Sony will soon ship an updated version of its first hard drive-equipped digital music player, this time to pitch the product straight at Apple's iPod Mini.

The NW-HD2 matches the specification of the original NW-HD1 (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/07/01/sony_hd_walkman/) - in particular the 20GB 1.8in hard drive - simply adding three alternative coloured cases. In addition to the NW-HD1's darker metallic shell, the NW-HD2 is available in silver, metallic pink and metallic blue shades.

The compact player weighs just 110g and measures 8.9 x 6.2 a 1.4cm. There's a small blue-backlit LCD panel, with a round five-way controller to handle playback, track skipping and menu navigation.

Sony may have committed itself to native MP3 playback in future music players, but the NW-HD2 continues to support said format only through the company's transcoding software built into its SonicStage jukebox application. Ditto WAV and WMA files - and only non-DRM'd versions at that. The NW-HD2 only plays ATRAC 3, ATRAC 3 Plus and lossless PCM coded files natively.

Sony claims the unit offers up to 30 hours' continuous playback on a single battery charge, and on the basis of The Register's testing of its Vaio Pocket VFG-AP1 music player (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/09/28/review_sony_vaio_pocket/), we can well believe it.

Sony's move to offer pastel-hued music players follows a similar announcement from Toshiba earlier this week (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/09/27/toshiba_updates_gigabeat/) that it's preparing coloured-versions of its Gigabeat player. Apple rival Creative also announced coloured versions of its MuVo2 player early in September (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/09/01/creative_muvo_2_fm/).

And not just music devices. Kyocera is already shipping an iPod Mini-matching line of digital cameras (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/07/22/kyocera_ipod_cam/).

The NW-HD2 goes on sale in Japan on 10 October for around ¥40,000 (£201/$361). There's no word yet on US and European availability. ®

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Sony Vaio Pocket VGF-AP1L digital music player (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/09/28/review_sony_vaio_pocket/)
Sony unveils HDD Walkman (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/07/01/sony_hd_walkman/)
Toshiba tilts digital music player line at iPod (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/09/27/toshiba_updates_gigabeat/)
Creative unveils iPod Mini-coloured MuVo2 update (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/09/01/creative_muvo_2_fm/)
Kyocera offers iPod Mini-matching digicams (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/07/22/kyocera_ipod_cam/)
Packard Bell preps iPod Mini clone (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/08/12/packard_bell_ipod/)
Rio pitches Carbon player at iPod Mini (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/08/02/rio_carbon/)
T-Mobile to battle iPod with music smart phone (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/09/15/t-mobile_music_phone/)
Samsung shows 'world's first' hard drive phone (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/09/06/samsung_hdd_handset/)