Sounds a little bit like a cash grab.
Talk about a blast from the past. To celebrate four decades since the birth of the iconic Walkman cassette player, Sony has unveiled a brand new model.
Now, if you have a keen eye, you might have noticed something radically different to the Walkmans from decades past: the ability to play cassettes. Yep, the 40th-anniversary Walkman has been given a bit of an upgrade. Instead of playing cassettes, the model comes with an Android-powered music player and up to 16GB of storage. To calm disgruntled nostalgia fans, the music player also comes with a screensaver that looks like a cassette and a 3.5mm headphone jack.
The player will also have Wi-Fi functionality, meaning you can stream all your fave tracks — just like any other listening device made in the past five years. This leaves me scratching my head over what the point is.
When Apple discontinued its iPod Classic, I wept. It seemed to be one of the very few gaps left between listening to tunes digitally and succumbing to recycled streaming algorithms (Spotify, all my generated playlists are the same, please help). Sony is definitely looking to replicate this feeling of an offline listening experience, but it’s looking like modern-day technology is standing in the way of a real nostalgic experience.
For more info, head to Sony’s website.
