Should you buy a Walkman in 2023? – Sony NW-A300 & NW-ZX700
Should you buy a Walkman in 2023? – Sony NW-A300 & NW-ZX700
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The Walkman brand has been around since the 80s and they used to dominate the market. After a long time in hibernation, Sony has brought them back with the new ZX-707 and NW-A306 units that boast some high quality claims. Will Jake and Dan be impressed or should you stick to using your phone?
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Buy a Sony NW-A306 Walkman: https://lmg.gg/oE8uU
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CHAPTERS
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0:00 The 80s are alive
0:47 NW-ZX707 unboxing, buttons/ports, and design impressions
2:23 NW-A306 unboxing, buttons/ports, and design impressions
3:32 Specs, battery life, and differences between units
5:18 Sponsor – XSplit
5:51 Software impressions
7:00 Trying high-end Abyss headphones ft. Dan
8:18 Trying the Sennheiser HD 800 S with surprising results
9:27 Reading buzzwords on the website
10:14 Comparing Walkmans to Dan’s phone
11:04 A Moment with Dan
11:35 Trying Sennheiser HD 650 and Audio-Technica ATH-M50x
12:56 Trying Sony WH-1000XM5 bluetooth headphones
13:30 “Who are these for?” and Pricing
15:31 Future Jake found “High Gain Mode” has been REMOVED.
17:27 Outro
your fingernails made me stop watching the video, am sorry mate, you need gloves or band-aid like Smoorez 🎉
Ur pretty bad😂😂
The cd version of the Walkman was called the Discman, just fyi. Cool vid! Shows that Sony is just being ridiculous again…
I use a dap myself but I agree with the points. As you said, it’s nice to be able to listen to music without your phone, but a lot of daps are really expensive for what they offer. I use IEMs so driving them is not really a problem. I can just go for budget stuff and it works perfectly well for me. I have an old fiio mk3, which I bought new for €70 a couple of years back. From there even to the 350 one is a big distance in terms of budget!
Best off just using an old or budget android phone with a headphone jack and microsd card slot. I was hoping it would be better.
15:22 same
you are so young, incredible because i have 28 years old and i had a cassette walkman, 3 discman and 10 mp3/ipods.
Android version of the Apple iPod. Which itself is ironic since Apple no longer is selling iPods. Just saying. Next why would you want to play a game. That is the main problem that help eliminate the iPod. Yes, carrying a second device may seem redundant, but it how us old people survived back in the day.
I had a Sony Walkman mp3 player for a few years
You have nothing to say but Weird
Driving $$$$$ headphones with hi resistance rate on a handheld without a portable amp… is redundant. Unless you were trying to prove that Sony needed to look for obvious use case and have support. But then you would’ve been like: "Euw, only 5h battery life; really Sony, what is this…?" 🤣✌
I have the NW-A306. Used with fairly ordinary wired ear buds of the type you would typically use with a phone (significantly cheaper than the device itself), the volume is more than adequate and to me, at least, it sounds way better than any smartphone with a standard USB to 3.5 headphone adapter cable of the type you have to use with almost all phones these days, although I don’t suppose everyone will notice the difference. Here is where it really shines though – extended listening. If you sit and listen to music for four or five hours plus (something I do regularly when working in the office) on a smartphone, it will be fatiguing. Your brain may even feel a bit battered if listening to any sort of music with a heavy beat. You will need a break. Not so with the NW-A306. I can listen to it all day long. I’m not sure of the technical reason for this but it’s very real, and if I recall correctly it has something to do with less refined audio circuitry pumping out spurious ultra-high frequencies that you don’t consciously hear, but which tend to make the listening experience become rather unpleasant after longer periods of time. As far as I’m concerned, there’s your use case.
I’ll stick with my Walkman that only plays cassettes.
I stopped watching from 1:11 …
The NWA Walkman just says "Fuck tha police coming straight from the underground" when you boot it up
I want one for my digital storage
your finger nails look like someone was bad at 3D modeling and just gave up and called it a day. xD
Why you eat your nails ? Uuugh
Gawd I’m old… He talks about a CD Walkman and when I last had one it was a cassette Walkman. I remember my schoolmate gave me a new one before they were out yet as his mother worked for some big record company and got about 6 of them given to their family, so they gave me one of them. Everybody I knew wanted to try them out.
My first Sony walk man was in 2002 still the best on earth
Just get a sony phone, same hardware…with an antenna. Hi res audio players are great, but as viewed require a lot of power to drive simple headphones.
Hundreds? You can buy a new MP3 player for less than $50, and some new ones have microSD slots.
The primary reason to still have an MP3 player in 2024? PHONE CALLS DON’T INTERRUPT THE MUSIC. The whole point of music is to shut out the world, why listen to it on a phone?
try OEMs
Why would someone want one of these if they have a mobile phone?
Sony please built a phone like this again ffs
am 10 and i asked for a og walkman that takes casets for christmas
all the more reason to bring back zune
litterally the exact thing I need. Too bad its poorly priced
I have the generation before the A300, i bought it exclusively because i like to listen to music in bed (and fall asleep with the music on), and having physical buttons allows me to adjust the volume, skip tracks or repeat a song easily, the small size is a plus too. I can’t do that with a smartphone and while some headphones have buttons to control the media playing, having to keep a hand "up" is uncomfortable.
I still use an iPod Nano 8GB (4th Gen) for the gym so that I can wear it on an armband without the bulk of a mobile phone. Still has good battery life and charges quickly. I’m looking to buy a modern small music player with bigger capacity.
really a multi hundred mp3 player. i do not even pay that much for my phone.
Why are they acting like high impedance is what makes a pair of headphones high quality? Do they know that many low impedance headphones are very good? I’m really confused watching this
It’s a shame Sony *ruined* their digital audio players – if I wanted a crappy Android-based experience, I’d buy a cheap smartphone.
I have a pre-Android NW-A45, and it’s pretty great. Long battery life, *reasonably* fast UI, good sound quality, and it’s lightweight. Great for running, or other physical exercise where I don’t want the weight of a smartphone. It’s also pretty great for travelling, I have hours and hours of audio without draining my smartphone battery.
@DankPods this one’s for you, mate
Sony NW-E394 Walkman 8GB is my to go to when out walking or travelling
The reason why I own one is to also own my music. I ripped all my old CDs and I download and pay for music online, mostly high res files. It’s a great way to have music and not need wifi. Maybe the best hack is to get a Japanese one if you can convert it to English.
The Dunning-Kruger Effect in full display. This guy knows very little about these things, but he’s ready to offer his rather ignorant advice to the World. I know much more, but I’m not an expert. So, I’d rather get more information from the manuals and experts. This guy’s using the Walkman the wrong way and for the wrong purpose.
I’ve had my NW-A55 "Walkman" for years and have absolutely loved it. I bought it for a long road trip, since then It’s replaced my phone and spotify in the car, as well as getting much more play time than 90% of my vinyl collection
At the prices…. just no. Terrible buttons. No benefit over a phone. My phone has 2 DACs.
the use of "CD walkman" instead of Discman is the evidence that you’re too young
The fact they didn’t just grab an amp to drive the headphones boggles the mind here. Guys come on lol.
16:50 money 😂
Remember the og version of the iPod was almost the same size of today regular iPhones. So the two models you have one that is phone size, and other is like later generation of iPods. lol. A reason why these players will load and start song faster is they are only operating one type of systems. It is the problem with Smart Phones of today, they are expected to be a camera, music player, phone, digital assistant, Text pager, and many more other personal devices that they have replaced over the last 20+ years. I remember back in the 90’s you would have Cell Phone and Pager. When someone needed to talk to you immediately, they would call your pager number, leave their numbers, you would then get alerted. It was then your responsibility to return their call in a timely fashion. Now we send text messages eliminate the need for having 2nd device attached to 2nd phone number. Depending on the nature of first text, will now dictates if you respond by text or give someone a call. Just saying.
A: I can’t believe he hadn’t seen a hold button before haha, little things tell me my age and i’m only 31
B: I genuinely don’t understand how people get their fingernails that short without chopping off the end of their fingers
C: Stop going on about 128kbps mp3s, as you said yourself NOBODY will listen to those on these things
D: Trying to drive those headphones with a battery powered pocket sized device was just stupid
$900? Fiio has DAC/AMP devices at that point.
These are for the off-grid, outside music listeners
They just don’t know what is compatible with these DAPs do they?
just get a fiio m15, much better than any audiophile player
I thought you were older than Linus.
If it didnt use Android, and instead used its own OS specifically made for that device, i bet it would not only perform much better, but it would have the benefit of not having Google scraping data from it.