Sony NWA840 A-Series Walkman

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Never one to be outdone in the electronics arena, Sony has once again decided to up the ante when it comes to slick-looking portable music players with their latest introduction, the super-thin A-series Walkman, the NW-A840. This thing is definitely a looker with its brilliant OLED touchscreen and shiny colorful package and if they play their cards right, it just might help them take a bigger bite out of the Apple-dominated PMP pie.

Did I mention that the new Sony NW-A840 Walkman is slim? It measures in at an anorexic 7.2-mm and features a 2.8-in WQVGA OLED display to boot. Not only do you get a killer music player, the latest Walkman device also sports a TV-out function that can output 720×480 resolution video. Among the other welcome (and quite impressive) features are a digital noise canceling function, an S-Master digital amplifier, and an FM radio.

The drag-and-drop capable NW-A840 supports a myriad of file formats including MP3, WMA, AAC, HE-AAC, ATRAC, ATRAC AL, PCM/WAV, AVC (H2.64), MPEG-4 and WMV file formats. And for the first time in a Sony PMP we are seeing auto-conversion video transfer which should help to make managing your multimedia a bit less of a task and more of a joy. The NW-A840 is said to deliver about 29-hrs of music playback at 128kbps and 9-hrs of video playback at 384kbps MPEG-4.

The Sony NWA840 A-Series Walkman is available in 16GB, 32GB and 64GB models and will go on sale in Japan next month for $263, $329, and $439, respectively. Along with the actual device, which comes in both black and brown, they’ve thrown in a set of Sony’s premium MDR-EX300SL digital noise canceling headphones. There’s no word yet on when they’ll hit North American store shelves, but given the upcoming holiday season, we bet it’ll be pretty soon.