The newest music players from Sony, the Walkman, have spectacular aesthetic looks and Android 12

 

The newest music players from Sony, the Walkman, have spectacular aesthetic looks and Android 12

Sony still clings to the wonderful goal of developing portable music players that operate independently of a computer.

Both the NW-A300 and the NW-ZX700 are new Android Walkmans that have been released by Sony. That's correct, we're talking about the renowned Walkman brand of music players that Sony released in the 1980s. Apple may have abandoned the concept of a smartphone-adjacent music player when it recently discontinued the iPod Touch series, but Sony continues to produce Android-powered Walkmans and has done so for some time. The first time this occurred was in 2012 with the Android 2.3 Gingerbread-powered NWZ-Z1000. This device seemed as if Sony had just removed the modem from an Xperia phone and rushed it into the market as a music player. Since then, Sony has produced designs with hardware that is more purpose-built, and now there is a complete range of Walkman music players that are driven by Android. Unfortunately, it seems that these new ones are only available for purchase in Japan, the United Kingdom, and Europe at this time.

We'll begin with the NW-A300 since it's the model that caters more toward the average customer. This fundamental design made its debut in 2019 with the NW-A105, although at the time, Android 9 was preinstalled on the device. This new model of the same gadget has an updated version of Android, a redesigned system-on-a-chip (SoC), and a scalloped back design. It is an upgrade from the previous model. In Sony's native country of Japan, the 32GB version is 46,000 yen, which is around $360. However, in Europe, the price is 399 euro, which is approximately $430.

The NW-A300 is a teeny-tiny gadget that has dimensions of 56.6 by 98.5 by 12 mm, which places it in close proximity to a standard deck of playing cards. And in all seriousness, have a look at these images. Even though Sony is not the consumer electronics behemoth that it once was, it still has an amazing product design department. Even though I have no need for a standalone music player, I really really want to get my hands on one of these Walkmans because of how lovely they are.

The front is dominated by a touchscreen LCD with a resolution of 1280 by 720 pixels and a refresh rate of 60 hertz. The gadget supports Wi-Fi 802.11AC and Bluetooth 5, and it comes with a storage capacity of 32 gigabytes. Regarding the official specifications, that is about all Sony is willing to discuss. It promises "36 hours* of 44.1 KHz FLAC playing, and up to 32 hours* of 96 KHz FLAC High-Resolution Audio playback," but it won't disclose how large the battery is. Instead, it brags about having "greater battery life." It seems like that's everything with the screen turned off.

The Walkman Blog is a fantastic website that takes these little music players extremely seriously, so if you are interested in additional technical details, you should check it out. The site discovered paperwork for the A300 in October, which listed a battery with 1500 mAh capacity. The NXP i.MX8M-Mini was the system-on-a-chip that was used in the earlier NW-A100 model. This 28 nm SoC is very sluggish since it only has four Arm Cortex-A53 CPUs and 4 gigabytes of RAM. You might claim that "This is simply a music player," but that would not be entirely accurate since it still runs a complete version of Android and includes everything from an app store to the operating system itself. According to the results of Geekbench, this contains a new quad-core Qualcomm CPU of some type together with 4 gigabytes of RAM; however, we are unable to confirm the product number. A more recent processor with more efficient use of space would undoubtedly fulfill a significant portion of the promise of improved battery life.

Since this is a music player, it should come as no surprise that there is a headphone jack located on the underside of the device. In addition, there is a space for a lanyard, a fast USB-C 3.2 Gen1 connector for transferring music quickly, and a MicroSD card for storing all of your music. All of these features are included. You have access to every music control imaginable because to the buttons that run down the side of the gadget. These buttons include a hold switch, previous, play/pause, next, volume controls, and power.