Sony Europe undid the wrapper on a new 9.3mm thin E-Series Walkman today that is an interesting update to the line of low-cost drag and drop MP3/video/photo players – especially since it is going to be available in 4GB NWZ-E443), 8GB (NWZ-E444), and now 16GB (NWZ-E445) flavors. The slim, lightweight E-Series will be available in black or red and offer a 2 inch QVGA screen with up to 30 hours of battery life (listening to music at 128kbps) for audio, and 6 hours (watching movies at 384kbps) video. That’s a little strange since last year’s E-Series Walkman touted 8 hours video and 45 hours of audio at the same bitrates. A 5-band equalizer, FM radio (recording abilities and up to 30 presets), dynamic normalizer compliment the audio experience. Clear Stereo and Clear Bass are being introduced in this generation as well – a feature usually found in S-series and higher models. Unfortunately, this unit also has a WM-Port, which is fine as it provides compatibility with numerous Walkman accessories, but I long for Mini-USB.
In a Walkman first, there’s now support for video file format conversion via the supplied Content Transfer software, which should be a big help for consumers who have had difficulties in the past converting videos. Codec support includes MP3, AAC, WMA (DRM) and L-PCM for music, and H264/AVC, MP4, WMV (DRM) for video.
