NEWS TECHNOLOGIE

(Credit: Sony) Some might say our current decade is merely an amalgamation of other decades from the last century. Everything from vinyl records and low-rise jeans to nuclear tensions and a good old space race is back on the menu, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that an established tech company is reviving one of its most notable retired devices. Forty-four years after releasing its original Walkman, Sony is introducing the NW-A306 and the NW-ZX707: a pair of portable music players that combine beloved 1980s aesthetics with contemporary audio technology.

The first of the two, the NW-A306, takes the original Walkman’s bulky, brick-like shape and slims it down into a sophisticated 12-millimeter-thick milled aluminum rectangle. Its 3.6-inch, 1280-by-720 touch screen offers a maximum of 60 frames per second (fps) and displays a cassette screensaver when idle. Taking up the rest of the device’s 2.23-by-3.88-inch face is a relatively chunky bezel, while the back features a scalloped design for grip.

The NW-A306 has 32GB of storage, which users can load up with music they own via the device’s USB-C 3.2 Gen1 port or microSD slot. Users can also opt to download streaming apps like Spotify and YouTube using the Android app store. Sony says the device offers 36 hours of 44.1kHz FLAC playback and up to 32 hours of 96kHz FLAC High-Resolution Audio playback, though this drops to 26 hours while streaming. It’s Wi-Fi 802.11ac compatible, and you can listen via Bluetooth or the headphone jack. Buttons on the side facilitate standard music controls like play/pause, forward/back skip, and volume.

The NW-ZX707. (Credit: Sony)

Sony’s more premium model, the NW-ZX707, is much larger at 17mm thick. Its 2.86-by-5.2-inch body allows room for a bigger 5-inch display, which sits atop a gold-plated copper body. This model features two headphone jacks: the standard 3.5mm and a 4.4mm balanced jack for specialized audio equipment. It also boasts twice as much storage as the NW-A306, which might be useful for those who want to truly unplug from the internet and only listen to the music they own.

As one might expect, the Walkman’s two modern successors sit at starkly different price points. The more affordable option, the NW-A306, becomes available in Japan this February for 46,000 yen (approximately $360). The NW-ZX707 goes for 104,500 yen ($818) and has already hit shelves. Both offer a welcome opportunity to ditch the notification-heavy smartphone while you walk the dog, hit the gym, or trudge through work. As more people crave disconnection from their phones and become nostalgic for music-only devices like the retired iPod nano and iPod shuffle, Sony’s new Walkmans might hit a sweet spot in the mobile device market—or create a new one entirely.

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