Sony NWZ-S544 Screen Flicker

[Mark01]

Hello all.
Just bought a NWZ-S544 .It's about seven days old.
I have it all loaded with about 4GB of music , pictures and video,everything works great and the SQ is fantastic.

Here is the problem when I turn it on after being off for a couple of hours the whole screen flickers back and forth,
and it's a very noticable pulsating flicker of the screen lasting about a minute or two until the unit warms up and then the flicker goes away.I'm beginning to get concererd and thinking of either getting an exchange for another NWZ-S544 or upgrading to a NWZ-S545.

Can any other NWZ owner tell me if they get a screen flicker or is mine an isolated problem?

[CrowdAds]

[MattMc3]

My NWZ-S545 (16GB) does the same thing. I don't know if I should be concerned or not. Mine only happens during the "building library" bootup phase. Maybe 5-10 seconds tops. Once the player is fully "on" the flickr goes away. I've never had a problem with my screen other than the cold-boot flicker. I've had my S545 approximately 4 months and it's done it since the very first time I turned it on. Your post is the first that I can recall about anyone asking about the S54x flicker, so I don't know if we have defective units or if nobody is asking about it.

Matt

[Mark01]

Yes,i've searched around and can't find any other users that have this problem also.
Mine seems a little more severe than your as mine flickers well after the bootup ,so if i'm playing a song the whole screen is flickering.

I'm wondering what brightness level you have set, mine is set at 3.
I just noticed something strange when I tuned on my unit after being off for the last hour.It flickers if set on brightness level 3 but if the setting is bumped up to 4 the flicker goes away and if I set it back to 3 the flicker starts again..kind of strange.

[MattMc3]

Yours definitely sounds worse. I think I'd return it if I were you and try another one. I generally keep my brightness set at 2-3 and can't remember ever turning it up to 4-5. I haven't noticed my brightness settings affecting my screen's flicker. This week I've had it set at 1 and I still get the flicker at startup.

I might contact Sony support and see what they say. My waranty card says 1-year parts and 90-days labor. I'm over the 90-day mark but I won't pay anything to have it fixed. I can live with it. I imagine a couple hours of labor would be close to the purchase price.

Matt

[nature]

I have the same exact unit and 2 weeks after I bought it it started flickering and sometimes it was really bad, but unfortunately by the time i found time to go to best buy i noticed that the flickering had stopped and no matter what i did it didn't reappear at all. until a week ago which ofcourse i couldn't return it anymore. So 2 days ago i charged my unit almost fully and used it a little. yesturday when i tried to turn it on the Sony page would only briefly show up and it disappeared, i tried reseting, connecting it to the computer which didn't recognize the device and finally when i try it now it's totally dead. it doesn't work at all. What a waste of money, i should've bought ipod instead.
Return it and buy another good mp3 player. coz even if it works for awhile i'm sure it is gonna end up dead after some use. I guess sony didn't do a good job of their mp3 players.
I'm soo mad at them right now

[MattMc3]

I looked into Sony's repair program a little and came up with this info (for the NWZ-S545). It has a 1-year parts warranty and a 90-day labor warranty.

If your Walkman is:

Less than 90 days old: If your Walkman is less than 30 days old you will get a new one. If it's between 30-90 days old you will get a refurbished one. No charges (shipping?) since parts and labor are under warranty.

Over 90 days old but less than 1 year old: $29 flat-rate "labor" fee plus you pay to ship the Walkman to Sony. They will send you a refurbished unit. If Sony determines that what is wrong with the Walkman isn't covered under warranty then they will give you a repair quote prior to performing any repairs on the Walkman. If you have it repaired, they pay return shipping. If you choose not to have it repaired, you pay return shipping.

Over 1 year: Warranty expired.

So, I guess the moral of the story is to return it to the store within the store's return policy if you can.

Matt

[Marvin the Martian]

Originally Posted by Mark01

Yes,i've searched around and can't find any other users that have this problem also.
Mine seems a little more severe than your as mine flickers well after the bootup ,so if i'm playing a song the whole screen is flickering.

I'm wondering what brightness level you have set, mine is set at 3.
I just noticed something strange when I tuned on my unit after being off for the last hour.It flickers if set on brightness level 3 but if the setting is bumped up to 4 the flicker goes away and if I set it back to 3 the flicker starts again..kind of strange.

I don't seem to notice any flicker on my S545, at startup or after. My brightness is at 1...since it's wintertime, it's tucked away in my pocket if I'm outside, so no need to turn it brighter, and I don't watch videos on it.

[Marvin the Martian]

I just noticed the flicker. The player had been off for about 10 hours, and it flickered for about two seconds while the create library was going. The battery was down to one bar out of four, which is lower than I usually run it.

I'm not terribly concerned about it, to be honest....but I'll keep an eye on it from now on.