No New Sony Walkmans planned in the near Future

An unlikely source has revealed that Sony is not planning on updating their Walkman lineup anytime soon. The information comes from a FIIO Twitter post, stating that:

based on private discussions with industry insiders, a well-known Japanese brand currently has no plans to update its portable player lineup. 

Thanks to Akella for bringing this to my attention. I am including a screenshot of the tweet, in case FIIO remove the info. I am guessing that this brand is Sony.

This comes as no surprise, as both the A and ZX received their second Android update not too long ago, where as the previous A100 and ZX500 never received any OS updates. The current gen of Walkmans were announced in January 2023, so more than 2 years ago, with the A100 and ZX500 announced back in September 2019. This is a 4 year life cycle, which is very long, but Audio players are not like smartphones and updating them often is not profitable. So the information from insiders via FIIO is more than likely true, and we will not be getting any new models anytime soon.

Update, thanks akella again. I had some rumours last year of a new premium model, but the sources were not very specific or detailed, so I did not have much confidence in these rumours, which is why I never posted them.

Meaning if anyone has been hesitating picking up a new Walkman because a new model was around the corner, it seems that is not the case. Unfortunately neither model is on sale right now, but if you do decide to pick one up, check it out threw Amazon, as I would get some commission and this would help cover certain costs like the domain costs and cookie management. 

Of course, I would recommend grabbing a model from Japan, as their audio output is not capped. but returning some models may be trickier.

NW-A300 Amazon

NW-ZX700 Amazon

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