATED SECTION *** Ok, now that I've familiarized myself with the product, I like it much better. The software that comes with the player (version 1.5 I think) makes you "check in" and "check out" your songs so that you cannot create more than 3 ...

Pros: Battery Life, Size, Sound, Skip Proof
Cons: No case or clip, Headphones

I bought the N410 as a compliment to my other Sony MD player that is not Net/Computer capable (MZ-R5 ...

Pros: Everything but the software.
Cons: Software.

Worthless software for an incredible player. Okay, I remember when these came out last year, sounded like a great product. I was going to buy one, and was reading here and on other review sites how bad the software was for this. I thought to myself ...

Pros: Low cost, high quality
Cons: Download software (SonicStage) is ATROCIOUS. Hard to use and ridiculous limitations

I got my unit at for a good price (it came with 6 disks). It works well and is of a good quality. ...

Pros: 55 hours battery life, great sound, beat around durable.
Cons: terrible software, poor design, crappy headphones.

I grabbed this Sony NetMD MZ-NE410 a couple of years ago I can't believe it still works because I put this MD in some serious head trauma, I must have dropped it over fifty times just a small dent and It's good to go again. The battery life is amazing ...

Pros: Lots of Storage Space, fairly small in size, battery life is supposed to be excellent
Cons: Virtually no way of using with a Mac

I have been shopping for a music playing device to take to the gym for a while and I finally decided ...

Pros: Price, features
Cons: Doesn't work

Product was defective directly out of package. Sony tech support insisted that I had installed softw ...

Pros: doesn't skip, affordable
Cons: somewhat bulky compared to other MD players

I bought this at the Sony Outlet store in Wrentham. I can't afford the ipods so I went for something cheap. It costs $99 at stores but at the outlets, I got it for $46. It came with headphone, one empty mini disc and MDburner CD software. The battery life is very good and uses one AA battery. I don't have to recharge it till a week later. The only negative thing I have to say about this player is that it only fits 36 songs. I normally have to carry a few MDs so I can switch.


Product Details
Key Features
Recordable Recordable

Built-in Equalizer No

Remote Control No

Headphones Yes

Backlit Display No
Playback Features
Random Play Yes

2x Playback Yes
Included Features
Editing Tools Yes

Disc Track Naming Yes

Auto Track Mark No

Manual Track Marking No

Synchronized No

Jog Dial Yes

Timer No

Bass Boosting No

Sampling Rate Converter Yes

Anti Skip Buffer G-Protection By Sony
Power Supply
Battery Life 42 hrs.

Power Source Battery, AC Adapter
Included Accessories
Optical Cable Included No

Digital Link Cable Without Digital Link Cable
Miscellaneous
MPN mz-ne410

Pros: Size,weight,files navigation,price :)
Cons: software!!,no optical input,small display

Terrible USB recording. Good for lazy users, but not enough for great sound maniacs (as me :). No optical :( I prefer recording in SP level from my CD by optical cable, but I can`t so I want to change it for N510. Close price, bigger display and of course... optical line-in :)

Pros: Bass Boost, Repeat, Shuffle, Battery Meter, Great Sound Quality
Cons: None

The Sony MZ-NE410 Minidisc player is a great audio device for anyone in love with music (figurativly speaking of course). Features include Bass boost, Repeat (the minidisc or one track), and Shuffle. This Minidisc player can get up to 50 hours of playback off of one double "A" (AA) Battery.
The disc will not skip, however, when you get down to the last of the batterys life, the sound quality decreases by the minute. Sony did include a battery meter, however, it is not very accurate.

Pros: Very cost efficient: runs all year on one battery, disks can hold 4 CD's!!
Cons: Software is idiotic, designed with licensing copyright limitations in mind, unit wont let you delete(!)songs

Basically, i would rate this product higher than any mid end memorychip MP3 player in terms of capacity and moneys spend on batteries, unless you are a petite lady and really want a microscopic unit to cary in the pocket of your bellbottoms. You need to download 3rd party sofware(SimplerMD or use RealAudio's writing plug-in) to write songs to NetDisk, because SonicStage soft included is "very pretty" but will pizz you off when you simply want to select a few songs from this CD and a few from another and a couple of MP3s from your HDD. Deleting old songs from your disk is called("check out"- friggin idiotic!). Coz it will only let you copy the song 3 times to your disk. After that you have to pull it and convert it to its native compressed format(very good compression/quality ratio-cant complain though, I was impressed)

Pros: Good sound and very long battery life
Cons: The only con is that the Display doesn't light up

Good quality portable mini disc player. Good sound and High quality. Only disadvantage is I don't know how many drops it can take so buying a cheap case is a good idea. Only interfaces through USB unlike the G-shock which can burn off of a CD player as well. Good value and it never skips.

Pros: Nice and small, fairly easy to use. Better than CD player for not skipping.
Cons: Menus can be a bit confusing. Also, the software is absolutely terrible.

In general I've been fairly satisfied with the MD player. It's nice and small, and never skips, so it's perfect for running/exercising. A lot of music can be fit onto a single disc, assuming the software doesn't crap out after the first couple of songs.
I honestly haven't come across such poor recording software before in my life. At times it seems to work fine, and I can fit as much as 5 albums on a single minidisc. This is fairly rare, as the rest of the time it stops after recording only 5 or 6 tracks, and says the disc is full. The only was to keep recording it to close the software, unplug the MD player, take out the disc, put it back in, and start over. Needless to say, this is a huge pain as it happens 80% of the time I try to record.
If I'd known how horrible the software was, I wouldn't have wasted my money on this MD player.

Pros: Simple burner works for copying your CD collection.
Cons: MP3 software is useless, Not durable

In theory the Net MD is a great idea unfortunately the inability to move mp3 files easily means that the product does not do what it is advertised to do. If you want to use the MD’s Simple Burner software to store your CD collection this unit will work. All mp3 files must be converted to atrac format, double your storage double your headache! Checked in and out files more than 3 time and you violate the rules, then you must erase the file and reload it, it’s all just a pain.
I dropped my Net Md just passed the 90 day warranty the case cracked and the disc erased and shortly there after the MD was toast, Sony wanted 85 dollars to do an out of warranty repair.
I have long been a Sony fan but this is it for me I will buy a Rio and never another Sony product, what a frustrating experience. Stay away from Sony.

Pros: Tiny and versatile-you don't need a separate burner, Uses efficient music format (Atrac3)
Cons: Slow records, on smallest-size file there is noticeable hiss in the background

Even though it holds less music per MiniDisc than an MP3 CD player does per CD, the small size makes up for it. I broke 2 MP3 CD players in 5 mos., and I've had this a year and nary a scratch. I just bought a 20 GB MP3 jukebox because my music collection began to exceed the amount of minidiscs I could find space for. Even though I could just re-burn the minidiscs, it takes about 25 minutes to fill one up at the medium-quality compression setting and there is no optical input for recording from sources other than computers. SonicStage (the included recording program) is one of the most refined and appealing music-management programs out there, but the copyright protection built in is almost nonsensical. You can't import music on a different computer than the one you recorded it on, which created a real problem for me (I switch between a notebook for traveling and a desktop at my office)

Pros: Fair price, great media cost/size ration, compactness
Cons: Stupid simplicity, long pre-buffers, slow but phenomanal software

Wow is all I can say. For less than 110 dollars (now, that is) you get such a great, portable device. Man...anyway, out of the box, you MUST take the small size into account. Thicker, yes, but half the dimensions of your average MP3-CD (no way you can compare this to a regular CD player...). The interface is simpler than a Slipknot album. Volume, play/pause,stop,next,previous (double as frwd/bkwd in menus). This works, given customizability includes EQ (1 of THREE settings) and display type. Now, durability. You're MD will take a fair beating, to NO (it's an enclosed floppy in a harder case) consequence to the MDs and little to the player. What happened to mine? Out of warranty, I accidentally broke my previous button. It works, with appropriate pressure, but not the same. It'd cost Sony 30 bucks to even look at it, so.... All in all, if you don't need the fanciness/size of even a mini-HD player, yet you want up to ~40 songs on you at once (per disk), MD players are for you.

Pros: Easy to use, skip free and the disks hold 5 hrs in lp4 mode.
Cons: Have to have a computer to load and unload longs.

This is my first adventure into Minidisc and since most players are flash memory I thought that I might be buying a BetaMax machine. It still could go away but probably not in the lifetime of this player. I have read several reviews about the software and have to agree that it isn't the best, but is average. I was concerned that my downloaded files with DRM (digital rights management) wouldn't convert to atrac, but solved it easily by making a redbook CD and then used the Sony Simple Burner to copy the songs to the 410. All told, I like this player and I am looking forward to using it while snowboarding this winter.

Pros: Phenomanal Battery Life, good sound, good skip protection
Cons: no native mp3 playing, needs thinner case

Great little personal audio device. I bought mine from Circuit city for $79 in March'04. I really have enjoyed using it while walking to work (25 minutes each way). I can go a week or more on one AA battery. It took a while to copy my mp3s over to the ATRAC format, which was kinda silly.
If I could change *ONE* thing, I'd hack the firmware to play mp3s natively. Why doe it not play MP3 natively? Are you listening Sony? MD *NEEDS* this to survive? MD is a great format, I don't know why it has been handicapped by Sony. Such an articial limitation. I plan on purchasing more MD players in the future, NetMD is a great direction to take things in. I'm looking forward to the HiMD players, 1gb is a good start.

Pros: Great Software and Minidisk is a great alternitive to CDs
Cons: Keypad doesnt work!

Look it was nice to be able to put several cds on one tiny thing but it doesnt work when you pres the forward button it goes backwards and turns the volume down and the same thing for pressing the backwords so going forward doesnt work... This problem was present for some of my freinds minidisks too...

The Software did work nice though...

Pros: Battery Life, Cheap, Simple, USB, Extended Play Modes
Cons: Display size, Sometimes difficult to read, software can be confusing until fully learned

I purchased this MD player to see what the MD hype was all about. After careful consideration I chose Sony's cheapest, lowest-end model. Primarily, I need something to make MD's so that I can eventually upgrade to MD in my car.

This model is nice because it has a USB computer interface, and extended battery life. I can't believe how long batteries last in these MD players. It's also very simple to use.

Turns out the sound quality is exceptional in the SP mode, and also good in the LP2 mode. In LP4 mode, the mode which allows you to put approx 5 hours on a single MD, it looses a little top end fidelity, however, still decent enough to listen to.

The software is sorta tough to figure out...but it works. I would recommend this to anyone that wants to try MD for the first time, or anyone that needs a cheap way to get music onto their MD's.

The major drawback is that you can ONLY put music on MD's via USB...no optical inputs or otherwise. The display is also smaller than it needs to be, and is sometimes hard to read because of lighting.

Pros: Size, battery life, cheap discs, songs can be added and deleted from the discs.
Cons: Software software software, no AC power input, recording speed.

I was searching for something that would allow me to listen to music while running and would not skip. Being new to all this I thought that an MP3 player was the answer until a helpful clerk suggested a minidisc. After doing a little research and some price checking I realized that for a number of reasons a minidisc was the way to go.

I am by no means a techie but I know what I like and I like the fact that I can record several discs for running and swap them as I choose and I love that I can add and remove songs from the disc without having to start from scratch.

What I don't like is the Sony software so I tried RealOne(not a fave either) and found that it works much better for me.

As an added bonus I got the arm band free with the purchase at the disc and a 10% discount for signing up for the store's credit card.

All in all this was the right choice at the right price for me and made better with a couple of bonuses.