Sony Gives The Walkman A Series Another Generation

I don’t blame Sony for using the gorgeous design found in the popular Walkman A Series a second time around. In some ways, this Walkman is probably up there amongst the best product designs the company has made in the last 64 years. Is that really so much of a bold claim? There is still something special about this Walkman even in its second generation. Meet the new Sony Walkman A850 series. Despite the fact the competition is so insanely fierce, Sony has added a few things here and there to make this still an incredible audio player for the high-end enthusiast.

Sadly, this is not the Android Walkman you’ve been looking for.

I always read about how slim audio players are getting and the NW-A850 series is no exception, as it maintains the same shape as the previous models at only 7.2mm thin. That is really slim. It’s the perfect fusion of analog greatness and digital innovation. It has buttons. Buttons to go Back, or Home, Options, and the usual Play/Pause and directional pad.

This Walkman is very hard to perfect for Sony because in some ways; this type of design will soon become obsolete as music players mostly have big screens, few buttons and will soon have unconventional form factors. Look at the iPod for example, the device that destroyed Sony’s portable audio dominance – the most popular music player of all time with its navigation wheel has transitioned to nearly all touchscreen models. The iPod Classic is still available, but faces extinction soon. And when Apple goes all touchscreen, the majority of the portable music player industry will too.

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Nonetheless, I believe the Walkman A series has the pinnacle of what one would consider a good multimedia experience. It’s a worthy device to carry along with your phone. It’s drag and drop, meaning you can transfer music to it by dragging from your library to the drive. Capacity is no issue, as there are 16GB (NW-A855), 32GB (NW-A856), and 64GB (NW-A857) versions. Battery life is up to 29 hours, while video playback clocks in at 11 hours. The display is a crisp and goregous 2.8 inch OLED screen and is available in Black, Rose and White colors. Audiophiles will bask in the glory of the integrated Digital Noise Cancelling feature/earphones (13.5mm), which in my experiences at CES earlier this year, was able to completely drain out noise around me when I tried the earphones on. That’s pretty impressive considering there was hundreds of people around me. There are three sound modes: Transit, Airplane, and Office modes adjust the settings for the best noise cancelling possible.

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The Walkman A Series has a S-Master digital amplifier, DSEE, and Clear Stereo for incredible sound. These options have been a staple feature in the highest end Walkmans and allow you to color the audio to your liking. Support is pretty robust with MP3/WMA (DRM not supported) / ATRAC / ATRAC Advanced Lossless / Linear PCM / AAC (DRM not supported) / HE-AAC. Can you believe they are still supporting my beloved (ha ha) ATRAC in Japan after removing it everywhere else in the world?

Video playback is great with the ability to do MPEG-4 AVC/H.264, MPEG-4, WMV (DRM supported), up to 720 × 480 resolution. Which is basically SD. Sony says that movies will look pretty clear through the analog WMC-NWV10 audio/video cable when connected to a TV. Speaking of connections, it can also connect to a Japanese Sony All-in-one Blu-ray Player and DVR and transfer content and recordings straight to the Walkman.

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In Japan, the Walkman A Series is a little different. Lyric support is included, which is an exclusive service that you pay into, but this has never been integrated in any version of the A series Walkman outside of the country. It also has an improved Karaoke mode over last generation with several new features including key control, song speed and others. A cool thing with the Karaoke mode is that Sony encourages you to buy the cable that connects the Walkman to the TV so you can do Karaoke for everyone.

There is also now a collaborative feature with the mora service called “Listen little mora” that delivers 10 songs together in one pack from a certain genre every time you sync your Walkman to x-app. They also will have special packs for holidays, such as for Christmas. I think this is actually a really smart play on Sony’s part – automatic music delivery of top tens or cherry-picked tracks every time you connect. We’ll see how that plays out and see if this music delivery strategy for Sony will evolve further. We also spotted an update to the x-app application, version 2.0, which is a popular PC management program for newer Sony Walkmans and other devices.

Did we mention it also has an Alarm clock?

Real life images courtesy of AV Watch (JP).