Sony Ericsson Walkman W595 music phone

The Walkman Player 3.0 software delivers a fine mobile music experience. The user interface is funky but straightforward to use and smooth to navigate. Within the media player options are the usual extensive mid-tier Walkman categories: albums, artists, tracks, playlists, genres, years, podcasts and audio books. You also get SensMe, the mood- and tempo-defined playlists you can compile from tracks copied from a PC, provided they have previously been assigned this information using Sony Ericsson’s supplied Media Manager software.

The player itself works extremely well. Cover art is supported and the auto-flip screen works here too. Sound quality is extremely high for a mobile phone – Sony Ericsson does this music phone stuff very well.

Whether the slider’s up or down, handling is nicely balanced

The supplied earphones are mid-range grade, so are better than average rather than of stunning quality. Still, sound reproduction is satisfyingly rich and detailed. While the two-part headset plugs into the phone using an unwieldy proprietary all-purpose connector on the side rather than top, the headset has not one but two 3.5mm sockets midway. This splitter provides the option not only of adding your own higher quality headphones, but also of allowing a friend to listen in too.

You can also listen using the loudspeaker, which is a typically tinny when cranked up, but is capable of hitting surprisingly high volume levels.

To go with the basic 40MB of internal user memory, there’s a 2GB Memory Stick Micro card supplied. Cards up to 8GB are supported if you want to expand your music collection. The card slot is under a rather flimsy back panel cover, but unless you’re constantly swapping, this shouldn’t be much of an issue.

Tune-loading is similar to other recent Walkman phones – using the supplied USB cable and Media Manager software, you can transfer tunes from a PC, or you can simply drag and drop in mass-storage mode. Alternatively, you can slip in a pre-loaded memory card or send songs over Bluetooth.