Sony Network Walkman NWD-B100 announced

Looks like Sony finally took the wraps off its Network Walkman NWD-B100, which we first heard about months ago. The featherweight player is landing in Europe come August (sorry, no US release info as of yet), and has a 3-line color LCD, comes in 1GB (NWD-B103 / B103F) and 2GB sizes (NWD-B105 / 105F), and features an FM tuner, mic / voice recorder, up to 12 hours battery life, and perhaps best of all, it's now ATRAC-free (MP3 and WMA only) with mass-storage mode, meaning you can officially throw out your copy of SonicStage. Sony, welcome to 2007 -- we could almost kiss you.

[Matt @ Jul 23rd 2007 12:52PM]

More like welcome to 2000.

[Simon Templar @ Jul 23rd 2007 12:59PM]

Would care to tell us what DAP had 1-2 Gig of memory, a 3-line colour display, usb, 12-hour battery life, and a voice recorder in 2000? I'm really quite curious.

[Matt @ Jul 23rd 2007 4:50PM]

No, my comment was about ATRAC support. And I believe thats what they were referring to in the post. They finally ditched the crappy ATRAC. Took em long enough.

[Augustos Morales @ Jul 23rd 2007 1:07PM]

Maybe he traveled through time with his 2007 iCLOD to the year 2000. Oh wait, in the year 2000 there was no DAP with 2GB FM tuner or voice recorder.

[easano @ Jul 23rd 2007 4:37PM]

I don't know why everyone gets so hyped about having an FM receiver in their MP3 player (or a voice recorder for that matter). How many times have you actually used those functions?

[Augustos Morales @ Jul 23rd 2007 1:08PM]

Looks like Matt's another Apple Fan Boy - where's the "OMGZ, SONY STOLE THE WALKMAN IDEA FROM APPLE!" comments...?

It has a great battery, no longer tied to proprietary garbage, color LCD and is small AND has an FM tuner and a voive recorder...what's wrong with that?????

[paloooz @ Jul 23rd 2007 1:05PM]

Man, you guys are on a roll today. Who said anything about Apple other than you?

[riggs @ Jul 23rd 2007 1:16PM]

you?

[Scooter @ Jul 23rd 2007 1:08PM]

and price? Doubtless double what's reasonable, though hopefully the build quality is better than the identical item I bought from some Chinese no-brand for around $30 two years ago.

[P Sin @ Jul 23rd 2007 1:09PM]

WTF? 12 Hour battery life? my NW-e507 (which i love!) has a 50 hour battery life. Basically i charge it once a week and i'm good. When it comes to battery life its hard to beat ATRAC.

[Jake @ Jul 23rd 2007 1:10PM]

Am I the only one who would like there to be at least an ATRAC option? I use it on my PSP simply because you can fit twice as many songs with little loss in audio quality. I realize Sonic Stage isn't the best or easiest to use software by any means, but if you don't have a player with a large hard drive, it's a nice format.

[Akshat @ Jul 23rd 2007 1:16PM]

12 hours? That has to be a mistake. Sony's previous NWs have more than triple that.

You wouldn't do that to us Sony would you?

[Augustos Morales @ Jul 23rd 2007 1:17PM]

We bought the NW-e507 player for our teenage daughter, because I was sure the style would make her fall in love with it immediately. She did. But then we tried dragging and dropping her favorite MP3s onto the unit, only to discover that it doesn't work that way. You have to run MP3s through a special obfuscation software by Sony in order to play them. You cannot move these obfuscated MP3s off of the device afterwards -- so our daughter wouldn't be able to share music with her friends with this device. I explained this to her, and she immediately agreed that she would rather have a "free" MP3 player, that allows her to do anything with her music that she wants. We returned the unit to the dealer the next day.

[Andrew @ Jul 23rd 2007 1:29PM]

"our daughter wouldn't be able to share music with her friends with this device"

Sure she could. Plug the device into speakers and play the music. Or did you mean copy the files she owns and give it free of charge to her friends?

[Homeboy @ Jul 23rd 2007 1:23PM]

I don't give a crap about this DAP. There are thousands of similar mp3-players like that around.
What a want to see is a 40gb or 60gb Sony mp3 players. It seem like they have given up fight and left Creative and Creative to fight alone. iRiver has also been quiet in the battle of the titants.

[philipbarrett @ Jul 23rd 2007 1:42PM]

I'm with you - yet another 8GB or less player, yawn. How about a 120GB model?

[steedums @ Jul 23rd 2007 1:30PM]

i thought this already existed as the sansa express?

[Sam @ Jul 23rd 2007 1:34PM]

Why do they call it a "Network" Walkman? What's networked about it?

[Karan @ Jul 23rd 2007 1:50PM]

They know where you got all them MP3s from.

[John @ Jul 23rd 2007 1:40PM]

Raise the memory to 4 or 8 and you got yourself a pretty darn useful USB key.

[Linkdead @ Jul 23rd 2007 1:52PM]

I believe their may be an error in this article. As decreed in ancient texts Sony devices can run only on the ATRAC format.

I'm sure at some level your crazy new-age "MP3" format is converted into the loving ATRAC every Sony device craves.

[blog.ifallacy @ Jul 23rd 2007 2:24PM]

"However, those without a music collection on their PC will also be able to connect the NWD-B100 series straight in to their micro hi-fi or mini audio system and record files straight from their music collection. "

Quote from: http://www.pocket-lint.co.uk/news/news.phtml/8892/9916/sony-nwd-b100-mp3-player-announced.phtml

does this mean line-in recording support?

I have an nw-e005 and love the fast charging (over usb nonetheless!) the only complaint is sonic stage, so if this solves the problems, i'll be in for one =]

it seems like the voice recording is new, and the screen is now and lcd instead of an oled? is that why the battery life is so low? (meh, please don't have sucky battery life - battery life tends to be a strength of sony's)

[Wolfticket @ Jul 23rd 2007 2:27PM]

I think I'm in shock. Obviously it's a good move (esp as Sony Ericsson phones have done this for ages) but if there are any sonyfanboys left I bet they will be really pleased when they find out that sony no longer supports their music collection.

I hear that the new k850i supports Memory Stick M2 and MicroSD! Has the world gone mad?! I'm off for a lie down...

[chibifs @ Jul 23rd 2007 2:31PM]

I already have this player, though I believe they called it the SAMSUNG YP-U2

[obiwan @ Jul 23rd 2007 2:32PM]

How about a firmware upgrade for my NetMD (enabling WMA/MP3)? That would be Sony news worth hearing!

[Flying? @ Jul 23rd 2007 2:41PM]

F-I-N-A-L-L-Y no more Sonic Stage and ATRAC conversion ... if they extend such policy to their entire mp3 player line-up, they may end up serious iPod challengers ...

[AoMoe @ Jul 23rd 2007 6:48PM]

It is funny to read that many people believe that this is the death keel for SonicStage and ATRAC. Sony has decided to dump SonicStage and ATRAC to release a products that
- has less battery life than current Sony products
- has less memory that some Sony's current products
- does not allow you to manage your music across multiple media.

Yeah! Right!

[Loonie @ Jul 23rd 2007 2:42PM]

I'd be pleased to see the back of Sonic Stage, but not pleased to lose ATRAC.

[strider_mt2k @ Jul 23rd 2007 3:04PM]

Too little, and too late.

[Arvind Ganesh @ Jul 23rd 2007 3:07PM]

I think the "LCD" might really be an "OLED" screen and it certainly doesn't look like a color one - no album art, I noticed. Sony has not used LCD screens in their DAPs in a while.

[Arvind Ganesh @ Jul 23rd 2007 3:10PM]

Agreed! Unfortunately, I believe that ATRAC as it has been implemented is DRM-ed in all its forms and needs a hardware chip to be able to play it back. This results in higher manufacturing costs for Sony. This has been the explanation given for why the Sony Ericsson phones do not support ATRAC.

[Andrew @ Jul 23rd 2007 3:27PM]

Not all forms of ATRAC are DRM-ed. As I recall, the last version of SonicStage I installed allowed me to rip CDs to ATRAC without DRM.

I could be mistaken though. I have recently converged my phone/music/video functions with the VX8550, and no longer need/have SonicStage installed to confirm this.

[russ @ Jul 23rd 2007 3:22PM]

what the first gen shuffle should have been.

[Michael @ Jul 23rd 2007 3:41PM]

Yeah, A 120 Gigabite player,think logicly ,who has enough songs,we are talking about an MP3 player here!

[philipbarrett @ Jul 23rd 2007 5:08PM]

"who has enough songs?"

People who save their music as Wave/AIFF. I have about 40GB of mp3s and about the same in AIFF.

:-P

[Hiro11 @ Jul 23rd 2007 4:16PM]

I bought a Creative MuVo TX FM 1GB for about $85 almost three years ago. It has every single feature this Sony has (mass storage, built in USB key, FM tuner, recording etc) with the exception of the color 3 line LCD (it's got a black and white three line). You can now get the same TX FM 1GB for about $35 bucks now, they're essentially giving them away. What the hell, Sony? You're at least three years late on this.

[Alex Yee @ Jul 23rd 2007 4:18PM]

ATRAC was put aside a while ago. My NWS 700 can do MP3, WMA, AAC and ATRAC. I think it should be left as an option. Also, Sonic Stage isn't as bad as it used to be.

[David @ Jul 23rd 2007 5:18PM]

The question is, does it support wireless headphones? HD-Radio? How about AM? I listen to more AM than FM these days, but I could be getting old...

[Wwhat @ Jul 23rd 2007 7:05PM]

Sony is evil, but then so is canon apparently :[

[Murc @ Jul 24th 2007 12:43AM]

looks nice...I've been lookin for a small mp3 player...I have a zune...but I want a small player for the gym. put the 2gb one at 100 bucks and I'm sold.

[AlexRowanDoble @ Jul 24th 2007 10:44AM]

Looks really nice...... Although I was holding out until I could afford a nice big iPod (I've about 90GB of Mp3s on my PC...... Not many artists - just a lot of material from each!), but my old CD player's getting cumbersome and unreliable - I mean, I don't want to have to put up with it jumping whenever I take a step and it's in my pocket.... Yes, you get AntiShock, but it isn't as 100% foolproof as solid state players.

This thing looks beautiful, and I read somewhere else that the 2GB model with a built in FM radio is £55 - and that's pretty damn good in my opinion - I may just have to pick one up!

[Z @ Jul 25th 2007 4:53AM]

Network Walkman? Sony's back to the "Network" naming convention again with their Walkmans, eh?

What the heck does the word "Network" have to do with a portable digital audio player, anyway? I've never understood that. It's the worst name they could ever come up with. The average person can barely grasp what a network even is, let alone how it relates to an audio player.

And Sony, you have GOT to stop letting nerds name these things and get someone who knows how to come up with good product names. And please get rid of the name "Walkman". It makes me think of a tape player from 1985.

With the name "Network Walkman", you might as well have called it something ridiculous like "Yesteryear Local Area Token Ring Topology Unit". Geesh.

At least the player looks nice. I would have preferred a microSD or Sony M2 slot for removable/expandable memory, though.

[tekdroid @ Jul 26th 2007 2:00PM]

AoMoe @ Jul 23rd 2007 6:48PM sez:

It is funny to read that many people believe that this is the death keel for SonicStage and ATRAC. Sony has decided to dump SonicStage and ATRAC to release a products that
- has less battery life than current Sony products
- has less memory that some Sony's current products
- does not allow you to manage your music across multiple media.
------------
1) Sony have always quoted battery life using some ridiculously small 64kbit atrac files, if I'm not mistaken. Real-world = far lower

2) the market buying this doesn't need more memory; not all of us need to put our whole collections on a player

3) it allows you to manage your music across multiple media fine; it's Mass-Storage compliant which is far more open than having to install SonicStage on machines, I reckon. Besides, with a max of 2GB, what's to manage?