A new portable music player from Sony has been launched, and unlike other of its more recent Walkman models, it isn’t outrageously pricey. It has a long battery life and is made to be lightweight, portable, and affordable.
Specs
The newest Walkman, the NW-A306, has a 3.6-inch touchscreen as well as a number of physical buttons for adjusting the interface and audio. It is made from a sturdy piece of machined aluminum. Additionally, it weighs 113 grams, which is considerably less than your smartphone.
Its ability to deliver clear music with little noise and distortion, made possible by Sony’s S-Master HX digital amp technology, was given a lot of thought. According to Sony, even the solder used to join materials and components internally was selected for its impact on sound quality.
It also employs an AI-powered DSEE Ultimate sound engine for intelligence, which has the ability to upgrade compressed audio to create a higher-quality file. This technique gives improvements even for “CD-quality” 16-bit lossless codec audio, according to Sony, and may “restore acoustic subtleties and dynamic range” to files.
You gain support for a variety of audio codecs, just like with any dedicated Hi-Res audio player. These include Apple Lossless, FLAC, AAC, DSD, WMA, and MP3. Additionally, since it is an Android 12-based media player, you may download well-known music streaming apps from the Play Store and use the highest quality audio that those services have to offer.
Battery life
How much battery life you get very much depends on how you use the mini player. Using the stereo audio jack with wired headphones you can get up to 36 hours of playback with 96kHz/24-bit FLAC files. Push the bitrate up, and it understandably takes a bit more battery. Using it wirelessly using Bluetooth in ‘Transmitter Mode’ shortens that down to between 18-26 hours depending on whether you’re using a popular streaming app, or playing an offline local file.
