Name: Sony Walkman S730F Series
Category: portable audio player
Price: About JPY27,000 (16GB)
Release date in Japan: October 11, 2008

Everyone on the planet knows Sony's fabled "Walkman" portable casette player that revolutionized music appreciation in 1979. There are those, though, who don't realize that the Walkman name still lives, in a growing line of music player products. These include the MD (MiniDisk) Walkman, the CD Walkman, and yes, even cassette Walkman models, should you still be hanging on to your 80s mix tapes.

As you'd expect, though, the primary Walkman format for the past five years has been digital audio players with hard disks or flash memory. Like all other portable music players, this form of Walkman (technically dubbed the Network Walkman) has had its lunch thoroughly nabbed and devoured by the iPod, with no sign yet of a respite. But it soldiers on, keeping the Walkman name on its feet and offering maverick audiophiles a few features that the iPod doesn't.

Sony recently announced several new configurations in the S Series of Walkmans, including the S730F. The player carries forth the S700 series' key feature, noise cancellation (which requires use of the included headphones). Hit a switch at the bottom of the unit, and the Walkman will digitally filter out 3/4 of the surrounding noise, letting you play your music at a comfortably modest volume even in noisy environments. (Or just use the feature without music, to reduce noise during study or sleep.) A nice added ability: you can use noise cancellation while an external sound source plays through the Walkman via its audio input. Sony suggests it's a good way to enjoy a standard in-flight video system, with the Walkman cutting out engine noise.

The Walkman's iPod-like aluminum body is only 7.5-mm thick - the thinnest in Walkman history, says Sony. (That's still over a millimeter thicker than the new iPod nano, and at 46 grams, almost 10 grams heavier.) The vertically-oriented, two-inch 320x240 screen is similar to the nano's. Video playback (MPEG-4, H.264 AVC, WMV) is a decent 30 fps, and uses the screen held sideways.

Supported audio formats include MP3, WMA, AAC, HE-AAC, and Sony's own ATRAC. The Walkman wants to add some automation to your music selection: it analyzes music tracks and automatically creates "channels" such as Active, Relax, Slow Ballad, Sofa Lounge, and Extreme, to match your listening mood. Sony says it's the first such intelligent channel creation in a portable device - though Apple just undid that claim, if its new iPods' "Genius" playlist feature counts as the same thing.

Still, the Walkman gets to boast of its noise cancellation, and a few more capabilities that surpass the iPod: FM radio, the ability to record music directly from MD or CD, the ability to record video directly from TV or camera (requires separate docking station), the ability to snag video from BluRay disc recorders (BDZ-A70/X95/X100 models), and 40-hour playback time for MP3 audio, 10 hours for video.

Available colors are red, gold, black, or pink. Expected prices are JPY27,000 for 16GB memory (NW-S739F), 21,000 for 8GB (NW-S738F), and JPY17,000 for 4GB (NW-S736F).

More info (Japanese):
http://www.ecat.sony.co.jp/walkman/product.cfm?PD=32350&KM=NW-S739F