Sony announces Walkman NW-A306 – finally, I can ditch my smartphone and still listen to quality music and make playlists
Image Credit: Sony
Sony has announced the NW-A306 – a new Sony Walkman portable music player for the touchscreen digital age.
Its shape is reminiscent of the Walkman player that those in their twenties and thirties will remember fondly, and it’ll be available later this month for a price that’s fairly reasonable.
Sony’s new NW-A306 Walkman gives you a 3.6″ full-color touch screen with a collection of side buttons for volume control, play/pause, and even a volume rocker switch. In fact, the new NW-A306 even offers Sony’s proprietary AI upscaling technology Digital Sound Enhancement Engine (DSEE), and the world-renowned company states that this technology can “restore acoustic subtleties and dynamic range”, which means that users can expect a listening experience much closer to what an artist intended during recording.
The new audio device allows you to stream tracks online with support streaming apps from Google Play, download music to its 16GB of memory with external memory such as MicroSD supported, and listen with wireless earphones.
Furthermore, the NW-A306 is available in two colors: blue and black. I think this is a little underwhelming, but it may be because we’re in the age of smartphones and Sony may not be confident in potential sales. But if the product proves popular then new colors may become available.
A strong battery life of up to 36 hours is available, but this is dependent on the mode of listening. Streaming draws more power than listening to downloaded tracks, and I imagine wireless listening demands more power than wired listening.
I’m personally pretty excited about this. I’ve wanted to break away from the addictiveness that is a smartphone for a long time, but then I wonder what I’d do without those sweet reels in my life. Instagram aside, music is the biggest boundary that stops me from discontinuing the use of my phone. I could of course use an old MP3 player – but I’m too much of an audiophile. And losing the ability to make playlists and queue tracks isn’t appealing to me either.
But because the NW-A306 is priced at a reasonable £349, I may now be able to ditch my smartphone with confidence. I’ll figure out Instagram later!