Sony Ericsson W960i - Hit or Miss ?

With 8Gb of memory to hand the Sony Ericsson W960i should be a music lovers dream mobile - but is it any good ?

The W960i was barely ready to hit the shelves before Xmas when Nokia got in there first with their N81 8GB and N95 8GB models, so was the W960i washed up before it had begun ?

In a nutshell the answer i think is no. It falls between the two Nokia's pricewise and it's arguably perhaps the best looking handset of the bunch & it features a touch screen display that some love & others, well you guessed it. It's light at 119g and measures just 109 x 55 x 16 mm so it's not bulky to carry around and for all extents and purposes looks just like any ordinary mobile phone. Sony Ericsson have been producing the Walkman range for a few years now & the W960i is a far cry from it's big and chunky forbears such as the W900i.

Music is at the forefront with any Walkman model so let's take a look at what the W960i has to offer. It’s easy to manage the music , One click starts the Walkman music player. Now you can play, rewind, fast forward, equalise, shuffle tracks and create playlists - just like in any other digital music player. The Walkman player supports several file formats including MP3 and AAC. Another handy feature is disc2phone which enables you to transfer tracks straight from a music CD to your W960i - just drag and drop and you're done. The W960i also has an FM radio, just plug in your headphones and activate. With RDS, you see which station you’re tuned into and, sometimes, what song is playing.

Not just about music though, the W960i is a 3g handset that can stream video with ease, make and receive video calls and has an ‘always on’ Internet connection with high-speed data transfer. So now your mobile phone doubles as a media player for streaming movie trailers, the latest sports news, music videos and more. Choose the news and entertainment you want, when you want it - couldn't be simpler could it ?

Camera-wise it features a 3.2 megapixel, which again falls between the N81's 2Mp and the N95's impressive 5Mp. It has autofocus and 3x digital zoom to take crisp clear photo's and video for you to watch time and time again.

Using the menu with the Sony "jog dial" is a joy - can anyone remember the Sony Z5, the first phone to feature it ? It's simply a wheel on the top left corner of the phone that you scroll up or down and press in when you want to select - far better than joysticks and navi-keys and much under utilised i think. You can also use the stylus and touchscreen should you prefer but personally speaking the jog dial suffices - for me anyway. One criticism i do have (and it is the only one) is that the W960i i had on test could be quite unresponsive at times and suffered "lag" - not all the time, but enough at times to frustrate me. It may just be down to me using an early demo model, i'm not sure, but it wasn't enough to detract from the phones overall credibility.

Whether you choose to plump for the N81, N95 or W960i, you're really not going to go far wrong as they're all remarkable handsets. In all, if you take the plunge for the W960i and get it, i really don't think you'll be disappointed - 8/10 from me anyway !