Sadly there is little or almost nothing happening in the world of the walkman. I did have a chance to play with a new E-Series a few months back that a friend of mine bought and I have to say it is a nice little player. Solid build quality, great sound quality but there are a few issues I had with it. More after the break.
First the button layout is horrible, the Mickey Mouse design is not a good design and Sony needs to rethink the button layout. Second the buttons are a bit hard to press and one needs to use a bit more force than normally one would need to. Perhaps this is because the player was new, but then my A818 button’s were never this difficult to press.
Since the buttons are harder to press then navigating the menu is a bit difficult but otherwise the menu is like all other Walkman’s, easy to navigate and use. One advantage the new E-Series has, at least the US version is that it uses mini-USB and not the WM-Port which is good since if you lose the cable all you need to do is use any other mini-USB cable, but then all of the WM-Port products will not work with the US E-Series.
Sound quality is great, I tried the E-Series with 3 different headphones, first my EX82s and then my NC32s and it sounded even better. The headphones my friend has some in ear Sony headphones, cheaper ones but still good quality since the supplied headphones are weak.
Otherwise a good quality budget walkman which is a much better deal than the bigger S-Series when comparing 16GB sizes. Hopefully a walkman replacement will soon debut.
You think Sony will release a new stand-alone Walkman based on the SE Yendo? I have little interest in getting one of the SE Walkman phones, but I am dying to see what they have planned for the Walkman series, especially after discontinuing the X series. I don't care if it runs Android or any other alternative touch screen UI, I just hope it has all the standard Walkman features, top sound quality, and a far better browser, one that at least competes with that of the Zune HD.
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