Sony Brings Back the Walk-Man, Gold-Plated and $3,700

NEW SONY WALK-MAN GOES FULL BLING, GOLD-PLATED WITH A PRICE TAG OF $3,700

How much is nostalgia worth? Well, in this case it’s worth quite a lot. I remember my own from forever ago. I had one, of course. It was incredibly simple in design, and only played cassette tapes. The profile was barely bigger than that carbon tape itself, and ran on a single AA battery. I loved it. But I haven’t used that since maybe(?) 1990. And I’m appalled that was 32 years ago! But I still love gadgets. And Sony is trying and failing to tempt me yet again. But only because the price tag is simply ridiculous. They’re bringing back the Walk-Man, yes. And this one is gold-plated and will cost you $3,700 to own and call my precious.

GOLD-PLATED WALK-MAN IS FOR WELL-HEELED AUDIOPHILES WHO WANT THE BEST IN DIGITAL MUSIC

Sony clearly thinks there is a market for this. And likely they are right. This gold-plated nostalgia tease is also sort of no-frills. But in a very different era’s priorities. This is a sound-quality-maximizing device that doesn’t come with any kind of cellular components. You won’t be browsing the internet on this. Well, except for your music, of course. And no, of course this doesn’t play cassette tapes. This Walk-Man will run an Android 11 media player. With it, you can stream music and download music via apps. Funny, but my cell phone does that! Sadly, my iPhone 13 isn’t gold-plated.

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THE LOWER-END WALK-MAN IS ONLY $1,400, BUT I’M ALREADY REACHING FOR MY TURNTABLE ON-BUTTON

Not to worry, though! If that $3,700 price tag scares you off, you can still get in on the action with a lesser model that only sets you back (gulp) $1,400. That Walk-Man, of course, isn’t gold-plated and doesn’t come with the higher end sound-quality-enhancing hardware. I seem to remember LP’s sounding pretty good, myself. But the new crazy bling Walk-Man will have Wi-Fi, and will also play media files like MP3, FLAC, AAC and others. The storage is somewhat paltry, at 256GB. It will have a standard headphone jack and will charge via USB-C.

And did I mention the new Walk-Man is gold-plated? Now, about hunting down some “new” LP’s for my turntable……