If you long to block out the rest of the world like a teenager that’s a bit too fond of My Chemical Romance, then this music player from Sony might do the trick. It’s the first flash-based model to feature built-in noise-cancellation technology, which promises to stop the racket from the outside world intruding on your tunes.
At £80, it certainly isn’t one of the cheapest players around, especially as it only comes with 1GB of memory, but it does promise to match the innovative noise-cancellation feature with exceptional battery life and pristine sound quality.
Despite these plus points, however, the Sony NW-S703F never really manages to establish itself as anything other than a pretty average product. The player’s fiddly controls mean that we could never feel completely comfortable with it, and despite some useful recent improvements, Sony’s SonicStage software still remains way behind the likes of iTunes or even Windows Media Player in terms of usability and reliability.