Following its recent announcement of the "Live With Walkman" Android smartphone, Sony has today officially introduced the Walkman Z Series (Japanese press release) of personal media players.

These Android 2.3 devices will weigh approximately 156g and will feature the following specs:

  • 1GHz NVIDIA Tegra 2 dual-core CPU
  • 4.3 TFT color LCD, WVGA (480 × 800)
  • 512MB RAM
  • Bluetooth
  • 802.11b/g/n WiFi
  • WEP/WPA/WPA2 Encryption
  • GPS
  • E-Compass
  • G-Sensor
  • FM Radio
  • Built-in mono speaker (this is an interesting choice considering this device is billed as a "Walkman" phone)
  • HDMI output
  • DLNA

As these devices are billed as "Walkman" PMPs the lack of a camera is not entirely surprising.

However, sticking to its core music and media consumption functions these PMPs have a wealth of audio enhancements, including the following technologies built right into the device:

  • "S-Master MX" digital amplifier
  • digital noise cancelling
  • 13.5mmEX Headphones
  • DSEE
  • Clear Stereo
  • Clear base
  • 5-band Equalizer
  • 5 seeds VPT Acoustic Engine
  • Dynamic Normalizer
  • Clear phase
  • xLOUD

The devices will also support a wide variety of music formats, such as MP3, ATRAC, ATRAC Advanced Lossless, AAC, HE-AAC, WMA, and Linear PCM, and video formats, such as MPEG4, AVC (H.264 Baseline), and WMV.

There are also a couple of interesting features built-into the devices to allow the user to make full use of it as a PMP. Firstly, the "W. Music," app provides a number of ways for the user to browse through their media library.

Secondly, the built-in "W. Button" appears everywhere, regardless of the display, allowing the user to control the music playback. Lastly, there are a number of elegant visualisations to suit the mood of the music.

This series of Android PMPs will come in three varieties based on sizes:

  • "NW-Z1050" (16GB): ¥ 28,000 ($ 363.64)
  • "NW-Z1060" (32GB): ¥ 33,000 ($ 428.57)
  • "NW-Z1070" (64GB): ¥ 43,000 ($ 558.44)

Sony's press release also provides estimates of dedicated accessories for the Z Series, including:

  • Dedicated headphones ("MDR-NWNC200"): ¥ 18,000 ($ 233.77)
  • Leather case ("CKL-NWZ1000"): ¥ 4,000 ($ 51.95)
  • Clear case ("CKH-NWZ1000"): ¥ 2,800 ($ 36.36)
  • Silicon case ("CKM-NWZ1000"): $ 25
  • Privacy filter ("PRF-NWP43"): ¥ 2,000 ($ 25.97)
  • Screen protectors ("PRF-NWH43"): ¥ 1,500 ($ 19.48)

With numerous manufacturers making their own versions of Android, Sony's Walkman Z Series should satisfy the niche audiophile market who wish to have a state of the art Android device.

The original source of this article was in Japanese and Google Translate was used, hence some content may have been lost in translation.

Source: Walkman Z Series and Press Release (Japanese) via This Is My Next