16 ms·

New Sony Walkman music player

322 points by rcarmo 4y ago

okasaki 4y ago
I quite like the look of this device. It's blocky, 16:9 screen, lots of buttons. I would definitely buy a phone or PDA in this format. Actually I wonder if this could function as a decent PDA? I guess it doesn't have any cameras or GPS, which would be nice to have.
- kube-system 4y ago
  The older Sony Xperia phones look at lot like this, but unfortunately the new ones don’t.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- yawniek 4y ago
  One of the reasons i liked and bought the xperia pro-i was this design style. Unfortunately it has really bad battery life.
  - antonyh 4y ago
    I have the Pro-I and I get 3+ days on a charge. Right now it reports 21 hours since 100%, and 3 days left. It's been excellent.
_trampeltier 4y ago
Finally with a standart USB port. So I guess it's time to buy a new one :-)
andremedeiros 4y ago
I’m not knowledgeable at all, but I suspect there would be a DAC I could buy that’d make my iPhone sound just as good. Am I way off base?
- astrange 4y ago
  The $9 headphone adapter is better than most audiophile DACs. Audiophile equipment is a scam (one sign is the "balanced" audio output, which they pretend is better but isn't) and Japan's high res audio brands are also scams. You might want an external amp for high impedance headphones for electrical compatibility reasons, but an amp and DAC are not the same thing.
  - nicolaslem 4y ago
    > one sign is the "balanced" audio output, which they pretend is better but isn't. Maybe for a MP3 player it does not matter, but in general the physics behind balanced analog audio is quite sound (pardon the pun). It is a simple trick that provides better resistance to interference. Every XLR cable on the floor at a show is balanced and it is not because the sound guy fell for audiophile marketing, it is because it works and costs next to nothing.
    - astrange 4y ago
      Indeed it does, but that doesn't really apply to headphones since the cable is short and there's not a lot of EMF interference. It does have one theoretical advantage - the maximum voltage from a battery powered device can be higher which might be useful for a very high impedance headphone if they're too quiet.
- Synaesthesia 4y ago
  Yes but iPhones already have a pretty good DAC so you're not gaining much.
  - bakugo 4y ago
    Doesn't matter what DAC they have unless you're listening on the built in speaker, because you can't plug anything into it.
    - Synaesthesia 4y ago
donatj 4y ago
So why buy one of these over an Android phone and an external DAC/Amp? Also 32gb? That's only a handful of highres audio. I'm assuming the people buying this kind of thing are the same people buying higher than CD quality audio?
- matt-attack 4y ago
  I'm pretty sure the last iPod I bought in 2006 has 160GB.
  - CaptainZapp 4y ago
    Sure (I actually still use the same model). But it doesn't come with a memory extension slot. Which, granted, is also not really necessary.
- ErneX 4y ago
  Some people prefer a dedicated device for music.
- Godel_unicode 4y ago
  I feel like they know that the people who buy this are going to need TB of storage, and are going to use MicroSD cards for the media.
- neonscribe 4y ago
  32GB is just for the system. It has a microSD slot for music.
- xeromal 4y ago
  I could probably use something like this hiking so I can power off my phone for emergencies hunting/camping.
  - Ballas 4y ago
    Putting your phone in airplane mode and carrying a power bank for emergencies seems like a much more efficient solution to me?
rektide 4y ago
I wish they'd make phones with profiles more like this. 3.6", nice tactile controls. Even if it has relatively short 16hr battery life, I'm fine, if it can take a 25W charge. A passable camera also feels essential.
- aidenn0 4y ago
  The Unihertz Jelly 2 has everything except the cameras are arguably not passable. They are like 2010 Android phone level quality at best.
brundolf 4y ago
It's bizarre to only have 32GB/64GB storage. I remember getting a dedicated music player with 80GB in 2008. Bulk storage seems like it would be one of the few good ways to differentiate these from a smartphone Maybe I'm just not the target market. They must be doing something right because Hideo Kojima uses one (and frequently tweets pictures of it): https://twitter.com/hideo_kojima_en/status/1614746093270740994 https://twitter.com/hideo_kojima_en/status/16147460932707409...
- em500 4y ago
  You can add a 512GB micro-SD for $50.
  - nomorewords 4y ago
    I think that's not the point. They are making a product seemingly targeted at audiophiles and they don't provide enough storage (for the amount of music an audiophile might have), while showing off some obscure features like the gold plated components
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - izacus 4y ago
      It has an SD card slot for unlimited storage practically, what are you complaining about?
    - bakugo 4y ago
      It doesn't "provide enough storage" because it's not supposed to provide storage. You're supposed to provide your own storage, whatever amount you see fit, and you are able to upgrade it at any time. I know people nowadays are used to not having any control over their storage and simply throwing their device in the trash and buying a new one every few years when it's no longer enough, but it wasn't like this in the past.
  - brundolf 4y ago
walterbell 4y ago
Is there a viable competitor of these elegant Sony designs? 2021 thread on music players, some with Rockbox firmware, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26870648 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26870648
- LeoPanthera 4y ago
  Fiio devices are excellent, but not much cheaper. https://www.fiio.com https://www.fiio.com
  - yborg 4y ago
    Have a FiiO M6, industrial design is nice, but the system software is horrid, as is the battery life.
    - walterbell 4y ago
      FiiO M3K has partial Rockbox open-source firmware support, https://rockbox.org https://rockbox.org.
munchler 4y ago
> I have no use for a standalone music player, but both of these Walkmans are so pretty that I just want to hold one. I think that sums it up pretty well. Who would actually buy one of these?
p-e-w 4y ago
Is there any scientific evidence that the special hardware found in high-end audio equipment (gold-plated connectors, "large polymer capacitors", expensive DACs etc.) actually produces perceptibly different (and perceptibly better) audio output? I mean of course assuming hearing abilities that are within 1-2 standard deviations of the human average, not one-in-a-million-people super hearing. Also assuming actual music is being played, not audio tracks specifically engineered to highlight the difference.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- makeitdouble 4y ago
  I think your real question is wether uncompressed audio from a fine tuned DAC sounds better than compressed AAC converted by current Bluetooth headphones. The competition to this are mobile phones, and they almost all moved to bluetooth only, so the choice is which Bluetooth headphones gets better sound with a form factor you better like, pitted against the flurry of wired headphones and hybrid that are still on the market.
- MrBuddyCasino 4y ago
  Its all marketing. Price and performance have a surprisingly low correlation in the hifi market, after going above the threshold of crappyness. Nobody will believe you if you tell them this.
- semi-extrinsic 4y ago
  Certainly the gold-plated oxygen free copper hocus pocus would only be relevant after the DAC where the signal is analog. But that doesn't matter if you are just cargo culting. Case in point, the infamous $1650 HDMI cables where people would leave hilarious reviews on Amazon. That being said, there can be a big difference going from "consumer" level to "basic audiophile". I remember my own surprise when I first got a pair of Grado SR80s, how many details I could hear in music that I never knew existed before.
  - p-e-w 4y ago
Tsiklon 4y ago
One thing to note about Sony android players is that the European models have ferocious volume limits; neither having high gain mode, nor the grunt to drive more inefficient headphones in low gain mode. This appears to be set as a value in a read only database that would require root to remove. A method to acquire root is not known to be available on any of them.
- suction 4y ago
  [dead]
- Doxin 4y ago
  That's odd, AFAIK the EU only requires a warning at a certain volume level. My android phone will give you a warning that you've set the volume to the limit once, but then allows you to increase it further after dismissing the warning anyways.
  - Tsiklon 4y ago
    They certainly do that in Europe too, but they also hard limit the output of the player. Even the balanced output, which should offer more power is limited to the same volume as the 3.5mm output.
- 112233 4y ago
  I've noticed Sony doing a sort of malicious compliance with European regulations, implementing them in a way that is conformant, yet maximally infuriating. For example, energy usage warnings on their TVs sold in eirope.
  - Tsiklon 4y ago
    This is exactly what they are doing - as confirmed by their response to my very unhappy review of the WM1AM2 on their website: https://www.sony.co.uk/store/product/nwwm1am2.cew/WM1AM2-Walkman-Digital-Media-Player https://www.sony.co.uk/store/product/nwwm1am2.cew/WM1AM2-Wal...
rvz 4y ago
At least it has both a headphone jack and Bluetooth 5, unlike the majority of the smartphones out there that have outright removed the former. Just plug it in and that is it.
femiagbabiaka 4y ago
Finally USB-C, no more proprietary cables.
forgotmypw17 4y ago
This looks awesome. I've been wishing for more hardware buttons on Android or iPhone devices for so long. I would even take a case for iPhone which has extra buttons for common tasks on the side. Please steal this idea.
mg 4y ago
I am a huge fan of standalone mp3-players. So much so, that at some point I made a comparison site for mp3-players. But nobody cared. I made comparison sites for smartphones, laptops and monitors which became quite popular. But for mp3-players, it seemed like I am the only person on planet earth who uses them. Personally, I still use a Sony Walkman NWZ-E585. For me, that is the best mp3 player ever made. It has a nice form factor, feels very good haptically, the navigation interface is ok, the sound quality is great, the noise cancelling too, and you can access the storage without having to install propriatery software on your computer.
- tjrDL6MjB2Zwwa 4y ago
  Is that player comparison site still around, or do you have a recommendation for someone who has long had the thought of getting a dedicated music playing device? The article listed those as $800, which is ridiculous and there's no way I'm paying that much, but if I can find something at a much more reasonable price (preferably a physical headphone jack) I'd be happy as a clam.
  - omnicognate 4y ago
    I used to have one that cost me around £200 and was alright but sounded pretty anaemic. I replaced it with one that cost around £600 and is way better. I love it. Comments of the form "price X is unreasonable because I'd never pay it" are mildly annoying. You're an individual, not a market, and as such don't get to choose what a "reasonable" price is. DAPs (digital audio players) are available at a wide range of prices. The top result for "MP3 player" on Amazon UK right now is £23.99. Choose a price point you're happy with and you'll find something. I love mine at the price point I went for. (I've also had one for around £50, bought a couple of ~£20 ones for my small children and owned a couple of different DAC dongles for my phone. Unsurprisingly, the sound quality is very highly correlated with the price, up to the level I've tried. I expect it levels out not far above, though, and if you decide to pay thousands for a DAP they'll make it out of gold-plated copper because there's nothing else left to use the money on. [1]) [1] https://www.sony.co.uk/electronics/walkman/nw-wm1z https://www.sony.co.uk/electronics/walkman/nw-wm1z
dotancohen 4y ago
This device has all the specs that I want _for a phone_. Seriously, I would love a music player with a phone, not a phone with a music player. They do need to increase the storage, then add a SIM card and this thing would fly off the shelves.
sleepydog 4y ago
I came across these recently at an electronics store in Japan. These feel really good in my hand; it's not too wide or long, the buttons feel really solid, and its a bit thicker than a phone which makes it easier to hold and makes the buttons bigger. And they are light. I have no use for an mp3 player, but I would love to have a phone in the same body. It runs android but doing anything other than playing music felt sluggish. I used the smaller xperia phones for 2 generations and really liked them, but this mp3 player feels even better in my hand.
- DoingIsLearning 4y ago
  All phones are migrating towards being portable video watchers and mobile gaming devices with huges screen surface area. I was hoping it was just a trend and they come back to phones that my thumb can reach the top corner and that actually fit in my jeans back pocket. Seems like all the marketing people have forgotten about those, or perhaps I am just in the minority and there really is no market for phones as _just_ a PDA device.
  - Nextgrid 4y ago
    > All phones are migrating towards being portable video watchers and mobile gaming devices with huges screen surface area. Because you can't fit as many ads on a small screen.
  - SSLy 4y ago
    You can still buy iPhone 13 Mini, like I did last year.
francasso 4y ago
I say it's time to bring back cassette tapes and a new edition of the TPS-L2. If Leica can release a new M6, Sony should release a new TPS-L2
- sincarne 4y ago
  Well, we're halfway there. "Last year, cassette sales grew 28% to 440,000 units, up from 343,000 in 2021." https://www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2023/01/the-cassette-comeback-is-not-just-hype-and-here-are-stats-to-prove-it.html https://www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2023/01/the-cassette-comebac...
- Hackbraten 4y ago
  Even if cassette tapes become popular again, decent-quality cassette mechanisms aren’t coming back. If Sony (or anyone else) ever chooses to release another cassette player, brace yourself for a meh listening experience, and a crap mechanism with lots of plastic that’s going to deteriorate and break, with no one around who’d be skilled enough to fix your unit.
  - bobsmooth 4y ago
    Is the knowledge to make good read heads just lost? There's definitely a market for them. You'd think a Chinese manufacturer would have started cranking them out by now.
    - Hackbraten 4y ago
      I don’t know much about read heads. To me, they seem like complex mechanical devices on their own. The head must be able to move vertically, yet end up perfectly flush with the tape material. Its design requires special consideration just so it won’t damage the tape. It needs to take some degree of abuse, mostly in the form of abrasion but also (inappropriate use of) cleaning agents. Then the angle of the head needs to be adjustable, and the head needs to maintain the angle even in the face of vibrations. Even if someone knew how to design a good read head, producing one might turn out difficult in a less-than-mass market. What worries me even more than that is the art of building a drive. A tape drive must maintain the angular velocity of the capstan(s). If yours varies by more than a few tenths of percent, you’ll be dealing with “wow and flutter”. Not all listeners may care enough, but most do notice. Drive makers used to have all those issues under control, at least in the higher-end segment – as Sony has shown with their DD series and the D6C. Trying to mass-produce a decent drive in 2023 would, however, eat up incredible amounts of engineering time just for _designing_ a workable mechanism. Trying to copy and paste one of the old designs may turn out even more laborious. Those designs are tied to a huge stack of specific parts [0], for which there used to be an ecosystem of suppliers but those all long gone of course. I can imagine that they’ve taken their own specific knowledge with them, too. [0]: If you’re interested, elektrotanya.com has service manuals for a few higher-end Walkmen with exploded-view diagrams and BOMs. Looking at those has been a very humbling experience for me!
lnxg33k1 4y ago
It seems that tech world goes in round, we unify devices to only having to take one around, then we split the unique device in multiple devices, and back? Is it what capitalism is about? Manufacture needs back and forth to keep you paying?
alkonaut 4y ago
I'd pay for a thing that does streaming, is much smaller than my phone, and has good physical buttons. I don't want to run or sit in the gym with my huge iphone. But I also don't want to collect files, it has to support all the streaming services and I need to be confident it supports the ones tomorrow as well.
- nextlevelwizard 4y ago
  Have you thought about Apple Watch? Sure it lacks the physical buttons, but from my experience it is quite responsive with sweaty fingers.
  - Nextgrid 4y ago
    Edit: I stand corrected, see comment below. --- I don't believe you can download & save Spotify tracks on the watch itself - it still only operates as a companion app to the main iPhone one. So your only option is Apple Music which is a pile of shit.
    - elAhmo 4y ago
      It is somewhat of a recent addition, but you can now do that as well: download music and play it from Spotify without having your phone. I think they added it earlier last year, I was using it during summer.
    - derwiki 4y ago
      What's the beef with Apple Music? Besides Discovery Weekly on Spotify, they seem about the same to me
      - Nextgrid 4y ago
        Spotify beats Apple Music on performance alone. Search results and playback are instant on Spotify, but have a couple seconds' latency on Apple Music. The Apple Music client feels like an Electron pile of shit, which is ironic because the Spotify Desktop client is actually Electron and manages to be more performant and feel more native despite that.
eiiot 4y ago
Can anyone really name a reason why you would need a standalone MP3 player in 2023? With services like Tidal or even just Spotify it seems like there are so many downsides, with little to no benefits. (Other than maybe owning your own physical music as opposed to relying on a streaming service?)
- gppk 4y ago
  My wife has decades of music downloaded from CDs etc. It's just the music she likes, no ads/distractions/faffing about with networks etc. For her commute it works great to have just an MP3 player. She doesn't want to listen to other music, she likes what she knows, so the benefit of recommendations etc aren't of interest either. Just one data point for your question :)
  - MikusR 4y ago
    There are these things, smartphones or something like that, that apparently almost everyone has, that can do that.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - DocTomoe 4y ago
      Some people prefer a device that has real, physical buttons and is not permanently at risk of shattering after being dropped (the use case being to listen to music while on the go...)
  - antihero 4y ago
    For personal music collection I’ve found using navidrome (and subsonic before that) to be a much nicer solution than having a separate player.
    - KerrAvon 4y ago
      Some people want to avoid futzing with tech for some things to whatever extent they can avoid it. Even some people otherwise immersed in tech.
deleted 4y ago
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mhdhn 4y ago
Instareview: maybe cool, let's see... What, no buttons to skip ahead/behind 15 seconds? Useless. What a goof! Good-bye
schizo89 4y ago
Mobile phones aren't allowed in prisons while MP3 players are. Good to know Sony cares about inmates.
m000 4y ago
I would be hesitant to shell out 400 EUR for a music-player-only device. But this is a very appealing phone form factor, if Sony could also squeeze-in a GSM module, a workable (not necessarily great) camera, and more storage (32GB sounds rather measly these days).
- Narishma 4y ago
  It's not a music-player only device. It's basically an Android phone without the modem. It can do a ton of stuff besides play music.
moondowner 4y ago
I'm pretty happy with the Hidizs AP80 PRO-X (priced just under $200), but the Walkman devices are the endgame.
cutler 4y ago
I paid £250 for 5th generation iPod Touch in 2013. SONY's prices are way higher.
shp0ngle 4y ago
I heard good stuff about the Fiio players. Apparently they also run Android. https://www.fiio.com/player https://www.fiio.com/player
ldng 4y ago
YES BUTTONS ! (sorry for low quality post but it's been getting tough to find good hardware with buttons ...)
- drooopy 4y ago
  I share your enthusiasm. Much of my frustration with modern electronics and home appliances stems from the fact that I have to use shitty touch screens and touch buttons.
  - DoingIsLearning 4y ago
    I appreciate the frustration and I am right there with you as a user. However, it is actually hard (and costly) to manufacture and quality control physical switches that will survive the life time of a warranty + a few years (in terms of mechanical failure, dirt, corrosion, water ingress, etc.). Once you appreciate this then it is pretty easy to see how the design choices of using capacitive interfaces are a no brainer for consumer electronics and appliances. On top of it you have the marketing push of capacitive interfaces = modern.
    - aussieshibe 4y ago
      Maybe we're almost up to "physical buttons = retro cool"? I'm certainly ready for that.
- izzydata 4y ago
  Soon to be a major problem in vehicles as well. Hopefully it doesn't get too difficult to find a car with buttons.
  - aussieshibe 4y ago
    Absolutely. How is anyone supposed to be able to safely do anything on a touchscreen while driving? That using a touchscreen while driving is legal completely baffles me.
jwatt 4y ago
I would like something like this but one thing that makes Android-based music players like this unappealing is the versions of Android they start with. When this is releases in February, Android 13 will have been out for six months. Android devices don't get security updates for long enough as it is, so starting out the gate with a non-current version of Android isn't great.
- Tams80 4y ago
  It's a DAP. I mean, sure, you could be doing smart device things on it, but really it only runs Android to get easy access to streaming services and media apps. So it doesn't really matter, as the vast majority of owners aren't going to be doing anything that will get it compromised. Many might never connect it to the Internet again after setup.
  - jwatt 4y ago
    I agree the number of attack vectors is significantly reduced in comparison to the same version of Android on a smartphone (particularly if the user is making little or no use of the music player's already limited app store). But there are still many, many CVEs for Bluetooth, for example. Taking the Bluetooth example, I would be happier connecting to a hire car's audio system with a version of Android that is getting patched than a version that is not, and may have known vulnerabilities. I don't want my DAP to potentially be a vector for transferring malware around.
miklosz 4y ago
Been thinking about something like this but in the end I don't want trouble of additional device to take care of. Tried couple of off-line music players for iOS, but was not really happy with the experience so far. Is anyone using an offline mp3/flac player app for iOS (ideally both iPhone and iPad and supporting Apple Watch) where I can upload files (ideally from my NAS)? Paid app is fine, but subscription is not.
ilyt 4y ago
$300 for 32 GB storage with no option to expand sounds kinda awful for dedicated music player
- tecleandor 4y ago
  It has a MicroSD slot for storage.
mrblampo 4y ago
Fascinating. To use such a thing, where would I get downloadable DRM free music these days? What software do I use to sync it to an Android device? What software do I use to browse and play it on an Android device? (I am asking these questions excitedly, not dubiously)
- mrblampo 4y ago
  I guess one option would be to use the same music streaming apps I would use on a phone, but use the download feature aggressively for playing music offline.
- TonyTrapp 4y ago
  There's plenty of stores to buy MP3 or lossless music. Random (un-reviewed) list I found: https://www.10stripe.com/featured/directory/drm-free-music.php https://www.10stripe.com/featured/directory/drm-free-music.p... Obviously there is also Bandcamp. 7digital is also missing from that list.
  - everybodyknows 4y ago
    That list is 13 years old. Many links are dead.
- AdmiralAsshat 4y ago
  > To use such a thing, where would I get downloadable DRM free music these days? I usually do one of the following: 1) Purchase physical CDs from Amazon that include "AutoRip" on the description. This provides a DRM-free mp3 version of the album that you can download. 2) In the event that an AutoRip is not available, do the rip myself. I still have a USB CD/DVD drive that I plug-in to my laptop for this purpose, and a tiny VM to run Exact Audio Copy. 3) Finally, for purchasing digital music outright, there's always Bandcamp. I suppose itunes is still around, too, but to be honest I've never used it.
- pwg 4y ago
  <blockquote>To use such a thing, where would I get downloadable DRM free music these days?</blockquote> <p>One option is the same place you used to get downloadable DRM free music in the past, your local bittorrent client.
pjerem 4y ago
With such specs and form factor, that’d be the perfect phone for me. If it was a phone :(
- mouse_ 4y ago
  Statistically nobody buys Sony phones, it seems there's really no market for truly premium Android devices
  - tobyhinloopen 4y ago
    I really like their phones, in theory. I don’t trust them though. It’s a lot of money for a relatively unknown device
  - pjerem 4y ago
    I bought them twice (Z3 Compact & Z5 Compact). I loved their design. Beautiful, colorful, original, compact and ergonomic. But Sony abandoned them. They barely received any update, the Z5C had an overheat issue that Sony never fixed. The phone in itself, the hardware part, was brillant and I truly miss it. I’d even say that their design was better than iPhones. The problem was Sony. They could have been a serious contender to Apple. Even the software in itself was pretty good out of the box. It’s just that it was never updated and so their phones aged very poorly.
nathias 4y ago
I'm just buying a DAP, but I wouldn't buy an android based one, it'll get obsolete.
mongol 4y ago
It is going to be interesting to see if someone figures out other uses for it. Such as voice recording? I would like a recorder with tactile buttons. This could be it, except it looks like it is lacking a microphone?
- dewey 4y ago
  > I would like a recorder with tactile buttons. Sony has a lot of dedicated voice recorders with tactile buttons already. What are you missing from these?
  - mongol 4y ago
    Android and programability. GPS. I want to geotag my voice notes.
insane_dreamer 4y ago
iPod Nano 4 Gen was one of my favorite electronic devices ever. So sad Apple decided to discontinue it. I would still one today instead of carrying my phone everywhere.
hilbert42 4y ago
Seeing it's running Android and having the name Sony I'd strongly recommended that you not buy one if you intend to play pirate tracks! These days I wouldn't trust Sony as far as I could chuck the Walkman.
- capableweb 4y ago
  Well, maybe do some better research than just reacting to the name before judging stuff? It seems to play things like mp3, wav, aiff, flac and more formats perfectly fine, so hook the thing up to a computer, it shows up as a USB Mass Storage device and you chuck your illegally/legally acquired files over and it'll play it. Can't find anything else that says it has built in DRM, so why would you assume so?
  - hilbert42 4y ago
    It's hard to explain to anyone who never experienced Sony in the days when Masaru Ibuka and Akio Morita—Sony's founders—ran the company. Those were the hardware days before the company freaked out and went into entertainment, films and other intellectual property ventures to the extent of putting root kit viruses on people's computers. In those days Sony was an excellent company and had excellent customer service, its equipment was leading edge/state of the art. I still have lots of equipment from that era that still works. I was so enamored with the original Walkman that one afternoon when in Akihabara I bought four different versions of the device. I have a Sony 100W HiFi that's now 49 years old and its as good as the day it was purchased; I've two ICF-2010 radio receivers bought nearly 40 years ago and they're still used every day—even after all that time their volume potentiometers still havn't gone scratchy. Anyone who owns a ICF-2010 is unlikely to sell it as it's iconic and best of class. Moreover, its service manual is a sight to behold, it ought to be held up by the Rights to Repair advocates as the quintessential way companies should handle service. That company called Sony once run by engineers with engineering excellence as their aim no longer exists! What we now have is miserly spiteful interloper company that has the audacity to still trade under the name of 'Sony'. There's no point me adding more, you either understand what I'm on about or you don't. For the record, I've never been infected with the Sony root kit virus, nor have I pirated any of its IP (I've almost no interest in movies). What I'm on about is that a Trojan horse took over the company and it's never been the same since.
PaulHoule 4y ago
I recently got into collecting minidisc hardware. A minidisc player isn't too different from a flash player in that it plays compressed music off a filesystem, the difference is the filesystem is stored on a magneto-optical disc instead of flash. You definitely don't have the huge capacity that a flash player has but I'd say listening in outdoor conditions you can put 160 minutes of music on a disc and with a few discs you have enough music for your day.
sandreas 4y ago
THIS is really interesting. There are lots of high quality players nowadays (called Hi-res or DAP), but most of them with very custom / outdated android. Fiio has the ability to sideload android apps with M6 and M9 models, but no open app store. Most of these high quality players work well for music, some of them can even be used as USB sound card, but none of them has a specific audio book app / handling - except of course Apple iPod. With android 12 and a size pretty similar to old iPod classic or iPod touch, the NW-A300 Walkman device is very interesting to me. Slightly too large, but it could run Apps like substreamer (with Navidrome) and AudioBookShelf. I really hope the battery can be replaced and it is repairable without too much hazzle. Similar high quality devices / brands - some of them > 1000$: - Sony (NW-A55) - Fiio (M6, M9, M11) - Hidizs (AP80) - Shanling (M2X, M3X) - iBasso - Astell & Kern - Ruizu - Hiby (R3) - Lootoo - Luxury & Precision / L&P - Cowon
- 28304283409234 4y ago
  What is the software support cycle on this walkman look like? Android 12 is next year's outdated Android.
  - sandreas 4y ago
    If it is a stock android it's quite possible that an open variant could be supported some day. These walkman devices have several advantages over smartphones: - Better audio quality (obviously, some also have balanced outputs) - Better Bluetooth high quality transmit standards (LDAC, aptX, etc.) - Smaller form factor (most of the time, some of these are bulky) - Control buttons Something I don't know: Do they support earphone remotes? I bought an LG G5 H850 with a bang & olufsson audio module (Hi-fi plus) - pretty good so far and cheap (< 100$). - Lineage OS support - Audio Jack - Pretty small form factor - support up to 2TB micro sd - an interchangeable battery But it is still to big and the lack of control buttons is pretty annoying, even if earphone remotes are supported.
    - yarg 4y ago
      There's something dirty about the fact that we have to hope that one day we'll be able to install our own operating systems on a linux device.
pavlov 4y ago
If it doesn’t play DAT and MiniDisc, is it even a real Sony?
- xd1936 4y ago
  I hope it has a Memory Stick Pro Duo™ slot.
racl101 4y ago
Thank you Sony. I would so buy a standalone music player with buttons and OMG .... a motherfucking 3.5mm headphone jack. So simple. I don't get how removing essential things became "progress" and demanded "courage" from the consumer to accept.
ubermonkey 4y ago
I don't understand why these products still exist. The audio out of my iPhone with good headphones is excellent. It's certainly the greatest portable audio solution I've had in my lifetime. Not needing another device is a real boon for me, so I have a hard time understanding why you'd choose a single-purpose player in 2023.
- geoffeg 4y ago
  I think it's for people that have higher impedance headphones or just want a more audiophile-focused experience (hardware playback controls, a dedicated device, etc).
- zwirbl 4y ago
  Having a specialized device is a real boon to others. Also I'd expect Sony to use great DACs
- mgkimsal 4y ago
  you want to have... just music? If this gets lost, you don't have to worry about identity theft, bank/financial compromise, etc. Yes, security on modern smartphones is... pretty strong, but it's also a target.
- vanilla_nut 4y ago
  > The audio out of my iPhone with good headphones is excellent. Unless you're using a no-longer-supported older iPhone, you don't have an aux jack. Given the ongoing ubiquity of aux cables in cars, homes, planes, etc. and the ongoing unreliability and low quality of bluetooth headphones, I'm not sure you can call the audio out "excellent." I'm sure it works for many use cases. When you use an external DAC, I'm sure it's even great. But considering the fact that Apple doesn't even support hifi codecs over Bluetooth, it might be that you just have a simple use case for audio. I know that between the car and my home speaker system, I couldn't live without an aux jack.
  - ubermonkey 4y ago
    I am a lifelong audio nut, and I suffer from Headphone Acquisition Disorder. The sound I get from my Airpods Max paired to my iPhone is easily as good as I get from the Sennheisers I have to plug into a headphone amp to use. So no, the idea that all Bluetooth is "unreliable and low quality" is not a true statement. I don't use an Aux jack anywhere anymore. My car has Carplay. I don't use wired headphones anymore, because I haven't been able to hear a justifiable difference. My guess is that most people who whine about things like "hifi codecs over Bluetooth" wouldn't be able to reliably choose the audio stack they think of as superior in a blind test.
5amdotis 4y ago
I am still using my iPod classic 6th gen 160 GB. Almost everyday. It is wonderful to have a single purpose device for listing to music, podcasts, or audiobooks.
imwillofficial 4y ago
From the article: “It's a shame Sony never became a force in smartphones, because, wow, their product designs are still so good.” It looks like shit
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minimalist 4y ago
If this has a Qualcomm chipset and run Android, does this mean that it has a functional GPS radio as well? I've always wanted the equivalent of an android PDA/MP3 player--with all the functionality and ability to run 'apps' but without the cellular radio. I realize I could use an old phone in airplane mode, but I don't want that :)
- dstaley 4y ago
  They both use Qualcomm chips. The smaller model uses a QCS2290, which appears to support GPS, so I suspect the larger model does as well. https://www.qualcomm.com/products/technology/processors/application-processors/qcs2290 https://www.qualcomm.com/products/technology/processors/appl...
misterprime 4y ago
I wonder why these don't also include audio recording features. It seems like a standalone device to play music well would also be perfect for recording audio well.
- franga2000 4y ago
  There are very few situations where you can't just use a phone, but don't need any of the features of a proper audio recorder (phantom power, multiple inputs, XLR/jack, a good directional microphone...). It wouldn't hurt to have a mic on the player for sure, but I can't see it unlocking any new use cases.
  - misterprime 4y ago
    There's a whole market for stand alone audio recorders. https://www.amazon.com/s?k=audio+recorder&crid=1W4GXCLJNGKPI&sprefix=audio+recorder%2Caps%2C215&ref=nb_sb_noss_1 https://www.amazon.com/s?k=audio+recorder&crid=1W4GXCLJNGKPI...
    - franga2000 4y ago
      Oh yes, I've used those a few times and they were great. They're usually quite cheap (sub 50€), have weeks to months of battery, tactile controls (so you can use them for narration without looking) and (perhaps most importantly) large and high-quality microphones. Not something you can just add to an mp3 player.
      - misterprime 4y ago
        Thanks! Yes, they have nice features of their own. What about adding an mp3 player's features to those products?
lofaszvanitt 4y ago
The ideal mp3 player is - small, fits in your palm, - plays flac, wav, mp3, midi, and other obscure formats, - easy to upload/download files, pops up as an usb drive when plugged into a pc, - good sound output (I can sacrifice size for sound quality), - jack/bluetooth output, - sd/microsd card support, - cheap, - +1 optional fm/dap+? receiver. I once bought a Sony Xperia mobile phone. It had all kinds of issues. Microphones were trash, the noise suppression was terrible, sometimes you couldn't hear the other party, the back glass shattered multiple times while sitting on the desk etc. That was such a bad experience I never touched any kind of handheld from Sony, and not gonna touch this one, for sure.
- accidue 4y ago
  Hidizs (AP80)?
  - lofaszvanitt 4y ago
    Hm, looks great, thanks.
- teruakohatu 4y ago
  - has a removable / replaceable battery
CharlesW 4y ago
What's interesting about this vs. something like an Apple Watch? It's hard to imagine a use can where I need to to hear lossless audio on wired headphones but wouldn't have my phone with me.
MR4D 4y ago
7 buttons on one side. The whole thing is roughly the size of a deck of cards, so not sure how well that works out for anyone with big hands or gloves. But better than a touch screen I suppose.
d1l 4y ago
I have an nwa55, which is notably Not one of the android walkmans. I love it and spend usually 1-2 hours a night listening to music on it before bed. Battery life is incredible. I'm not sure why they went android though. Begs the question why not just get a phone.
eqmvii 4y ago
still waiting for minidiscs to make their comeback.
pasdechance 4y ago
If anyone is wondering, there are a number of choices out there for DAPs and portable music devices. https://www.head-fi.org/threads/hi-res-portable-daps-comparison-chart-2022.961903/ https://www.head-fi.org/threads/hi-res-portable-daps-compari... I have a Shanling Q1. But, next time around I will probably go with something from Sony. Not out of brand loyalty, but because some of these companies tend to forget to provide updates. I really didn't want an Android device for music. I just wanted something around €100 that could play hi-res music. To echo what so many others say: all hail the Sansa Clip+ and Rockbox.
jamjamjam27 4y ago
But where do you get legal flacs from for a price comparable to what one would pay for a service like spotify, qobuz or tidal? Long gone are the days I could exchange them with friends as none of them own any anymore...
sampling 4y ago
With regards to playlisting my digital music collection in novel and interesting ways, I've found Plexamp's "Guest DJ" feature [1] to be second to none. It's not the cheapest piece of software. However when viewed in comparison to the cost of a standalone mp3-player, I think Plex's $119.99 Lifetime Pass is justifiable. [1] https://mobile.twitter.com/plexamp/status/1585704401238298631 https://mobile.twitter.com/plexamp/status/158570440123829863...
tentacleuno 4y ago
I'm a real fan of Sony audio equipment. My XM3 cans still make me smile when I turn them up. Absolutely amazing sound.
am_lu 4y ago
I miss good mp3 player days. I started on iriver cd player that could read MP3s... once i had some spare money upgraded to iriver H10 wit 20GB spinning rust drive (still have it, still working, sitting in the drawer). Once tried an old ipod, to see what the hassle, learned the pain of loading my own music to it, and the lack of file browser on it, no i dont want that artist/album BS, got my own categorized collection. Sold that one quickly. Sandisk sansa with rockbox was spot on, both both units failed like a year from time i bought them. Currently using an old old heavy duty samsung xcover2, with cyanogen mod, it does not have a simcard just 128gb microsd with lots of music on it. DAC is reasonably good on it and it plays FLAC no problem. Doubles as offline GPS with osmAnd maps loaded in.

322 points by rcarmo 4y ago

I quite like the look of this device. It's blocky, 16:9 screen, lots of buttons. I would definitely buy a phone or PDA in this format. Actually I wonder if this could function as a decent PDA? I guess it doesn't have any cameras or GPS, which would be nice to have.

kube-system 4y ago
The older Sony Xperia phones look at lot like this, but unfortunately the new ones don’t.
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yawniek 4y ago
One of the reasons i liked and bought the xperia pro-i was this design style. Unfortunately it has really bad battery life.
- antonyh 4y ago
  I have the Pro-I and I get 3+ days on a charge. Right now it reports 21 hours since 100%, and 3 days left. It's been excellent.

_trampeltier 4y ago

Finally with a standart USB port. So I guess it's time to buy a new one :-)

andremedeiros 4y ago

I’m not knowledgeable at all, but I suspect there would be a DAC I could buy that’d make my iPhone sound just as good. Am I way off base?

astrange 4y ago
The $9 headphone adapter is better than most audiophile DACs. Audiophile equipment is a scam (one sign is the "balanced" audio output, which they pretend is better but isn't) and Japan's high res audio brands are also scams. You might want an external amp for high impedance headphones for electrical compatibility reasons, but an amp and DAC are not the same thing.
- nicolaslem 4y ago
  > one sign is the "balanced" audio output, which they pretend is better but isn't. Maybe for a MP3 player it does not matter, but in general the physics behind balanced analog audio is quite sound (pardon the pun). It is a simple trick that provides better resistance to interference. Every XLR cable on the floor at a show is balanced and it is not because the sound guy fell for audiophile marketing, it is because it works and costs next to nothing.
  - astrange 4y ago
    Indeed it does, but that doesn't really apply to headphones since the cable is short and there's not a lot of EMF interference. It does have one theoretical advantage - the maximum voltage from a battery powered device can be higher which might be useful for a very high impedance headphone if they're too quiet.
Synaesthesia 4y ago
Yes but iPhones already have a pretty good DAC so you're not gaining much.
- bakugo 4y ago
  Doesn't matter what DAC they have unless you're listening on the built in speaker, because you can't plug anything into it.
  - Synaesthesia 4y ago

donatj 4y ago

So why buy one of these over an Android phone and an external DAC/Amp? Also 32gb? That's only a handful of highres audio. I'm assuming the people buying this kind of thing are the same people buying higher than CD quality audio?

matt-attack 4y ago
I'm pretty sure the last iPod I bought in 2006 has 160GB.
- CaptainZapp 4y ago
  Sure (I actually still use the same model). But it doesn't come with a memory extension slot. Which, granted, is also not really necessary.
ErneX 4y ago
Some people prefer a dedicated device for music.
Godel_unicode 4y ago
I feel like they know that the people who buy this are going to need TB of storage, and are going to use MicroSD cards for the media.
neonscribe 4y ago
32GB is just for the system. It has a microSD slot for music.
xeromal 4y ago
I could probably use something like this hiking so I can power off my phone for emergencies hunting/camping.
- Ballas 4y ago
  Putting your phone in airplane mode and carrying a power bank for emergencies seems like a much more efficient solution to me?

rektide 4y ago

I wish they'd make phones with profiles more like this. 3.6", nice tactile controls. Even if it has relatively short 16hr battery life, I'm fine, if it can take a 25W charge. A passable camera also feels essential.

aidenn0 4y ago
The Unihertz Jelly 2 has everything except the cameras are arguably not passable. They are like 2010 Android phone level quality at best.

brundolf 4y ago

It's bizarre to only have 32GB/64GB storage. I remember getting a dedicated music player with 80GB in 2008. Bulk storage seems like it would be one of the few good ways to differentiate these from a smartphone Maybe I'm just not the target market. They must be doing something right because Hideo Kojima uses one (and frequently tweets pictures of it): https://twitter.com/hideo_kojima_en/status/1614746093270740994 https://twitter.com/hideo_kojima_en/status/16147460932707409...

em500 4y ago
You can add a 512GB micro-SD for $50.
- nomorewords 4y ago
  I think that's not the point. They are making a product seemingly targeted at audiophiles and they don't provide enough storage (for the amount of music an audiophile might have), while showing off some obscure features like the gold plated components
  - deleted 4y ago
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  - izacus 4y ago
    It has an SD card slot for unlimited storage practically, what are you complaining about?
  - bakugo 4y ago
    It doesn't "provide enough storage" because it's not supposed to provide storage. You're supposed to provide your own storage, whatever amount you see fit, and you are able to upgrade it at any time. I know people nowadays are used to not having any control over their storage and simply throwing their device in the trash and buying a new one every few years when it's no longer enough, but it wasn't like this in the past.
- brundolf 4y ago

walterbell 4y ago

Is there a viable competitor of these elegant Sony designs? 2021 thread on music players, some with Rockbox firmware, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26870648 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26870648

LeoPanthera 4y ago
Fiio devices are excellent, but not much cheaper. https://www.fiio.com https://www.fiio.com
- yborg 4y ago
  Have a FiiO M6, industrial design is nice, but the system software is horrid, as is the battery life.
  - walterbell 4y ago
    FiiO M3K has partial Rockbox open-source firmware support, https://rockbox.org https://rockbox.org.

munchler 4y ago

> I have no use for a standalone music player, but both of these Walkmans are so pretty that I just want to hold one. I think that sums it up pretty well. Who would actually buy one of these?

p-e-w 4y ago

Is there any scientific evidence that the special hardware found in high-end audio equipment (gold-plated connectors, "large polymer capacitors", expensive DACs etc.) actually produces perceptibly different (and perceptibly better) audio output? I mean of course assuming hearing abilities that are within 1-2 standard deviations of the human average, not one-in-a-million-people super hearing. Also assuming actual music is being played, not audio tracks specifically engineered to highlight the difference.

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makeitdouble 4y ago
I think your real question is wether uncompressed audio from a fine tuned DAC sounds better than compressed AAC converted by current Bluetooth headphones. The competition to this are mobile phones, and they almost all moved to bluetooth only, so the choice is which Bluetooth headphones gets better sound with a form factor you better like, pitted against the flurry of wired headphones and hybrid that are still on the market.
MrBuddyCasino 4y ago
Its all marketing. Price and performance have a surprisingly low correlation in the hifi market, after going above the threshold of crappyness. Nobody will believe you if you tell them this.
semi-extrinsic 4y ago
Certainly the gold-plated oxygen free copper hocus pocus would only be relevant after the DAC where the signal is analog. But that doesn't matter if you are just cargo culting. Case in point, the infamous $1650 HDMI cables where people would leave hilarious reviews on Amazon. That being said, there can be a big difference going from "consumer" level to "basic audiophile". I remember my own surprise when I first got a pair of Grado SR80s, how many details I could hear in music that I never knew existed before.
- p-e-w 4y ago

Tsiklon 4y ago

One thing to note about Sony android players is that the European models have ferocious volume limits; neither having high gain mode, nor the grunt to drive more inefficient headphones in low gain mode. This appears to be set as a value in a read only database that would require root to remove. A method to acquire root is not known to be available on any of them.

suction 4y ago
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Doxin 4y ago
That's odd, AFAIK the EU only requires a warning at a certain volume level. My android phone will give you a warning that you've set the volume to the limit once, but then allows you to increase it further after dismissing the warning anyways.
- Tsiklon 4y ago
  They certainly do that in Europe too, but they also hard limit the output of the player. Even the balanced output, which should offer more power is limited to the same volume as the 3.5mm output.
112233 4y ago
I've noticed Sony doing a sort of malicious compliance with European regulations, implementing them in a way that is conformant, yet maximally infuriating. For example, energy usage warnings on their TVs sold in eirope.
- Tsiklon 4y ago
  This is exactly what they are doing - as confirmed by their response to my very unhappy review of the WM1AM2 on their website: https://www.sony.co.uk/store/product/nwwm1am2.cew/WM1AM2-Walkman-Digital-Media-Player https://www.sony.co.uk/store/product/nwwm1am2.cew/WM1AM2-Wal...

rvz 4y ago

At least it has both a headphone jack and Bluetooth 5, unlike the majority of the smartphones out there that have outright removed the former. Just plug it in and that is it.

femiagbabiaka 4y ago

Finally USB-C, no more proprietary cables.

forgotmypw17 4y ago

This looks awesome. I've been wishing for more hardware buttons on Android or iPhone devices for so long. I would even take a case for iPhone which has extra buttons for common tasks on the side. Please steal this idea.

mg 4y ago

I am a huge fan of standalone mp3-players. So much so, that at some point I made a comparison site for mp3-players. But nobody cared. I made comparison sites for smartphones, laptops and monitors which became quite popular. But for mp3-players, it seemed like I am the only person on planet earth who uses them. Personally, I still use a Sony Walkman NWZ-E585. For me, that is the best mp3 player ever made. It has a nice form factor, feels very good haptically, the navigation interface is ok, the sound quality is great, the noise cancelling too, and you can access the storage without having to install propriatery software on your computer.

tjrDL6MjB2Zwwa 4y ago
Is that player comparison site still around, or do you have a recommendation for someone who has long had the thought of getting a dedicated music playing device? The article listed those as $800, which is ridiculous and there's no way I'm paying that much, but if I can find something at a much more reasonable price (preferably a physical headphone jack) I'd be happy as a clam.
- omnicognate 4y ago
  I used to have one that cost me around £200 and was alright but sounded pretty anaemic. I replaced it with one that cost around £600 and is way better. I love it. Comments of the form "price X is unreasonable because I'd never pay it" are mildly annoying. You're an individual, not a market, and as such don't get to choose what a "reasonable" price is. DAPs (digital audio players) are available at a wide range of prices. The top result for "MP3 player" on Amazon UK right now is £23.99. Choose a price point you're happy with and you'll find something. I love mine at the price point I went for. (I've also had one for around £50, bought a couple of ~£20 ones for my small children and owned a couple of different DAC dongles for my phone. Unsurprisingly, the sound quality is very highly correlated with the price, up to the level I've tried. I expect it levels out not far above, though, and if you decide to pay thousands for a DAP they'll make it out of gold-plated copper because there's nothing else left to use the money on. [1]) [1] https://www.sony.co.uk/electronics/walkman/nw-wm1z https://www.sony.co.uk/electronics/walkman/nw-wm1z

dotancohen 4y ago

This device has all the specs that I want _for a phone_. Seriously, I would love a music player with a phone, not a phone with a music player. They do need to increase the storage, then add a SIM card and this thing would fly off the shelves.

sleepydog 4y ago

I came across these recently at an electronics store in Japan. These feel really good in my hand; it's not too wide or long, the buttons feel really solid, and its a bit thicker than a phone which makes it easier to hold and makes the buttons bigger. And they are light. I have no use for an mp3 player, but I would love to have a phone in the same body. It runs android but doing anything other than playing music felt sluggish. I used the smaller xperia phones for 2 generations and really liked them, but this mp3 player feels even better in my hand.

DoingIsLearning 4y ago
All phones are migrating towards being portable video watchers and mobile gaming devices with huges screen surface area. I was hoping it was just a trend and they come back to phones that my thumb can reach the top corner and that actually fit in my jeans back pocket. Seems like all the marketing people have forgotten about those, or perhaps I am just in the minority and there really is no market for phones as _just_ a PDA device.
- Nextgrid 4y ago
  > All phones are migrating towards being portable video watchers and mobile gaming devices with huges screen surface area. Because you can't fit as many ads on a small screen.
- SSLy 4y ago
  You can still buy iPhone 13 Mini, like I did last year.

francasso 4y ago

I say it's time to bring back cassette tapes and a new edition of the TPS-L2. If Leica can release a new M6, Sony should release a new TPS-L2

sincarne 4y ago
Well, we're halfway there. "Last year, cassette sales grew 28% to 440,000 units, up from 343,000 in 2021." https://www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2023/01/the-cassette-comeback-is-not-just-hype-and-here-are-stats-to-prove-it.html https://www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2023/01/the-cassette-comebac...
Hackbraten 4y ago
Even if cassette tapes become popular again, decent-quality cassette mechanisms aren’t coming back. If Sony (or anyone else) ever chooses to release another cassette player, brace yourself for a meh listening experience, and a crap mechanism with lots of plastic that’s going to deteriorate and break, with no one around who’d be skilled enough to fix your unit.
- bobsmooth 4y ago
  Is the knowledge to make good read heads just lost? There's definitely a market for them. You'd think a Chinese manufacturer would have started cranking them out by now.
  - Hackbraten 4y ago
    I don’t know much about read heads. To me, they seem like complex mechanical devices on their own. The head must be able to move vertically, yet end up perfectly flush with the tape material. Its design requires special consideration just so it won’t damage the tape. It needs to take some degree of abuse, mostly in the form of abrasion but also (inappropriate use of) cleaning agents. Then the angle of the head needs to be adjustable, and the head needs to maintain the angle even in the face of vibrations. Even if someone knew how to design a good read head, producing one might turn out difficult in a less-than-mass market. What worries me even more than that is the art of building a drive. A tape drive must maintain the angular velocity of the capstan(s). If yours varies by more than a few tenths of percent, you’ll be dealing with “wow and flutter”. Not all listeners may care enough, but most do notice. Drive makers used to have all those issues under control, at least in the higher-end segment – as Sony has shown with their DD series and the D6C. Trying to mass-produce a decent drive in 2023 would, however, eat up incredible amounts of engineering time just for _designing_ a workable mechanism. Trying to copy and paste one of the old designs may turn out even more laborious. Those designs are tied to a huge stack of specific parts [0], for which there used to be an ecosystem of suppliers but those all long gone of course. I can imagine that they’ve taken their own specific knowledge with them, too. [0]: If you’re interested, elektrotanya.com has service manuals for a few higher-end Walkmen with exploded-view diagrams and BOMs. Looking at those has been a very humbling experience for me!

lnxg33k1 4y ago

It seems that tech world goes in round, we unify devices to only having to take one around, then we split the unique device in multiple devices, and back? Is it what capitalism is about? Manufacture needs back and forth to keep you paying?

alkonaut 4y ago

I'd pay for a thing that does streaming, is much smaller than my phone, and has good physical buttons. I don't want to run or sit in the gym with my huge iphone. But I also don't want to collect files, it has to support all the streaming services and I need to be confident it supports the ones tomorrow as well.

nextlevelwizard 4y ago
Have you thought about Apple Watch? Sure it lacks the physical buttons, but from my experience it is quite responsive with sweaty fingers.
- Nextgrid 4y ago
  Edit: I stand corrected, see comment below. --- I don't believe you can download & save Spotify tracks on the watch itself - it still only operates as a companion app to the main iPhone one. So your only option is Apple Music which is a pile of shit.
  - elAhmo 4y ago
    It is somewhat of a recent addition, but you can now do that as well: download music and play it from Spotify without having your phone. I think they added it earlier last year, I was using it during summer.
  - derwiki 4y ago
    What's the beef with Apple Music? Besides Discovery Weekly on Spotify, they seem about the same to me
    - Nextgrid 4y ago
      Spotify beats Apple Music on performance alone. Search results and playback are instant on Spotify, but have a couple seconds' latency on Apple Music. The Apple Music client feels like an Electron pile of shit, which is ironic because the Spotify Desktop client is actually Electron and manages to be more performant and feel more native despite that.

eiiot 4y ago

Can anyone really name a reason why you would need a standalone MP3 player in 2023? With services like Tidal or even just Spotify it seems like there are so many downsides, with little to no benefits. (Other than maybe owning your own physical music as opposed to relying on a streaming service?)

gppk 4y ago
My wife has decades of music downloaded from CDs etc. It's just the music she likes, no ads/distractions/faffing about with networks etc. For her commute it works great to have just an MP3 player. She doesn't want to listen to other music, she likes what she knows, so the benefit of recommendations etc aren't of interest either. Just one data point for your question :)
- MikusR 4y ago
  There are these things, smartphones or something like that, that apparently almost everyone has, that can do that.
  - deleted 4y ago
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  - DocTomoe 4y ago
    Some people prefer a device that has real, physical buttons and is not permanently at risk of shattering after being dropped (the use case being to listen to music while on the go...)
- antihero 4y ago
  For personal music collection I’ve found using navidrome (and subsonic before that) to be a much nicer solution than having a separate player.
  - KerrAvon 4y ago
    Some people want to avoid futzing with tech for some things to whatever extent they can avoid it. Even some people otherwise immersed in tech.

deleted 4y ago

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mhdhn 4y ago

Instareview: maybe cool, let's see... What, no buttons to skip ahead/behind 15 seconds? Useless. What a goof! Good-bye

schizo89 4y ago

Mobile phones aren't allowed in prisons while MP3 players are. Good to know Sony cares about inmates.

m000 4y ago

I would be hesitant to shell out 400 EUR for a music-player-only device. But this is a very appealing phone form factor, if Sony could also squeeze-in a GSM module, a workable (not necessarily great) camera, and more storage (32GB sounds rather measly these days).

Narishma 4y ago
It's not a music-player only device. It's basically an Android phone without the modem. It can do a ton of stuff besides play music.

moondowner 4y ago

I'm pretty happy with the Hidizs AP80 PRO-X (priced just under $200), but the Walkman devices are the endgame.

cutler 4y ago

I paid £250 for 5th generation iPod Touch in 2013. SONY's prices are way higher.

shp0ngle 4y ago

I heard good stuff about the Fiio players. Apparently they also run Android. https://www.fiio.com/player https://www.fiio.com/player

ldng 4y ago

YES BUTTONS ! (sorry for low quality post but it's been getting tough to find good hardware with buttons ...)

drooopy 4y ago
I share your enthusiasm. Much of my frustration with modern electronics and home appliances stems from the fact that I have to use shitty touch screens and touch buttons.
- DoingIsLearning 4y ago
  I appreciate the frustration and I am right there with you as a user. However, it is actually hard (and costly) to manufacture and quality control physical switches that will survive the life time of a warranty + a few years (in terms of mechanical failure, dirt, corrosion, water ingress, etc.). Once you appreciate this then it is pretty easy to see how the design choices of using capacitive interfaces are a no brainer for consumer electronics and appliances. On top of it you have the marketing push of capacitive interfaces = modern.
  - aussieshibe 4y ago
    Maybe we're almost up to "physical buttons = retro cool"? I'm certainly ready for that.
izzydata 4y ago
Soon to be a major problem in vehicles as well. Hopefully it doesn't get too difficult to find a car with buttons.
- aussieshibe 4y ago
  Absolutely. How is anyone supposed to be able to safely do anything on a touchscreen while driving? That using a touchscreen while driving is legal completely baffles me.

jwatt 4y ago

I would like something like this but one thing that makes Android-based music players like this unappealing is the versions of Android they start with. When this is releases in February, Android 13 will have been out for six months. Android devices don't get security updates for long enough as it is, so starting out the gate with a non-current version of Android isn't great.

Tams80 4y ago
It's a DAP. I mean, sure, you could be doing smart device things on it, but really it only runs Android to get easy access to streaming services and media apps. So it doesn't really matter, as the vast majority of owners aren't going to be doing anything that will get it compromised. Many might never connect it to the Internet again after setup.
- jwatt 4y ago
  I agree the number of attack vectors is significantly reduced in comparison to the same version of Android on a smartphone (particularly if the user is making little or no use of the music player's already limited app store). But there are still many, many CVEs for Bluetooth, for example. Taking the Bluetooth example, I would be happier connecting to a hire car's audio system with a version of Android that is getting patched than a version that is not, and may have known vulnerabilities. I don't want my DAP to potentially be a vector for transferring malware around.

miklosz 4y ago

Been thinking about something like this but in the end I don't want trouble of additional device to take care of. Tried couple of off-line music players for iOS, but was not really happy with the experience so far. Is anyone using an offline mp3/flac player app for iOS (ideally both iPhone and iPad and supporting Apple Watch) where I can upload files (ideally from my NAS)? Paid app is fine, but subscription is not.

ilyt 4y ago

$300 for 32 GB storage with no option to expand sounds kinda awful for dedicated music player

tecleandor 4y ago
It has a MicroSD slot for storage.

mrblampo 4y ago

Fascinating. To use such a thing, where would I get downloadable DRM free music these days? What software do I use to sync it to an Android device? What software do I use to browse and play it on an Android device? (I am asking these questions excitedly, not dubiously)

mrblampo 4y ago
I guess one option would be to use the same music streaming apps I would use on a phone, but use the download feature aggressively for playing music offline.
TonyTrapp 4y ago
There's plenty of stores to buy MP3 or lossless music. Random (un-reviewed) list I found: https://www.10stripe.com/featured/directory/drm-free-music.php https://www.10stripe.com/featured/directory/drm-free-music.p... Obviously there is also Bandcamp. 7digital is also missing from that list.
- everybodyknows 4y ago
  That list is 13 years old. Many links are dead.
AdmiralAsshat 4y ago
> To use such a thing, where would I get downloadable DRM free music these days? I usually do one of the following: 1) Purchase physical CDs from Amazon that include "AutoRip" on the description. This provides a DRM-free mp3 version of the album that you can download. 2) In the event that an AutoRip is not available, do the rip myself. I still have a USB CD/DVD drive that I plug-in to my laptop for this purpose, and a tiny VM to run Exact Audio Copy. 3) Finally, for purchasing digital music outright, there's always Bandcamp. I suppose itunes is still around, too, but to be honest I've never used it.
pwg 4y ago
<blockquote>To use such a thing, where would I get downloadable DRM free music these days?</blockquote> <p>One option is the same place you used to get downloadable DRM free music in the past, your local bittorrent client.

pjerem 4y ago

With such specs and form factor, that’d be the perfect phone for me. If it was a phone :(

mouse_ 4y ago
Statistically nobody buys Sony phones, it seems there's really no market for truly premium Android devices
- tobyhinloopen 4y ago
  I really like their phones, in theory. I don’t trust them though. It’s a lot of money for a relatively unknown device
- pjerem 4y ago
  I bought them twice (Z3 Compact & Z5 Compact). I loved their design. Beautiful, colorful, original, compact and ergonomic. But Sony abandoned them. They barely received any update, the Z5C had an overheat issue that Sony never fixed. The phone in itself, the hardware part, was brillant and I truly miss it. I’d even say that their design was better than iPhones. The problem was Sony. They could have been a serious contender to Apple. Even the software in itself was pretty good out of the box. It’s just that it was never updated and so their phones aged very poorly.

nathias 4y ago

I'm just buying a DAP, but I wouldn't buy an android based one, it'll get obsolete.

mongol 4y ago

It is going to be interesting to see if someone figures out other uses for it. Such as voice recording? I would like a recorder with tactile buttons. This could be it, except it looks like it is lacking a microphone?

dewey 4y ago
> I would like a recorder with tactile buttons. Sony has a lot of dedicated voice recorders with tactile buttons already. What are you missing from these?
- mongol 4y ago
  Android and programability. GPS. I want to geotag my voice notes.

insane_dreamer 4y ago

iPod Nano 4 Gen was one of my favorite electronic devices ever. So sad Apple decided to discontinue it. I would still one today instead of carrying my phone everywhere.

hilbert42 4y ago

Seeing it's running Android and having the name Sony I'd strongly recommended that you not buy one if you intend to play pirate tracks! These days I wouldn't trust Sony as far as I could chuck the Walkman.

capableweb 4y ago
Well, maybe do some better research than just reacting to the name before judging stuff? It seems to play things like mp3, wav, aiff, flac and more formats perfectly fine, so hook the thing up to a computer, it shows up as a USB Mass Storage device and you chuck your illegally/legally acquired files over and it'll play it. Can't find anything else that says it has built in DRM, so why would you assume so?
- hilbert42 4y ago
  It's hard to explain to anyone who never experienced Sony in the days when Masaru Ibuka and Akio Morita—Sony's founders—ran the company. Those were the hardware days before the company freaked out and went into entertainment, films and other intellectual property ventures to the extent of putting root kit viruses on people's computers. In those days Sony was an excellent company and had excellent customer service, its equipment was leading edge/state of the art. I still have lots of equipment from that era that still works. I was so enamored with the original Walkman that one afternoon when in Akihabara I bought four different versions of the device. I have a Sony 100W HiFi that's now 49 years old and its as good as the day it was purchased; I've two ICF-2010 radio receivers bought nearly 40 years ago and they're still used every day—even after all that time their volume potentiometers still havn't gone scratchy. Anyone who owns a ICF-2010 is unlikely to sell it as it's iconic and best of class. Moreover, its service manual is a sight to behold, it ought to be held up by the Rights to Repair advocates as the quintessential way companies should handle service. That company called Sony once run by engineers with engineering excellence as their aim no longer exists! What we now have is miserly spiteful interloper company that has the audacity to still trade under the name of 'Sony'. There's no point me adding more, you either understand what I'm on about or you don't. For the record, I've never been infected with the Sony root kit virus, nor have I pirated any of its IP (I've almost no interest in movies). What I'm on about is that a Trojan horse took over the company and it's never been the same since.

PaulHoule 4y ago

I recently got into collecting minidisc hardware. A minidisc player isn't too different from a flash player in that it plays compressed music off a filesystem, the difference is the filesystem is stored on a magneto-optical disc instead of flash. You definitely don't have the huge capacity that a flash player has but I'd say listening in outdoor conditions you can put 160 minutes of music on a disc and with a few discs you have enough music for your day.

sandreas 4y ago

THIS is really interesting. There are lots of high quality players nowadays (called Hi-res or DAP), but most of them with very custom / outdated android. Fiio has the ability to sideload android apps with M6 and M9 models, but no open app store. Most of these high quality players work well for music, some of them can even be used as USB sound card, but none of them has a specific audio book app / handling - except of course Apple iPod. With android 12 and a size pretty similar to old iPod classic or iPod touch, the NW-A300 Walkman device is very interesting to me. Slightly too large, but it could run Apps like substreamer (with Navidrome) and AudioBookShelf. I really hope the battery can be replaced and it is repairable without too much hazzle. Similar high quality devices / brands - some of them > 1000$: - Sony (NW-A55) - Fiio (M6, M9, M11) - Hidizs (AP80) - Shanling (M2X, M3X) - iBasso - Astell & Kern - Ruizu - Hiby (R3) - Lootoo - Luxury & Precision / L&P - Cowon

28304283409234 4y ago
What is the software support cycle on this walkman look like? Android 12 is next year's outdated Android.
- sandreas 4y ago
  If it is a stock android it's quite possible that an open variant could be supported some day. These walkman devices have several advantages over smartphones: - Better audio quality (obviously, some also have balanced outputs) - Better Bluetooth high quality transmit standards (LDAC, aptX, etc.) - Smaller form factor (most of the time, some of these are bulky) - Control buttons Something I don't know: Do they support earphone remotes? I bought an LG G5 H850 with a bang & olufsson audio module (Hi-fi plus) - pretty good so far and cheap (< 100$). - Lineage OS support - Audio Jack - Pretty small form factor - support up to 2TB micro sd - an interchangeable battery But it is still to big and the lack of control buttons is pretty annoying, even if earphone remotes are supported.
  - yarg 4y ago
    There's something dirty about the fact that we have to hope that one day we'll be able to install our own operating systems on a linux device.

pavlov 4y ago

If it doesn’t play DAT and MiniDisc, is it even a real Sony?

xd1936 4y ago
I hope it has a Memory Stick Pro Duo™ slot.

racl101 4y ago

Thank you Sony. I would so buy a standalone music player with buttons and OMG .... a motherfucking 3.5mm headphone jack. So simple. I don't get how removing essential things became "progress" and demanded "courage" from the consumer to accept.

ubermonkey 4y ago

I don't understand why these products still exist. The audio out of my iPhone with good headphones is excellent. It's certainly the greatest portable audio solution I've had in my lifetime. Not needing another device is a real boon for me, so I have a hard time understanding why you'd choose a single-purpose player in 2023.

geoffeg 4y ago
I think it's for people that have higher impedance headphones or just want a more audiophile-focused experience (hardware playback controls, a dedicated device, etc).
zwirbl 4y ago
Having a specialized device is a real boon to others. Also I'd expect Sony to use great DACs
mgkimsal 4y ago
you want to have... just music? If this gets lost, you don't have to worry about identity theft, bank/financial compromise, etc. Yes, security on modern smartphones is... pretty strong, but it's also a target.
vanilla_nut 4y ago
> The audio out of my iPhone with good headphones is excellent. Unless you're using a no-longer-supported older iPhone, you don't have an aux jack. Given the ongoing ubiquity of aux cables in cars, homes, planes, etc. and the ongoing unreliability and low quality of bluetooth headphones, I'm not sure you can call the audio out "excellent." I'm sure it works for many use cases. When you use an external DAC, I'm sure it's even great. But considering the fact that Apple doesn't even support hifi codecs over Bluetooth, it might be that you just have a simple use case for audio. I know that between the car and my home speaker system, I couldn't live without an aux jack.
- ubermonkey 4y ago
  I am a lifelong audio nut, and I suffer from Headphone Acquisition Disorder. The sound I get from my Airpods Max paired to my iPhone is easily as good as I get from the Sennheisers I have to plug into a headphone amp to use. So no, the idea that all Bluetooth is "unreliable and low quality" is not a true statement. I don't use an Aux jack anywhere anymore. My car has Carplay. I don't use wired headphones anymore, because I haven't been able to hear a justifiable difference. My guess is that most people who whine about things like "hifi codecs over Bluetooth" wouldn't be able to reliably choose the audio stack they think of as superior in a blind test.

5amdotis 4y ago

I am still using my iPod classic 6th gen 160 GB. Almost everyday. It is wonderful to have a single purpose device for listing to music, podcasts, or audiobooks.

imwillofficial 4y ago

From the article: “It's a shame Sony never became a force in smartphones, because, wow, their product designs are still so good.” It looks like shit

deleted 4y ago

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minimalist 4y ago

If this has a Qualcomm chipset and run Android, does this mean that it has a functional GPS radio as well? I've always wanted the equivalent of an android PDA/MP3 player--with all the functionality and ability to run 'apps' but without the cellular radio. I realize I could use an old phone in airplane mode, but I don't want that :)

dstaley 4y ago
They both use Qualcomm chips. The smaller model uses a QCS2290, which appears to support GPS, so I suspect the larger model does as well. https://www.qualcomm.com/products/technology/processors/application-processors/qcs2290 https://www.qualcomm.com/products/technology/processors/appl...

misterprime 4y ago

I wonder why these don't also include audio recording features. It seems like a standalone device to play music well would also be perfect for recording audio well.

franga2000 4y ago
There are very few situations where you can't just use a phone, but don't need any of the features of a proper audio recorder (phantom power, multiple inputs, XLR/jack, a good directional microphone...). It wouldn't hurt to have a mic on the player for sure, but I can't see it unlocking any new use cases.
- misterprime 4y ago
  There's a whole market for stand alone audio recorders. https://www.amazon.com/s?k=audio+recorder&crid=1W4GXCLJNGKPI&sprefix=audio+recorder%2Caps%2C215&ref=nb_sb_noss_1 https://www.amazon.com/s?k=audio+recorder&crid=1W4GXCLJNGKPI...
  - franga2000 4y ago
    Oh yes, I've used those a few times and they were great. They're usually quite cheap (sub 50€), have weeks to months of battery, tactile controls (so you can use them for narration without looking) and (perhaps most importantly) large and high-quality microphones. Not something you can just add to an mp3 player.
    - misterprime 4y ago
      Thanks! Yes, they have nice features of their own. What about adding an mp3 player's features to those products?

lofaszvanitt 4y ago

The ideal mp3 player is - small, fits in your palm, - plays flac, wav, mp3, midi, and other obscure formats, - easy to upload/download files, pops up as an usb drive when plugged into a pc, - good sound output (I can sacrifice size for sound quality), - jack/bluetooth output, - sd/microsd card support, - cheap, - +1 optional fm/dap+? receiver. I once bought a Sony Xperia mobile phone. It had all kinds of issues. Microphones were trash, the noise suppression was terrible, sometimes you couldn't hear the other party, the back glass shattered multiple times while sitting on the desk etc. That was such a bad experience I never touched any kind of handheld from Sony, and not gonna touch this one, for sure.

accidue 4y ago
Hidizs (AP80)?
- lofaszvanitt 4y ago
  Hm, looks great, thanks.
teruakohatu 4y ago
- has a removable / replaceable battery

CharlesW 4y ago

What's interesting about this vs. something like an Apple Watch? It's hard to imagine a use can where I need to to hear lossless audio on wired headphones but wouldn't have my phone with me.

MR4D 4y ago

7 buttons on one side. The whole thing is roughly the size of a deck of cards, so not sure how well that works out for anyone with big hands or gloves. But better than a touch screen I suppose.

d1l 4y ago

I have an nwa55, which is notably Not one of the android walkmans. I love it and spend usually 1-2 hours a night listening to music on it before bed. Battery life is incredible. I'm not sure why they went android though. Begs the question why not just get a phone.

eqmvii 4y ago

still waiting for minidiscs to make their comeback.

pasdechance 4y ago

If anyone is wondering, there are a number of choices out there for DAPs and portable music devices. https://www.head-fi.org/threads/hi-res-portable-daps-comparison-chart-2022.961903/ https://www.head-fi.org/threads/hi-res-portable-daps-compari... I have a Shanling Q1. But, next time around I will probably go with something from Sony. Not out of brand loyalty, but because some of these companies tend to forget to provide updates. I really didn't want an Android device for music. I just wanted something around €100 that could play hi-res music. To echo what so many others say: all hail the Sansa Clip+ and Rockbox.

jamjamjam27 4y ago

But where do you get legal flacs from for a price comparable to what one would pay for a service like spotify, qobuz or tidal? Long gone are the days I could exchange them with friends as none of them own any anymore...

sampling 4y ago

With regards to playlisting my digital music collection in novel and interesting ways, I've found Plexamp's "Guest DJ" feature [1] to be second to none. It's not the cheapest piece of software. However when viewed in comparison to the cost of a standalone mp3-player, I think Plex's $119.99 Lifetime Pass is justifiable. [1] https://mobile.twitter.com/plexamp/status/1585704401238298631 https://mobile.twitter.com/plexamp/status/158570440123829863...

tentacleuno 4y ago

I'm a real fan of Sony audio equipment. My XM3 cans still make me smile when I turn them up. Absolutely amazing sound.

am_lu 4y ago

I miss good mp3 player days. I started on iriver cd player that could read MP3s... once i had some spare money upgraded to iriver H10 wit 20GB spinning rust drive (still have it, still working, sitting in the drawer). Once tried an old ipod, to see what the hassle, learned the pain of loading my own music to it, and the lack of file browser on it, no i dont want that artist/album BS, got my own categorized collection. Sold that one quickly. Sandisk sansa with rockbox was spot on, both both units failed like a year from time i bought them. Currently using an old old heavy duty samsung xcover2, with cyanogen mod, it does not have a simcard just 128gb microsd with lots of music on it. DAC is reasonably good on it and it plays FLAC no problem. Doubles as offline GPS with osmAnd maps loaded in.