When it comes to Sony product names, the B stands for Basic, so don’t expect anything groundbreaking from the Sony Walkman NWZ-B153 MP3 player.

The B153 is one of those basic USB-style devices that have been around since the dawn of MP3 players. They don’t tend to offer a raft of features, but are valuable mainly because of their simplicity. Such is life with the B153 - you don’t need any special software installed on your computer to operate it, you can simply drag and drop your tracks straight onto the drive, as you would any USB device. Alternatively, you can load them through Windows Media Player - the advantage of this being that you can create playlists.

It’s a small player, so Sony has minimised the number of buttons on the exterior. It comes equipped with a jog dial plus play/pause button. There’s also a small LCD screen which displays the four icons of the home screen (Voice, Music Library, FM radio, Settings). As mentioned above, beyond this, features are minimal, though one noteworthy inclusion is Quick Charge, which allows you to connect the player for just three minutes to get around 1.5 hours of playback.

As you’d expect from a Walkman-branded player, audio quality is good, especially for the price. However the bundled earphones are not of great quality.

The Sony Walkman NWZ-B153 is available now for $89 for the 4GB model. It comes in blue, pink, red or black.

Buy cheap Sony MP3 player on sale in Australia

By Caroline Warnes