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Friday, April 3, 2015

Sony Launches Walkman with High Resolution Audio at CES 2015

Sony is bringing back the Walkman, with a new model of the music player pioneer that comes with high-resolution playback and Bluetooth-connected headphones.

The new Walkman, targeting audiophiles and set to cost about $US1200 in the United States ($1485), is a high-end version of a model Sony released in 2013 after retiring the classic cassette player in 2010. The first-generation, clunky-looking Walkman went on sale in July 1979, redefining the way people listened to music.

The NW-ZX2 Walkman was among products unveiled at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas on Wednesday (Australia time), and will be available globally alongside new high-end headphones in the first quarter of this year. Local pricing is yet to be announced.

Sony also presented an ultra high-definition action camera that uses the 4K video format its trying to push, a challenge to GoPro in the market for filming extreme sports.

Chief Executive Office Kazuo Hirai led the presentation at CES as Tokyo-based Sony seeks to move past the embarrassing hacking on its Hollywood studio, an attack Hirai described as "vicious and malicious."

All of Sonys web-connected TVs will run this year on Googles Android platform with Sony planning models from 43 inches to 75 inches (1.9 metres). The X900C TV is just 0.2 inches deep at its thinnest point, the company said.

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Sony unveils 1 200 Android powered Walkman player with hi res audio

Sony’s once massive Walkman brand is still going, however the glory days are long gone. I’m not sure how much market there is for music players in general, Walkman or otherwise, but I can guess the market size for a $1,200.

It’s as high-quality as a pocketable player gets – it supports FLAC/ALAC (up to 96kHz/24-bit) and Bluetooth with SBC/LDAC hi-fidelity codec. Dual-band Wi-Fi is also available for DLNA playback.

The player packs a massive 128GB – or not so massive considering a single FLAC album is in the hundreds of megabytes, a full gigabyte even. There’s a microSD card slot if you run out, but at an ultrabook price we were hoping for a bit more room out of the box.

Anyway, the Sony Walkman – officially NW-ZX2 – runs Android on a 4″ screen. The screen is not up to up to par with the audio capabilities. Not that the screen is a crucial part of a music player, but something better than 480 x 854px would have been appreciated.

Android 4.2 Jelly Bean is also not our top pick. With the whole “will they, won’t they” upgrade situation on phones, I don’t even want to think what it’s like to wait for a music player to be updated.

Did I mention that for $1,200 you don’t get an impressive pair of headphones? Or any headphones? Headphones are essential, otherwise the difference between FLAC and MP3 is imaginary. Just saying that you have to add several hundred dollars more if you want this Walkman player.

At least it gets decent battery life – 60 hours. If you listen to 128Kbps MP3s. If you want to use the player as intended and listen to FLAC, you get about half the battery life, 33 hours.

If you want a smaller device at a quarter of the price than this seems like an option – $300 for 64GB and an empty microSD card slot. Or if you insist on Android, you can get the Harman/Kardon HTC One (M8)that also supports 96kHz/24-bit FLAC audio. There’s a phone with a good screen and such in there too, besides the audio playback.