It appears that Sony’s unique wearable Walkman, the NWZ-W202, is not exactly the best canidate for heavy workouts. User reviews (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6) from around the Internet are pegging this as a music player that simply cannot handle sweating or a heavy workout. The problem seems to reside in the fact that the W202 isn’t waterproof, or moisture resistant. Most cases seem to be the same – a person goes jogging, or does a heavy workout, and about 15-30 minutes into it, a beeping sound occurs and the W202 becomes irresponsive. Others have noticed very strange behavior, such as volume suddenly maxing out, the Zappin feature turning on by itself, or the device turning on and off on its own. Sounds frustrating. We will be requesting the W202 soon and put it through its paces and solve this mystery once and for all.
SonyStyle has some more reports of NWZ-W202 sweating issues, as well within our own comments on Stan’s W202 review at Sony Insider.
Stan’s Comment: I can attest to this known issue as I have experienced the same problem. After a few continuous uses of W202 at the gym, all of a sudden it gave up on me and kept activating the Zapping function, volume would not work properly, etc. I had sent it in and received a replacement. It looks like I am not going to be taking it to the gym anymore as it is not going to make it. It looks like Sony needs to tweak its marketing verbage, as this Walkman will fail sooner or later if it comes in contact with any kind of moisture. I am pretty sure it has something to do with a hardware design flaws and quality control on this unit did not take place in its recommended environment. Let’s hope Sony addresses this issue, as it would be sad to see this amazing Walkman have a history similar to Walkman Bean…
P.S. I also noticed an interesting fact, my local Target put all W202 Walkman models on Clearance for a mere $32! I wonder why…..
