Sony NW-ZX900 Walkman revealed by Benchmark

A new Walkman has appeared on the Geekbench. Unfortunately I do not have any direct information from any sources to confirm or deny the existence of a new Walkman model, so we will need to examine the listing and dig deep. Thanks again to E_D___B_A_N_G_E_R from reddit in helping gather the details.

Here is what the NW-ZX900 benchmark reveals:

• Running Android 16
• Motherboard - volcano
• Governor - walt
• 8 Core SoC
• 4 Cores @ 1.80 GHz
• 4 Cores @ 2.02 GHz 
• 8 GB RAM
• Average score:
• single-core ~ 790
• multi-core ~ 2300

Below is one of the benchmarks, specifically the outlier with the highest score.

There are a total of 13 benchmarks over a span of 1-2 days, which seems pretty excessive, considering in the past, we would only see 1 or 2 for a new device.  Whoever is doing the benchmarking, wanting these benchmarks to be seen, almost as if this was on purpose. 

One piece of information missing from the benchmark is the internal model code. This information was always present for previous Walkman models on Geekbench.

• A100/ZX500 - EVK
• i.MX 8M Evaluation Kit 
• A300/ZX700
• icx1301/icx1302 
• NW-WM1ZM2/NW-WM1AM2
• icx1298 

Instead we have 'volcano' as the motherboard information. Volcano is a real entry, and is associated with devices that use the Snapdragon 6 Gen 4, Snapdragon 7s Gen 3, or Snapdragon 7s Gen4. Here are some examples of models with 'volcano' as the motherboard entry: Nothing Phone (3a) Pro, Samsung Galaxy XCover7 Pro, vivo iQOO Z10, and Honor Magic8 Lite.

The three Snapdragon SoCs are 8-core, but use a 1+3+4 core layout, while the NW-ZX900 uses a 4+4 core layout. Here are the details for the Snapdragon SoCs from wikipedia.

Snapdragon 6 Gen 4 (4nm Samsung 4LPX) - announced February 2025 

• 1 Prime core, up to 2.3 GHz
• 3 Performance cores, up to 2.2 GHz
• 4 Efficiency cores, up to 1.8 GHz 

Snapdragon 7s Gen 3 (4nm TSMC N4P) - announced August 2024

• 1 Prime core, up to 2.5 GHz
• 3 Performance cores, up to 2.4 GHz
• 4 Efficiency cores, up to 1.8 GHz

Snapdragon 7s Gen 4 (4nm TSMC N4P) - announced August 2025

• 1 Prime core, up to 2.7 GHz
• 3 Performance cores, up to 2.4 GHz
• 4 Efficiency cores, up to 1.8 GHz 

This difference may not matter all that much considering the prime and performance cores are the same type, Cortex-A720, only differing by their clock speed. Sony could limit the clock for the prime and performance cores to 2.02 Ghz, and keep the efficiency cores at 1.8 Ghz. This seems to be only logical explanation for what we see in the benchmark.

The GPU is confirmed as Adreno 810, which is used in all of the 3 Snapdragon SoCs mentioned earlier. So this new Walkman has to be using one of the SoCs.

As for the missing internal code, well we have that as well, ICX-1303. This makes sense, as the A300 was ICX-1301 and the ZX700 was ICX-1302. 

Question now is, will we see a new A-Series as well? Or will Sony retire the A-Series and only keep the ZX line? And what about the WM1-Series? Will we see a mark 3? Many questions, but no answers.

For anyone wondering why we are seeing a benchmark before a certification, 2 reasons. First, this was the same scenario with the NW-A300. The A300 appeared on Geekbench in March 2022, 6 months before the FCC filing, and 10 months before their announcement. I only discovered this after the FCC filing. Second, there was a recent discussion in the Walkmansphere that Sony would be exiting the Walkman business. Could the benchmarks be the work of Sony in order to dispel these rumours? Why else would we get 13 benchmarks over a span of 2 days?

So when could we see the an announcement for the NW-ZX900? The A100 and ZX500 announcement was in September 2019, with the A300 and ZX700 announcement in January 2023. This puts the model cycle at about 39-40 months, or about 3 1/4 years. If Sony were to stick to this cycle, then we could see new model(s) announced as soon as April 2026, but it could be later.

Once we start seeing certifications, then we should be about 3-4 months from an announcement. If Sony will offer the new NW-ZX900 in the US, then we will have a FCC filing as well.

Still lots of unknowns still, like price and availability, so if anyone has any more information about the NW-ZX900 or any upcoming Walkmans, please contact me or leave an anonymous post in the comments.

Update 

Something mentioned by a comment below (thank you). Supposedly Sony USA support mentioned a 1000 Series Walkman. This might be connected to the 1000X the COLLEXION trademark from a while back. The trademark did include audio players. I did speculate that perhaps we would see a Walkman with this branding in that original post.

Headphones; earphones; portable audio players; radios; loudspeakers; amplifiers; television receivers; telecommunication machines and apparatus 

The benchmark was first spotted by sumahodigest.

Please consider supporting my work here through Buymeacoffee. Thank you.