Sony beams down Bluetooth Walkman

Sony has cut the cord and unveiled the latest walkman media players, now with Bluetooth connectivity to ensure you’re never entangled by cables when transferring music or just singing along.

Sony's Walkman: ships with either 4GB or 8GB

The player comes with a choice of 8GB or 4GB capacity - dubbed the NWZ-A828 and the NWZ-A826, respectively - and includes both standard and Bluetooth earphones. The latter have a button for connecting them up to other Bluetooth devices, like your mobile phone, with a single click.

Both models have a 2.4in, 240 x 320 display and support both H.264 and MPEG 4 video formats. JPEG images can also be displayed on the player, which mimics Apple’s iPod Touch by incorporating an accelerometer that lets it display images in different orientations when its position is changed from vertical to horizontal and back again. Images can also be shown in a slideshow with a musical background.

A wide range of audio formats are supported, including AAC, MP3, WMA and WMA DRM.

You’ll get around 36 hours of audio playback when using the supplied cabled headphones, falling to about 15 hours when streaming music wirelessly to the supplied Bluetooth-enabled cans. Video playback is claimed to be around ten hours.

The 8GB NWZ-A828 and 4GB NWZ-A826 Walkman DMPs will both be available in Europe from April. Prices haven’t been streamed over yet.

Enough colours to match your clothing

Sony’s also created a colourful range of audio player sticks, each measuring 82 x 22 x 14mm, and looking like a USB pen drive, because of the incorporated USB connection for direct input into your PC. You can drag and drop audio files onto the player from a PC.

Dubbed NW-E026F, NW-E025F and NW-E023F, the players range from 1GB, 2GB and 4GB respectively. Interchangeable shells let the player's body colour change to suit your clothing and an FM radio tuner’s also built in.

All three models are set to be released in Japan early next month, but European timing or prices haven’t been given yet.