Sony Ericsson W200i Review

In a nutshell: A budget Walkman phone, offering excellent value for money. For well under £100 you get a smart-looking lightweight phone with a Walkman music player, stereo headset, a memory card big enough to store 30+ songs and a slot for a bigger card. You also get an FM radio and a basic camera. The one thing that we don't like is the wobbly joystick. Available in a choice of black, white or pink.
Best buy: £19.95 on Pay as you Go from Dialaphone (Black or Pink).

The W200i brings the massively successful Walkman range of phones within reach of the budget consumer for the first time. Available in black or white, the W200i is a lightweight phone with a classic design, similar to its big brother, the high-end W810i. The W200i has a neat keypad with good-sized keys, although it does use a joystick instead of a navigation key, which we would have preferred. The W200i offers a lot for your money: a camera, a music player, an FM radio, Java games and expandable memory, and looks set to be a winner.

The music player is based on the excellent Walkman player found in Sony Ericsson's top-of-the-range handsets, such as the W810i. This is a fully featured music player that can handle playlists and is very easy to use. It incorporates Sony Ericsson's MegaBass™ feature that boosts the bass tones in your music. The audio quality is excellent, especially with the stereo headset supplied. The PlayNow™ feature enables you to browse and download top-selling premium ringtones on your phone (you have to pay for any ringtones that you download). In addition to the music player, there's also a useful built-in FM radio.

The W200i is supplied with a stereo handsfree headset, a 128 Mbyte memory card (enough to store around 32 songs) and software for ripping music from CD's and transferring music from your PC to your phone. You can expand the memory to a maximum of 2 Gybtes by buying a larger memory card (Memory Stick Micro™ format). It's easy to transfer music from your PC to your phone using the USB connection, which supports drag-and-drop data transfer. Likewise, transferring photos or videos from your phone back to your PC is straightforward. The W200i also supports an infrared connection, but not Bluetooth - with a phone this cheap there have to be some compromises!

As already mentioned, the W200i has a camera, but don't expect much from this. At just 0.3 megapixels, this is a very basic camera, useful for taking fun snaps only. The LCD display is also very basic, being of CSTN-type and low resolution. This makes it quite hard to read in sunlight. However, for the price this is typical.

The W200i is a recommended phone for anyone looking for a music-playing phone in the under-£100 price range. If you have a little more to spend, you might consider the Sony Ericsson W300i which has a better screen and a Bluetooth wireless connection in a clamshell design.

Features of the Sony Ericsson W200i include:

* VGA camera (0.3 megapixels) with 4x digital zoom
* Video camera
* Display: CSTN, 128 x 160 pixels
* Media player (plays music and video)
* FM radio
* Polyphonic ringtones / MP3 ringtones
* Speakerphone
* Sound recorder
* Messaging: SMS, MMS, email
* 3D Java games
* Animated wallpaper
* Web browser, RSS feeds
* Personal organiser functions
* Memory: 27 Mbytes plus Memory Stick Micro™ (M2™) support
* Connectivity: USB mass storage, Infrared
* Flight mode
* Vibration alert
* Triband
* Size: 101 x 44 x 18 mm
* Weight: 85g
* Talktime: 7 hours
* Battery standby: 300 hours
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