Sony S630 Review

The Sony S630 is a new PMP – Portable Media Player by Sony in the mid budget range. At first look, it sports nothing radically different from the previous generation of Sony’s PMP range. It is an upgrade over the Sony S610 PMP which we reviewed earlier.

It competes with the the likes of the Creative Zen, Sansa Fuze as well as the iPod Nano. It packs a nice set of features at a decent price, with an cute design and great build quality. As expected of all Sony PMP’s, it sports great sound quality and battery life.

Sony S630 Specs:

• Dimensions: 42.9 x 89.5 x 7.5 mm
• Weight: 46 gms
• Storage: 8 GB, 16 GB
• Display: 2″ QVGA TFT LCD Display, 240 x 320 pixels
• Audio Formats: MP3, WMA, AAC
• Video Formats: MPEG 4, H.264
• PC Connectivity: MTP
• Other Features: FM Radio, Themes, SensMe, Podcasts, Digital Sound Enhancement Engine (DSEE), Virtualphones Technology (VPT)

Design:

The Sony S630 sports a stylish design and is probably one of the slimmest Sony PMPs. It measures around 42.9 x 89.5 x 7.5 mm in dimensions and weighs around 46 gms. The design is much better than the Sony S610 and the build quality is also improved. The design, in fact, closely resembles the Sony A820. It is composed mainly of aluminium and plastic which give it a great pricey feel. The build quality is robust and should easily last you for years.

Interface:

The Sony S630 sports a nice 2″ QVGA TFT LCD Display with a resolution of 240 x 320 pixels. The display quality is superb and adequately bright. The resulting video playback is also very fluid.

The buttons on the Sony S630 are exactly the same as on the Sony A820 with the exception that they are round instead of rectangular. Other than that, the placement and everything else is exactly the same. The display size has shrunk to accomodate the bigger buttons as well as factor in the dimension changes. The buttons offer decent feedback and a nice way to navigate around the interface. The interface is very similar to Sony’s earlier series, there is no significant change in that aspect.

Playback:

The Sony S630 has superb sound quality – typical Sony. It sports a range of sound enhancing technologies like Digital Sound Enhancement Engine (DSEE), Virtualphones Technology (VPT) etc. It comes bundled with the exceptional EX82 earphones which when coupled with the Sony S630, offer superlicious sound quality. They are one of the best bundled earphones. The S630 supports the following audio formats – MP3, WMA, AAC. The video playback is also nice. Video formats supported are MPEG 4, H.264. You can play videos at 320 x 240 resolutions. To transfer music to your S630, you can connect it to your Windows PC and use the MTP protocol.

Other Features:

The Sony S630 also has many other features like an FM Radio, Podcasts and customizable Theme support. It also has SensMe which can create custom playlists automatically based on your mood. The battery life is pretty good and lasts for about 40-50 hours. For normal users, that is about 4-5 days of moderate usage.

Pros:

• Nice Build Quality
• Great Sound Quality
• Long Battery Life

Cons:

• Not very different from its predecessors
• No MSC Support

Our Rating: 3.5 / 5.