Walkman brand still standing: Sony's latest additions to the once-venerable Walkman brand, the NW-X1050 and NW-X1060 (released last week), base their appeal on a wide range of features for watching video and playing music. Each of the pair sports a 3-inch OLED touch-screen display, which has a 432×240-pixel resolution. While OLED screens are known for their clear, bright pictures, you can't escape the difficult nature of watching images on such small screens.
Boosting their multimedia credentials, the Sony pair include FM radio and 1-seg TV tuners. They can also be used to surf the Internet, as they have both B and G versions of Wi-Fi, with a maximum range of about 50 meters from a broadcast source. Sony touts their ability to download and watch videos. Unlike iPods, they work with a wide variety of formats, including MP3, WMA, ATRAC, ATRAC Advanced Lossless, PCM/AAC and HE-AAC files. This variety maximizes the usefulness of the pair. The only real difference between the two is size, with the NW-X1050 having 16 gigabytes of memory and its sibling 32 gigabytes.
The Walkmans measure 96.5×52×9.8 mm and tip the scales at around 98 grams. Considering the variety of features Sony has crammed into its devices, it has done a decent job in regard to pricing, with the NW-X1050 at ¥39,800 and the extra 16 gigabytes of the NW-X1060 pushing its price up to ¥49,800. www.sony.jp/CorporateCruise/Press/200904/09-0414/