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Sony Music

New Sony Walkman Music Players Feature Stunning Good Looks, Android 12 (arstechnica.com) 48

Posted by BeauHD from the blast-from-the-past dept.
Sony has a pair of new Android Walkmans out, the NW-A300 and NW-ZX700. Ars Technica reports: We'll start with the most consumer-friendly of the two, the NW-A300. This basic design debuted in 2019 with the NW-A105, but that shipped with Android 9. This is an upgraded version of that device with a less-ancient version of Android, a new SoC, and a scalloped back design. In Sony's home of Japan, the 32GB version is 46,000 yen (about $360), while in Europe, it's 399 euro (about $430). The NW-A300 is a tiny little device that measures 56.6x98.5x12 mm, so pretty close to a deck of playing cards. [...] The front is dominated by a 3.6-inch, 60 Hz, 1280x720 touchscreen LCD. There's 32GB of storage, and the device supports Wi-Fi 802.11AC and Bluetooth 5. That's about all Sony wants to talk about for official specs. It touts "longer battery life" but won't say how big the battery is, promising only "36 hours* of 44.1 KHz FLAC playback, up to 32 hours* of 96 KHz FLAC High-Resolution Audio playback." Presumably, that's all with the screen off. [...] This is a music player, so of course, there's a headphone jack on the bottom of the unit. You'll also find a spot for a lanyard, a speedy USB-C 3.2 Gen1 port for quick music transfers, and a MicroSD slot for storing all your music. Buttons along the side of the device also give you every music control you could want, like a hold switch, previous, play/pause, next, volume controls, and power.

There's another new Sony Walkman, the NW-ZX700. It's 104,500 yen ($818) in Japan, and while that sounds like a lot for a portable music player, it's actually a relative bargain compared to the "Signature Series" NW-WM1ZM2, which goes for an eye-popping $3,700 thanks to audiophile hocus-pocus like a "gold plated, oxygen-free, copper body." Anyway, back to this $800 model. Unlike regular phone equipment, this has a proper audio amplifier with big, beefy capacitors to power the analog audio output. That makes it much bigger than the A300, at 72.6x132 mm and a whopping 17 mm thick. It also has two audio outs: a standard 3.5 mm headphone jack and a 4.4 mm "balanced" audio jack, which is used by some high-end audio equipment. I'm sure Sony has a wonderful headphone collection to match. [...] Both this and the A300 use the S-Master HX digital amplifier chip, which supports Sony's high-resolution "NativeDSD" audio format, which is also used on Super Audio CDs. If you're some kind of heathen that is just streaming 128kb Spotify, Sony's "DSEE Ultimate" feature dubiously claims to be able to "upscale" your music with AI. There's also a "Vinyl Processor" that will add record player noises to your audio for an "authentic listening experience."
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New Sony Walkman Music Players Feature Stunning Good Looks, Android 12 More

New Sony Walkman Music Players Feature Stunning Good Looks, Android 12

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  • Checks the date (Score:5, Funny)

    by rossdee ( 243626 ) on Friday January 13, 2023 @06:16PM (#63207014)

    Is it 1st April already?

    • Re:Checks the date (Score:4, Funny)

      by sysrammer ( 446839 ) on Friday January 13, 2023 @07:10PM (#63207120) Homepage

      Is it 1st April already?

      ...of 1979?

    • I am still nursing along a collection of Sansa Clip+ players with Rockbox firmware installed, because there is nothing as good on the market today. Phones are way too bulky heavy and full of alerts/distractions/phonecalls, and you have to stop and look at what you're doing to select a different album. With Clip+ and Rockbox I have tactile buttons and spoken menus so I can select whatever I want without stopping. Not having bluetooth is kind of annoying though.

      Unfortunately at this price these walkm

  • 32GB? (Score:4)

    by VeryFluffyBunny ( 5037285 ) on Friday January 13, 2023 @06:17PM (#63207016)
    32GB for a standalone music player? What's the point? Is it for people who don't like music? My phone's got 128GB & most of that's music. Cost about 200€, it's got a bigger screen, & sounds great. Why would I spend 400€ on this?

    • Re: 32GB? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by wgoodman ( 1109297 ) on Friday January 13, 2023 @06:21PM (#63207036)

      It has a micro SD slot too so I'm guessing 32gb is just the rom partition and any extra apps you want to install.

      • It has a micro SD slot too so I'm guessing 32gb is just the rom partition and any extra apps you want to install.

        That's still not enough. I have over 32gb of OS, apps and cache right now, and I don't consider myself to be a heavy user.

      • ...and Sony sells SD cards

    • My phone's got 128GB & most of that's music. Cost about 200€, it's got a bigger screen, & sounds great.

      Sounds great with your Bluetooth earbuds? Buy yourself a decent pair of IEMs and it will quickly become apparent how bad phones are as music sources.

    • You haven't seen what an original 80s cassette Walkman sells for these days. This is a nostalgia grab.

      • I had the yellow waterproof one. I took that into the steam room and sauna all the time. Never had an issue with the unit and never had a tape go bad. I think it cost me $99 at the time and was worth every penny.

    • same reason why people buy 400â headphones over 200â headphones. or anything really in the same category. phones are great at doing 1000 different thing but a dedicated device does things better than a phone can. for one thing they have a better dac and those are not cheap.

  • to be putting out an iPod competitor?

    • IPod was the Walkman competitor. Sony has had all along a consistent range of music players with excellent reviews (e.g. previous Sony Android music player NWZ-ZX1 from 2014) if you are looking for something that sounds better than a phone (yes even iphones) and do not care that it does not look you are following the latest fashion.

      • NWZ-ZX1 From 2014 with no Android updates. Stuck with original version. Amazon music and many other apps will not run on this dinosaur. Can load it up with lossless files but battery is very weak now too. With power source works. Too bad, I would line a small media player outside my phone preserve battery. Player with a headphone jack and little nicer amp.

        • why do you need updates? music formats change very slowly. mp3 and flac are a mature format. youre not supposed to be putting internet enabled apps from a app store on it. there shouldn't be a vector of attack on it. nor should the device contain your personal files or your sole copies of your music.

    • I haven't found a good ipod since the early nanos. The new ones are stupid expensive and with dumb peoples (shuffle only, postage stamp sized video, etc). I have not found a good music player since I my old nano was stolen, the mp3 stuff isn't great and syncing up podcasts on them is clumsy (please no more links to the one you think works, because I've tried them). Right now the podcasts are on my phone, but even then it is clumsy using it in my car because it periodically demands that I turn on cellular

  • I've got to have this! Word has it that you can do better in job interviews, and you get paid better, if you "look" good.

  • Can hold 10 songs.

  • And there's this ... (Score:3)

    by fahrbot-bot ( 874524 ) on Friday January 13, 2023 @06:44PM (#63207074)

    There's also a "Vinyl Processor" that will add record player noises to your audio for an "authentic listening experience".

    You can enable fake analog recording noises -- great. /sarcasm

    Wouldn't an "authentic listening experience" depend on the music? Like bourbon and a smoke-filled room for Jazz or heroin and a head wound for Punk, a trampoline for Lindsey Stirling? [ Feel free to add to this. :-) ] Just sayin' it's probably more than adding some record static and/or tape hiss -- and not sure why those would actually be desirable anyway.

  • These would be great in a world where smartphones don't exist -- with many that actually cost less.

  • These are just the entry level walkmans (Score:3)

    by quantaman ( 517394 ) on Friday January 13, 2023 @07:28PM (#63207168)

    I hear the next version will be able to make phone calls!!!

  • by putting a google built android i have to decline, Sony should have built & support their own android system

    • what? why? it doesnt have any google specific componments in it. its like android asop modded for the device. theres no play store, gmail, gearth, gdrive etc google uses for tracking.

  • The only reason I bought a Sony was for its colors. The camera. But fuck me, their proprietary formats and closed ecosystem.

    I remember my friend's Sony minidisc. "Top of the line", back in the day, or so its price would suggest. You could record to it, but to get the recordings in any format off of that that one could actually edit, we'd eventually record the analog output.
    Another had a no-brand minidisc player that would do .wave and .mp3. And the USB would copypasta both ways. No way Sony would let anyone

  • Not really a "Walkman" ;p

  • Sorry--what were we talking about?

  • Let me get this straight (Score:3)

    by Big Hairy Gorilla ( 9839972 ) on Saturday January 14, 2023 @12:16AM (#63207552)
    It's a phone with
    No Sim card
    Very low res screen
    Less memory than a 5 year old phone
    Heavier and 3x thicker than a 10 year old phone
    you could voluntarily opt for magical oxygen free metal for nearly $4,000
    "Journalists" are gushing over it.
    (Really need quotes for that one)
    Did I miss anything?
    Oh... and it's not available yet

    So they took a phone removed all the useful parts, downgraded all the specs, and made it heavier and thicker.

    Are you sure this isn't an Apple product?
  • My 2009 Dodge Ram has a 32GB hard drive built into the dash. It's a little clutsy loading music onto it, but I managed to get 32 GB of my songs on there. It works perfect every time I start my truck. I don't have connection issues. I don't have to pair anything. It's just 32 GB of my favorite songs available to me all the time.

    I also have a 2022 Jeep Grand Cherokee. And while the tech is pretty impressive, It's still a cluster fuck using your phone for audio in your car. You're listening to a decent son

  • Has wireless! More space than Nomad! Cool!

  • I had no idea music players still exist. This is like finding a T-rex walking around or something.

  • Stunning good looks? They look busy. They look, in short, like someone from the 80s would think something would look now. And the 80s was the last time Sony was relevant to people who want anything worth a fuck.

  • Assuming that I were an insane audiophile who would spend lots of money on a special purpose music player just for the purpose of playing things like DSD or MQA scam files (or maybe it's not a scam, maybe I'm buying this for my pet dog who can actually hear these frequencies)...

    No support for Opus
    No support for AptX-Lossless.

    This product is DoA.

  • Do they still come with a rootkit [wikipedia.org] ?

  • Thanks for another useless SlashVertisment.

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