We've been seeing Sony's S Series Walkman
around the town since July, and Sony's finally seen fit to make it official, also introducing the slightly lower-rent E Series. Specs on the former are completely in-line with expectations, including a 2.4-inch QVGA LCD, FM tuning and recording, along with support for a suite of formats including MP3, protected WMA, AAC, H.264, and WMV. Again as expected it offers battery life of 42 hour hours when playing music through headphones and 6.5 hours of video, but what we didn't know was that when you're rocking it out boom box style through the integrated speakers that drops to 17 hours and five hours oh so respectively. A palette of colorful options including black, pink, violet, and red will be available, with an 8GB model going for $110 and 16GB for $130. If that's a bit too rich for you there's the 2-inch E Series, sporting a slightly smaller chassis, slightly lower battery life (30 hours music and 4 hours video), and a slightly lower price of $80 for 8GB and $100 for 16. Both ship next month.
posted August 25th 2009 6:51AM
Why must i buy this over ZuneHD?
Nobody HAS to buy these.
Now a brief pause for thanks...
because the zune hd doesn't have these dumb ass mickey mouse look-alike buttons
Drag-and-drop file transfer, better battery life, Mac and Linux compatibility, and lower price? The headphones are crappier, though.
That being said, I'm looking forward to trying out a ZuneHD.
Who uses stock headphones? LOL
Seriously, spend 20 bucks and upgrade. :p
Cause it's a Sony, That's why
Sony= Quality products
Let's see... because Zune HD is made by M$. We don't really want to be using WMP for every application on our Windows, do we? Also, Sony has a long history of well-built quality products even though they are a bit dearer than the competition. Lastly, we just don't want to see the Japanese economy fall out of the sky.... wait, I think that has already happened.
I still looks like Mickey Mouse imprinted on the front.
It still looks*
It's all pops and clicks from over here, pal.
that cat on your avatar reminds me of a service pack
btw I've sent this to Sony some time ago (no joke): http://i31.tinypic.com/2hgbbpc.jpg
Unless it also includes a personal eleporter no one will care about this.
I mean teleporter, zaps you from place to place like in Star Trek
The integrated kick-stand is a nice touch.
I don't think this product will stop the flow of red ink over at Sony HQ.
Well, at least their prices seems okay. $100 for 16GB is not bad at all.
So Sony, are you going to put the X series on clearance sale before or after the month of September? I suggest before, or at least on the first week of September.
Bet Sony still won't support Macs with these series-like in the past and a built-in speaker in the S series is a neat addition
I'm not a Sony fan, but their NWZ series have always been OS-agnostic, as they are USB mass storage devices. Just plug it in, and drag-n-drop songs in Finder.
No 32GB?
EPIC FAIL
Sony fans don't care about proper playback of music. It's all about the brand.
whoops, that comment is supposed to be in regards to gapless playback.
32gb ?
Its called the X-Series Walkman. It has an OLED screen, the best sound quality of all competing devices and also the best stock headphones.
I bet they still won't play gapless. Sony is getting way too lazy.
The players look so crappy and cheap quality but with that battery life and those prices, that will make them sell
16gb for $130 is a very reasonable price, even lower than stuff in the Sansa series, the king of low-end. Plus battery life is better too. And it's non-touchscreen, with a decent-size screen. Perfect for the gym and maybe also for those looking for a bigger screen than what the Nano offers and for people like me who need something cheap to tide them over until the ZuneHD has some decent apps and games available. Of course, I could just buy a Cowon D2 16GB at $150, but I'm guessing these will fall to $110 or so by Black Friday.
damn it, sony, that GUI looks SO DATED, my gigabeat from 2006 had a better layout. Just take some tips from Apple/MS/Cowon/Iriver next time, PLEASE. That screen is wasted on the tiny-ass album art. and WTF is with that pixelated Arial Narrow font?
WUT?!? Where did all of a sudden did the name WalkMan comes from and I thought it was 1980 when I heard the word WalkMan lol. And the only thing I know is iPod, iPhone (it's an iPod Phone), Creative, M$ Zune, etc. But Sony was not on the list until recently.