NW-S706
Latest
Sony's NW-S700/600 series: the best sounding Walkmans, ever
Sony Japan just spilled the deets on their new Walkman S series of digital audio players. The NW-S700 players deliver pretty much exactly what we've already seen: 4/2/1GB of flash memory, 3-line OLED display capable of dishin' albumn art, FM tuner, playback for MP3/ATRAC/ATRAC Advanced Lossless/Linear PCM and AAC/WMA sans DRM files, and the ability to record from external audio sources direct to PCM or ATRAC3Plus. The player features a quick 3-minute charge for 3-hours of playback or a 2-hour full-charge for up to 50-hours playback of all those 132kbps ATRAC files you probably don't have. Finally, Sony claims that the NW-S700 series delivers the highest sound quality in Walkman history due to the integrated noise cancelation and bundled 13.5mmEX earbuds with integrated in-line Mic. Nice, if indeed their claims of 75% less ambient noise are true. Also announced are the NW-S600 players offered in 2/1GB flavas but without the FM tuner and built-in noise cancelation. The NW-S700 players will hit October 21st in Japan in your choice of black, violet, gold, and pink while the NW-S600 DAPs are set to roll on November 18th in black, blue and pink. And of course, there's the limited edition NW-S706F/T in brown which, as you know, is the new white of consumer electronics. Expect to fork over up to ¥29,000 (about $242) for the 4GB NW-S706F or as little as ¥15,000 (about $125) for the 1GB NS-S603 model.[Via Impress]
Sony NW-S706, the rockin' £180 player
Surely Sony would love it if a new music player could drown out the sound of the company's exploding battery bruhaha, but sadly that probably won't be the case. Nevertheless, Sony has just released the new NW-S706, which comes in an elegant elliptical form factor along the lines of the NW-E series -- that said, it appears to be an update to the NW-S205. All we know so far, according to one British online retailer, is that the NW-S706 comes in three colors (purple, black and pink), packs 4GB of storage, up to 50 hours of battery life (probably only if you're bumping ATRAC), line-in recording, an FM tuner, and should be due out on October 9 for £180, or $336. We're still unsure if this is a Europe and Asia-only release, but nontheless, we'd love to be able to snag one of these Stateside real soon.[Via CNET Asia]
