When almost everyone else has a digital audio player that also does video, it is only a matter of time before Sony comes up with one as well. While it doesn't have the large screen you find on personal video players, the fact that the Japanese offering is just a little larger than the iPod nano is a big plus.

Holding the NW-A800 in our hands, you get the feeling its product photos don't do it justice. They make it look like it has the same surface as the A1000, a glossy one that invites fingerprints. The A800 is also of plastic but features a matte finish, which gives the device a solid feel in the palm, less the greasy prints. The positions of the front buttons remain the same--one five-way navigator along with the Option and Back buttons on the right. The screen is, of course, much larger, a 2-inch, 240 x 320 one that can be adjusted along five levels of brightness.

Interface-wise, the main menu looks very much like what you will see in current Sony Ericsson mobile phones. That means a grid layout with icons that light up when they are selected. Navigation feels snappy throughout, though we will need to test that further after storing more music files on the player. An initial search feature lets you type in one letter, after which it lists the titles that start with it. As with previous Walkman audio players, music has to be transferred using the SonicStage software.

The main distinguishing feature of the A800 is definitely its video playback capabilities. The video codecs supported are Advanced Video Coding (AVC) baseline profile and MPEG-4, the same ones that can be used on the Sony PSP. If you have video files already using those codecs, they can be copied straight into the A800 for viewing. However, other common codecs like WMV and DivX will not be directly usable on the A800. To solve that problem, Sony will be bundling Image Converter 3 with this Walkman. It is the first Walkman device to get this software, which by the way is commonly used with Sony VAIOs and the PSP. It allows the conversion of video files that can be viewed on the PC to a format compatible with the A800.

Due to the portrait orientation of the screen, the A800 when held upright is not the best way to watch videos, but it can be reoriented horizontally. The few trailers we watched on this 2-inch screen looked sharp, but being so small, watching long television programs or full movies might be uncomfortable.

With its knock-out form factor and variety of colors, the A800 looks promising already. The small display may not be suitable for anything more than just short viewing spurts, but that's exactly the point for many users--teensy bits of entertainment.