it comes as no surprise to me that when a Walkman yes the brand new Sony
walkmans from 2023 came to our little
ShortCircuit shelf that the most excited person about these was Linus and
that's because he's you know old and you might look at me and be like well you're
too young to have enjoyed a walk man but I had two older brothers and I only ever
got hand-me-down so I rocked a CD Walkman until I was like 14 and I got an
iPod Touch for Christmas and I kept that iPod Touch for many many years and
mother's iPod touch okay but yeah this is
strange product it doesn't like
you know an OG Walkman obviously they're not going to release something that uses
CDs in 2023 but this is the NW
zx707 it's an Android based Walkman
so it's it's probably just kind of like an Android phone without a SIM card with
really good audio that's hopefully what it is
holy crap that looks pretty premium yeah
I mean on the outside whoa there's a lot of media controls there
we got some we got a hold button I don't know what that does
oh it's any idea holds for audio like it
holds the current track Maybe oh it's almost like it should just say
lock oh we got a forward we gotta play a
pause we got it back we got a volume down and up and a power button are these
okay they're ever so slightly different size it would be hard to reference which
button you were clicking in your pocket you can put texture on things you know
there is little bumps but I don't know if that's enough to really get the vibe
now there's a Micro SD slot on this side and then on the top we have the balanced
output along with just a normal 3.5 millimeter so you probably want to use
the balanced one if you have headphones that support it on the bottom type c
charging that's good and a little like hanger thing so you could have like a
little wrist strap on it which is which is cool it's really square and
it's got really harsh edges it looks and
feels premium but also kind of feels I don't know uncomfortable I guess the
leather on the back is nice and it does have the little Walkman logo Walkman
Walkman I'm just gonna keep saying Walkman just so just to bug people so
maybe this guy the NWA 306 which is the cheaper version
the packaging on this one is definitely not as I hate these things
not as premium but we still got the cellophane wrap oh
wow it's much smaller look at that hey another one of these wonderful Sony
branded cables it is I identical cool I
like the pocket ability of this I mean this is almost just the size of a wallet
it's the same size as this cute little bellroy wallet I have which is about the
same size as a credit card nice form factor on this one for sure the buttons
same deal it's actually all the exact
same but these ones see look they had the foresight on these ones to make the
the volume buttons a little different so when you're feeling
I can feel that that one is distinctly larger and I know that that's volume and
these ones are just other although the power button being on the end here I
could have gone for a power button on the other side maybe just so you don't
accidentally hit it this guy also has micro SD
type c a little spot for a hanger and then down
here is the 3.5 millimeter headphone jack so it's not gonna be a balanced
output on this one just looking at the specs of these things on the Sony
website they all have the same supported audio playback codec so like all of the
same bit rates all the same codecs are supported they have the same amount of
Maximum output power on both the 3.5 mils and the balanced output they both
can do USB DAC mode which is you plug it into your computer and just use it as a
DAC man there's not a lot of specs wise visible differences they
don't mention how big the battery is on these it just says rechargeable lithium
ion battery if using Bluetooth headphones with the lbac codec you're
going to be at around 11 hours and then with SPC you can get around 22 hours
interestingly enough the smaller one seems to have much better battery life
if you're just listening to 128 kilobit MP3s which I imagine you're not if using
a device like this you get 25 hours on
the big expensive one and 36 hours on
the smaller cheaper one kind of weird this thing is massive
the room for a bigger battery I know part of it being bigger is they've
implemented a lot of you know kind of fancier components and there's a giant
like copper block inside here to to prevent EMF from the components on the
board interfering with the audio if this thing had crazy output power for like
beefier headphones compared to this one I could kind of see that making sense
but uh it's a bit weird one thing you could I guess say is this one has a much
larger screen it seems like sound wise though many of the features about like
upscaling and remastering on the Fly and
vinyl mode which Believe It or Not adds
vinyl like artifacts to your digital music which is so stupid we'll have to
see if they sound any different that's what I'm really curious about hey look
they're on but before we look at them a message from our sponsored xsplit thanks
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off your first purchase or subscription nice okay that looks like pretty stock
Android push the oh my God this one is so little so for scale here's an iPhone
13 Pro Max this is a very small device I
mean it's credit card size for real right off the bat in terms of
responsiveness not the greatest I guess this one is really cheap so it's it's
not that bad but this one is is really expensive
so it's it's more bad oh my God this one
is so little I can't get over this it's like
this is like the prison version of a
Walkman I guess if you already have a playlist set up it's not so bad but if
you're trying to search for music on this thing regularly I could see the small screen being a bit of a problem in
terms of the responsiveness in a music apps this is Deezer
um it's pretty it's pretty cludgy I mean here's an
iPhone after it's had a sec to load this one
pretty bad I wouldn't say it's game breaking deal breaking but it's just a
little weird you know clearly these aren't the Pinnacle of Android
performance I'm sure if we tried to play a game on it it would be real bad but uh
it's more about the music so why don't we try that we have some exceptionally
fancy headphones here but I don't know if this is gonna be able to drive them
very well or at all these are the reference five something or other from
Abyss they're like six thousand US Dollars they're planar magnetic which
means by Design they're going to be pretty hard to run they need quite a bit
of power worst case scenario for this device so I do have a couple other pairs
of headphones to try oh yes I forgot how these are the the
Pinnacle of comfort smaller
editor cut this I just want to plug them in I've I've given up on balanced at
this point oh my God oh my God I can't
use this thing oh this cannot drive these headphones it's
so quiet I think if I had my smartphone right here turned at half volume it
would be louder I'm only at 100 though it does go to 120. it's just barely
listenable to now hi Jake Sony what the hell
that's a thing don't think about it okay
I brought these as well these are also super hard to drive HD 800s that's right
so there that's at Absolute Maxwell This
is max volume
be fair these are like ridiculously hard to drive headphones it's so quiet but
it's very quiet the HD 800s are definitely still hard to drive
headphones that's absolute maximum I
would listen to that on the bus I you can't we can't really evaluate this with
these headphones it's well that's a problem it's too much sauce for how
expensive this is I was kind of hoping it could push a little more power now
what I'm curious about is is it the same amount as this one because it says it is
so we should see if they sound mostly the same yeah
check the volume level excuse me don't let it be too you have to click OK and
then it unlocks the volume so you can turn it back up
that's louder what no way
plug it into the other one I mean maybe there's some settings we haven't gone
into yet but it's louder ever so slightly okay now there's
nothing there's no like sound to boost or anything like that okay give me again
and switch it back over quickly okay upside down all right ready okay yeah
I locked it damn it yeah it does seem
louder from the outside that's a couple DB lighter yeah that's uh that's weird very weird is
there additional settings on this one that aren't on the more expensive one no
that doesn't make sense no it doesn't look they're better Electronics in here
you should see the product page with louder is better Jake look at all these
buzzwords we got hold on hold on hold on
large solid High polymer capacitors so like a normal capacitor we've got large
coils we've got oxygen free copper blocks oh you got to say oxygen free
copper that's what we acquire yeah we got oxygen free copper cable crystal oscillators everything has high quality
solder containing gold even their Reflow solder contains gold it's a waste of
gold optimized circuit board layout but other than that the specs like all of
the Kodak support the quality support between the two of them is the same this
one gets like more battery life for some reason
it's like 36 hours with a 128 kilobit
MP3 and this one is 25 like it's it's
noticeably that's like 30 less it's unheard I wasn't expecting to run into
this problem uh I was expecting these to be too loud
to be usable at least you know I want to try it with my phone
you're joking no I want to see the comparable boxes Christ yeah I mean I do
have these uh Sony xm5s we can use these
with Bluetooth I'd say the volume is actually pretty similar between this and
your phone which I guess kind of makes sense sort of um
but it sounded different you I think you should try it okay give me these play
that again it does sound like better I think
wait maybe let's check the settings that's imperceptively that's the same
seems like the same now it might have just been that the quality was set differently before why did I prefer it
when it was set lower then I don't know
maybe you just can't drive these headphones properly this is a bit
disappointing I'm gonna go see if there's any headphones I can just quickly borrow that could run
like six sixes or 600 and now a moment
with Dad the part of a show where Dan keeps the
audience buying headphones what will happen this week oh it's heavy
let's find it you had enough room to put
a quarter inch Jack on it why didn't why did you put a quarter inch Jack on it
this has been one time with Dad well
Jake goes to find headphones let's not do it at max volume just in case today
it's capable you don't care about yours okay here's
like I'm I'm holding that headphone button down
you see it keep going after I let go it's got lag in it all right I'm just
gonna send it full volume same it's the same
it totally sounds are you sure these aren't 300 ohm as well
just put them on your head
go for it the 90
that's Max how loud is it though
that's uh pretty loud that's pretty loud that's like I want to enjoy this song
kind of volume long listening but like
that's kind of the volume that I would expect maybe this is like I'm intoxicated level
of volume yeah like oh you messed me up but I don't know that's
kind of where I would think a hundred should be and then you have 100 I can't
hear you at all I know yeah it's good you're nice and isolated what is the
impedance of these I don't know like five five oh yes thanks Dan 38 38. okay all
right it's too bad because otherwise it's a cool looking device I mean the
sound sounds good but you can't even really push headphones far enough to to
see how good they sound I guess they talk a lot about Bluetooth maybe that's
the vibe you want a Walkman for your
Bluetooth headphones should we should probably just try it at least right I
guess I don't wanna listen to music
quietly it popped up there we go holy
God damn it just I love current gear don't you I would
like to click 17 different prompts before I can use this app
sounds like Bluetooth headphones sounds like music this is kind of a hard one
because I mean from a from a value standpoint if
this device maybe it is clearer audio but it's kind of indiscernible from your
smartphone in terms of quality because it can't push headphones enough to
really see I don't know if there's kind of any reason to buy these so it's kind
of it's kind of lame for 900 and 350 I mean
maybe this if you're like one of those people that doesn't like to carry around
a smartphone but you still want to listen to music I don't know
so overall you got some thoughts 900 is
a lot of money for okay ignore this one let's say you're a 350 one this one's
louder anyways yeah a little bit uh I don't know for 350 bucks
it can't even drive the headphones that I wanted to it's not like I'm gonna use
Bluetooth with it because the digital to analog conversion is no longer happening
on that device it's happening on my headphones so why do I need a DAC in the
unit if it's not even gonna get used and
it seems to struggle with volume I'm sure the interface is fine but it's just
Android it's a little slow seems sluggish yeah it doesn't do anything
that my phone can't do it seems like the
only use case I can conceivably think of for a product like this is to sell it to
people who have too much money or for people that don't want to carry around a
phone I can understand trying to go a little bit you know less plugged in all
the time which is funny because you're going to plug in music okay to be clear I mean the 800s and the 650s are not
easy to drive headphones but they're also not the hardest to drive headphones
either no um if you're running planar magnetics don't buy this
if you're running anything other than like m50x's don't buy this I would even
say it m50x probably don't buy 10 ohm headphones maybe buy a cheap Android
smartphone and turn cellular off God
it's just this is such a like an enigma it's like high high quality so
disappointed it's a high quality DAC but with not enough amp to run it on high
quality enough headphones that you could appreciate the deck yeah well it's a few
days later now and we've made some interesting to say the least discoveries
after shooting the first part of this video and kind of coming to the
conclusion that this thing was like ah just not enough power right I was
looking through the manuals and found mention of a high gain mode but we
didn't really see that during the shoot and I actually went and checked on the
devices after the fact and there is no visible High Gain mode anywhere in the
settings or the volume app there's also no mention of it on Sony's website in
the specs page for either of those devices except if you go to the Sony
Asia website for the same products then it shows you can double the output power
of both the 3.5 mil Jack and the balanced output in High Gain mode on the
same devices why you can't access this in North America I don't know but the
really sus thing I just checked out the signature series version that's like 3
600 US dollars with Adam well that one has High Gain mode it's in North America
on the Sony USA website it shows High
Gain mode so the only thing I can conceivably see here is that they are
purposely limiting these devices to make
their really expensive one seem more appealing
this one is already expensive it's over a thousand dollars but I guess if you
want to use headphones that are any good with it you have to buy the 3600 one I
don't know why they do this I guess my conclusion is you just shouldn't buy
these things unless you listen on really really easy to drive headphones in which
case you should probably just use your smartphone I really don't see a
situation where you should buy either of these devices it's just mind-boggling
that they would purposely limit them especially considering that the hardware
can do that sort of output I don't think you should buy these they're kind of
slow in Android they can't really power any headphones that are reasonable it's
just I don't really know why it exists it's
kind of making the the legendary Walkman disappointing I'm I'm not very nostalgic
anymore well if you guys like this video hit the like button if you didn't don't
get subscribed maybe check out the
one of Adam's short circuits on some headphones because those are good either
way bye