Sony unveils two new Walkman players, the iconic 1980s device still going strong

The Sony Walkman is an iconic music player dating back to 1979 when it quickly became a phenomenon thanks to being able to listen to music on the go - on cassette tapes. So much so that back in the day, portable cassette players were referred to as Walkmans even though that was explicitly Sony branding.

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With the arrival of CDs, it stepped aside for the fresh-on-the-scene Discman and disappeared as the Apple iPod became the portable music player of choice in the digital age. Fast forward to 2023, and the Sony Walkman is now a premium portable music player, as seen in the new NW-ZX707 (USD 899.99) and NW-A306 (USD 349.99) models.

No doubt, the price of the NW-ZX707 Sony Walkman might make you do a double take, but when it comes to listening to high-fidelity music, high-end components are a big deal. In addition to the larger 5-inch display and enhanced battery life, the NW-ZX707 uses high-polymer capacitors and OFC (Oxygen-Free Copper) in the underlying hardware. It also uses what Sony calls a DSD (Direct Stream Digital) Remastering Engine to make compressed music on platforms like Spotify sound better.

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The NW-A306 Sony Walkman features the same high-end S-Master HX digital amp and the ability to make CD-quality (16-bit 44.1/48kHz) music sound richer and fuller thanks to AI. It's also smaller, more lightweight, and more affordable to boot. It also supports Wi-Fi for streaming.

In the age of using your smartphone as a portable music player, you might be wondering if there's a need for something like a brand new Sony Walkman that is purely a music player. Well, as per the hardware talk above, the result is better-sounding music when paired with a decent pair of headphones. That said, as great as it is to see the Walkman still going strong - it probably won't ever reach the mainstream heights it did back in the 1980s and 1990s.