what happened now? If you remember recording your radio tunes onto a cassette and listening to them later on your chunky portable tape player, we have some good news for you. Sony has released two new versions of his iconic Walkman. But you don’t have to carry around a pencil to fix an unspooled cassette. These are his Android-powered devices, the latest in the series that Sony has been producing for the last decade.
Like other digital music players, the NW-A300 and NW-ZX700 can play streamed and downloaded music. They’re powered by Android 12, enable support for apps like Spotify, and offer “advanced sound,” according to Sony.
The NW-A300 is by far the cheapest of the two Walkmans at 46,000 yen (about $360) in Japan and €399 (about $430) in Europe. According to Ars Technica, the tiny 56.6 x 98.5 x 12 mm footprint is about the size of a pack of cards and features a 3.6-inch 1280 x 720 (60 Hz) touchscreen LCD, Wi-Fi 802.11AC, and Bluetooth 5. increase. – wisely, it has a USB-C 3.2 Gen1, a MicroSD slot, and a headphone jack.
The NW-A300 is powered by an unnamed quad-core Qualcomm SoC and 4GB of RAM. Sony promises he 36 hours of 44.1 kHz FLAC playback and up to 32 hours of 96 kHz FLAC high-res audio playback, but that’s probably with the screen off.
The high-end NW-ZX700 model is aimed at audiophiles, which is reflected in the ¥104,500 ($818) price tag. Sony tries to justify that amount by adding proper audio amplifiers and big capacitors to power the analog audio output. It has a 5-inch 1280 x 720 screen, 64GB of storage, and 23 hours of audio playback. There’s also a 4.4mm “balanced” audio jack next to his standard 3.5mm port.
Unsurprisingly, the NW-ZX700 is much larger at 72.6 x 132 x 17mm. Like the cheaper model, it has the S-Master HX digital amplifier chip. Both Walkmans use Sony’s artificial intelligence-powered Edge-AI and his DSEE Ultimate (a digital sound enhancement engine) to upscale compressed digital music files to high quality and add vinyl sound to your tracks. It has the ability to add There is also a special cassette tape user interface and screen saver.
Both Walkmans are scheduled to go on sale in Japan in February of this year.