New Sony MP3 Video Walkman Lacks Innovation – Sony Style becomes Sony Dull

We have always had the utmost respect for all things Sony, and there was a time when we wouldn’t even consider purchasing a gadget from any other manufacturer if we could find what we were looking for with a Sony badge, but, perhaps its just us, we cannot help but think that recently Sony’s products have lacked that certain spark (that ‘Sony Style’) that they once had and that, certainly in terms of innovation, Sony has been decidedly lacking of late – and their newly announced 8GB MP3 Video Walkman is a prime case in point.

From the offset, Sony’s new 8GB MP3 Video Walkman certainly has one thing going for it on account of the fact that its freed from the catastrophe of accessibility and usability otherwise known as Sonic Stage. But, in reality, whilst Sony has already dropped Sonic Stage dependency from other MP3 players within its latest ranges it really ought to have banished it a great deal earlier. Still, better late than never.

But, apart from the greater cross-format functionality now offered by Sony’s new Walkman, there really is not much here to get excited about, to the point where we can only wonder whether Sony has been wearing blinkers over the past year or, more worryingly, whether Sony has simply decided that innovation and style are best left to the likes of Apple.

It’s not that Sony’s player is a complete disaster in the looks department – it’s just that it’s really nothing we haven’t seen before in one form or another from other manufactures. So, whilst this new Walkman is hardly an eyesore, its not exactly breathtaking either. It’s just so-so – and that’s not a term we could have ever envisaged applying to a Sony product a few years ago.

The somewhat uninspiring aesthetics could be forgiven (though only in part) were the device a hotbed of technological revelation, but again Sony disappoints. There really is nothing here that gets the pulses racing – in fact, had we have woken up on the other side of the bed this morning we would have gone so far as to call this device dull (what are we talking about, even in the best of lights, this device is dull).

The NWZ-S618FBLK comes with 8GB of inbuilt memory, a 1.82 QVGA LCD screen (non touchscreen) boasting bi-directional display (at the push of a button) with a wholly unimpressive 320 x 240 resolution, MP3, WMA, AAC, MPEG4 and M4V file support and an FM tuner with 30 presets. So far, so-so.

The new Walkman also comes with Clear Audio Technology (hardly a new feature), a Time Machine Shuffle function that will shuffle songs according to a randomly selected year and Initial Search which will allow you to ‘use the first letter of the song, album or artist to easily find the music you are looking for.’.

Is your pulse racing? No, didn’t think so. Indeed the vary fact that the ability to search tracks using the first letter of a song, artist or title is even touted as feature on the official product webpage serves aptly to show just how humdrum this device is – unless, of course, a search feature is genuinely worth portraying as a prime selling point.

Don’t get us wrong. The last thing we ever want to do is to find a Sony product wholly lacking and genuinely insipid but in order to help us rave about Sony’s new Walkman it would have been nice if Sony could at least have produced a gadget that stands out from the crowd. Unfortunately the new Walkman offers little in the way of originality and, as the product specs above underpin, nothing by way of innovation.

We could be forgiven for thinking that, in the face of Apple’s onslaught in the field of personal digital players, Sony have simply decided to roll over and play dead if this new Walkman is anything to go by. And that’s not only something we never expected from Sony, it’s a tragedy for us all.

The new Sony MP3 Video Walkman is due to go one sale in the UK in the next few days for £179.