Sony fight back with two new Walkman MP3 players

Sony launch the 2OGB (NW-A3000) and 6GB (NW-A1000) MP3 players

8 September 2005 12:15 GMT / By Stuart Miles

Sony has caught the “it's September lets launch a MP3 player” bug and has announced a new range of MP3 players today.

The new models will be available in a 2OGB (NW-A3000) and 6GB (NW-A1000) versions and come in violet, silver and pink colours with matching earphones (unlike the Apple's new black iPod nano).

The models will measure W55.0mm x H88.1mm x D18.7mm (the thinnest part is 11.5mm) with a 1.5in screen for the 6Gb player and W65.2mm x H104.2mm x D21.4mm (the thinnest part is 13.5mm) with a 2in screen for the 20Gb.

Users will be able to interact with the device via its advanced organic EL display. The mobile phone style ‘Home' menu offers nine options, easily selected via the four-way directional button.

Sony is hoping to strike lucky with a host of search features built-in including an ‘Artist Link' button that searches every artist, album and song stored on the device and offers suggestions of artists and bands closely linked to the genre of music being played at the time.

Intelligent Shuffle functions allow music to be searched in more ways than has ever including via ‘Genre', ‘Artist', ‘Album', ‘Song', ‘Release Date', ‘Rating' and ‘Recently Transferred', enabling the user to really own the way their music is listened to. ‘Time Shuffle' plays songs of a randomly selected year and ‘Favourite Shuffle' plays your top 100 most listened tracks. The new units will also have access to three years of playback history.

The new WALKMAN will be in stores by early November 2005. The price is £199 for the 20GB and £169 for the 6GB in the UK.