Sony has unveiled the latest update to the A-Series Walkman line with some serious features. The new NW-A840 series, available in black and brown, simply is the most brilliant Walkman offering from Sony to date – it has all of the features people have been asking for in previous Walkmans while shedding what it needed to. In my opinion, this is the most stylish appearance I’ve seen in a personal media player – and it has a jaw-dropping 2.8 inch WQVGA OLED screen. This is also the thinnest Walkman ever created at only 7.2mm. Sony has also finally come to the table with a better assortment of capacities – with the NW-A845 (16GB, Y24,000), NW-A846 (32GB, Y30,000), and NW-A847 (64GB, Y40,000) all due on October 31st. What’s also new for the first time is a TV-out function, that can output at 720×480 (SD) quality.
There is no Wifi or touchscreen. Let’s face it – the browser on the X-Series was a disaster. The X-Series Walkman used an old CPU and lacked the memory needed for an optimal iPhone-esque browser experience everyone has become accustomed to.
Of course, the newest A-Series is drag n’ drop, which also includes for the first time autoconverting video transfer! Additional features to round out this sweet package include a S-Master digital amplifier, FM radio, digital noise canceling (which we really think is incredible) and comes with premium MDR-EX300SL earphones. That is a really nice pair of stock buds to come with a Walkman – I am glad to see they didn’t skimp out. Other premium features to color your sound include DSEE, Clear Stereo, Clear bass, and lyric display.
I’m seeing here that the new A series has about 29 hours battery life at 128kbps, and 9 hours of video playback at 384kbps MPEG-4. Codec support looks like MP3, WMA, AAC, HE-AAC, ATRAC, ATRAC AL, PCM/wav. I assume ATRAC support will probably be limited to Japan, but we are not sure yet. For movies, the usual AVC (H2.64), MPEG-4 and WMV are allowed.
Here’s a keen introduction video courtesy of Sony Japan:
Sony also released a picture of a special SonyStyle limited edition Violet NW-A847:
This information, brought to you in English, is a Sony Insider exclusive, brought to you here first.
