Sony Unveils Candy-Colored Walkman

Sony looked to jellybean candy for inspiration in designing its latest Network Walkman digital music players.

The players, which will go on sale later this year, are bean-shaped and will be available in colors that are intended to match various jellybean flavors: tropical ice is blue; cotton candy is pink; licorice is black; and coconut is white, the company says.

Like Sony's other Network Walkman players the new models can play MP3 or ATRAC3plus format music files.

Additional Features

Other features include a 1-line OLED (organic light emitting diode) display for details of the track being played or to show the current time. The rechargeable Lithium Ion battery can provide up to 50 hours of playback and also has a fast-charge function which will deliver up to 3 hours of playback from a 3-minute charge.

The bean-shaped players will be available in four versions: the NW-E205 and NW-E305 have 512MB of memory and the latter model has an FM radio, and the NW-E207 and NW-E307 have 1GB of memory with an FM radio in the latter model.

Sony has announced three of the models, except the NW-E307, for the European market and the two 300-series models for the U.S. market. In the U.S. the NW-E305 will cost $130 and the NW-E307 will cost $180 and they should both be available in October. European launch details and pricing was not immediately available.