Sony's OLED Walkman specs revealed, QVGA rears its ugly head

We've been itching to spend some quality time with Sony's NWZ-X1000-series player since its granite-sided shell was first revealed just ahead of CES, and now that it's inching closer to release (in the Old Country, at least) we finally have a full spec sheet to parse. On the audio side it'll play MP3, WMA, and AAC at up to 320kbps, and for video there's MPEG-4, H.264, and WMV support, sadly in most cases crippled at 320 x 240 despite that 3-inch OLED screen's 432 x 240 native resolution. That's nearly a quarter of those pixels gone to waste. Other goodies include FM tuning, 802.11g/b WiFi, internet browsing with YouTube support, and 33 hours of battery life when grooving to tunes, 9 hours when watching video, and surely much less when cruising the web. Still no confirmed domestic release date, but it can't be long now.

[Thanks, Steve]

[voodoo Posted Mar 9th 2009 10:38AM]

I have one of the last-gen walkmans, and it wont play any files even 1 pixel over 320 wide. Theres no capability for scaling at all.

I really hope that's not the case with this player, I was going to buy it, but not if I can't play a H.264 movie at native screen res.

Hopefully the can unlock it or change it before its release. I know the PSP was locked to crappy resolutions when it came out, and eventually it was unlocked. Sony, do that BEFORE you release this one.

[TravisO2 Posted Mar 9th 2009 12:11PM]

The native res isn't even that impressive (despite it being the norm for smart phones) but the fact they don't even make the most of it... epic screen fail.

[(Unverified) Posted Mar 9th 2009 12:24PM]

Still has the 1988 VW GTi Fleck Stone dashboard Paint job though. Barf.

[(Unverified) Posted Mar 9th 2009 2:15PM]

From a Sony fanboi. This product is dead before it even comes out. Apple touch/iPhone have killed while still in the womb. Just like scene from watchmen. It is hard to accept, but we must all accept defeat n surrender to apple,. Another raping . Kilgore trout is right,I'm sure we all agree ??this Sony is 2 years too late. Stick with lowend mp3s, u will fail in USA, guaranteed.

[(Unverified) Posted Mar 9th 2009 3:52PM]

way to stay relevant sony

[fourblades Posted Mar 10th 2009 12:30PM]

I think the resolution is fine for youtube purposes, though it'd be better for higher resolution on your own video sources...

[(Unverified) Posted Mar 10th 2009 8:18PM]

Do you guys think the X1000 will come equipped with VPN? At my college you need a VPN client to connect to the wireless network, and I know the ipod touch has VPN and I've seen people connect to the campus wireless with it...

Without VPN the whole wifi feature would be pretty useless to me and I would get the S9 instead.