Sony’s Walkman brand of devices has seen better days, but they continue to put out Walkman branded devices nonetheless and some of the stuff is pretty cool. With Sony’s new lineup of products shown off at IFA this morning there was tons to see and tons to love, not the least of which are these Walkman headphones, the Sony Bluetooth Walkman WS610. Perhaps the most compelling part about these headphones is that they function both as a Bluetooth stereo headset for use with mobile devices like your smartphone or tablet, but they can also function completely independently as your stand alone music player for while your running or exercising, or doing anything that requires music in a hands free state, as they have their own built-in storage and act as a independent MP3 player.
Sony unveiled the Smartwatch 3 at IFA this morning as well, and stated that it’s running Android Wear but it will also be getting a Sony Walkman app that can allow for a connection to a Bluetooth headset for music playback, so we’ll assume that it’ll be compatible with this headset here. That makes the Walkman WS610 much more useful if you just want some tunes but don’t want to carry your phone and want to control things from your watch, that is of course assuming that is compatible. The headset uses Bluetooth 4.0, so expect low power consumption which means better battery life in the end, something that is sorely needed with any device that plays music. Storage wise it comes with an included 16GB of space, which is plenty of room for music. Quite frankly, more than enough room for numerous song singles, albums, discography’s and playlists.
Not only does it come with the ability to store and play your music without a connected device, it also sports the usual Sony IP waterproof rating so you can even wear the headset in more wet conditions and underwater meaning you can wear them while you swim, if you wish. Music playback will last you either 4 or 8 hours depending on if you’re playing through the local on-board storage or streaming from your Bluetooth connected device, 4 hours obviously for the Bluetooth streaming and 8 hours for the local playback. If connected as a Bluetooth headset, you can use it for phone calls as well thanks to Sony’s implementation of the microphone. The headset also has embedded NFC for fast connection to devices, and can be charged either through the normal charging functionality or through the fast charge option which only takes about 3 minutes. The fast charge only allows for up to an hours worth of playback though, so if you’ll need more time you’ll want to wait out the charge on the headset a bit longer before you start using it. So far there isn’t word on pricing, but the headset is supposed to be available starting sometime next month in the UK, and hopefully we’ll also see this headset come stateside as it would pair nicely with the T-Mobile Xperia Z3.