Japanese consumer electronics giant Sony Corp. has announced a range of portable audio products at the IFA 2015 trade show in Berlin, including a number of new headphones and Walkmans as part of its new H.ear series of portable audio products, designed to deliver high-res audio. The Walkmans will come in two different series – the NW-A20, which is seemingly an update to the A17 series launched last year, and the NW-ZX100HN, which would be an update to the premium MW-ZX2 Walkman released last year by the company. According to Sony, the new Walkmans feature a piece of software called DSEE HX, which enables the media player to upscale low bitrate audio files from the humble MP3 file format to “near high-res” quality. The media players come with Bluetooth and NFC, but lacks Wi-Fi connectivity.
Coming to the NW-A20, the device comes in two different variants; the NW-A25HN which comes with 16 GB of native storage, and the NW-A27HN, which includes 64 GB of on-board storage. Both versions however, come with a microSD card slot each, which would allow the storage to be expanded by up to 128 GB. The NW-A20 Walkmans come with digital noise cancellation and LDAC Bluetooth streaming, and will come with Sony’s brand new H.ear (pronounced hear) range of noise cancelling headphones, of which, there are two – the MDR-NW750N and MDR-NW750NE, both of which were also announced at the event. The devices will also come with 50 hours of battery life, according to Sony.
As for the more premium of the Walkmans announced on Wednesday, the NW-ZX100HN also comes with digital noise cancellation, but unfortunately, doesn’t include Wi-Fi connectivity. It comes with a 3-inch TFT colour LCD display, with a QVGA (400 — 240 pixels) resolution. The devices also come with Sony’s in-house operating system instead of Android, which was the feature of last year’s ZX2, meaning no support for streaming apps like Tidal or Spotify with the latest models. According to Sony, the NW-ZX100HN will offer 45 hours battery life, and will be commercially available from next month. The company however, hasn’t mentioned anything about the possible pricing of any of the aforementioned products.
In the run-up to the IFA in Berlin, a number of leaks had indicated that Sony would be launching an array of devices at this year’s event. It now seems like those reports have indeed turned out to be true. The company did not only launch these new Walkmans and headphones, but also a brand new 4K Bravia TV, and of course, as many as three new premium smartphones as part of its Xperia range of handsets, including one with a 4K display panel!