BODY: A portable music player that costs more than a used car is not a typo — it's Sony's new halo product. On October 15 (US time), Sony Electronics announced three additions to its high-end Walkman line, and the headline number is the NW-WM1ZM3's suggested retail price of $5,899.99, roughly ¥932,900.
The three models land at sharply tiered price points. The flagship NW-WM1ZM3 pairs a 5.5-inch display with 256GB of onboard storage, while the NW-WM1AM3 at $2,999.99 keeps the same 5.5-inch screen but halves storage to 128GB. The entry point in the trio, the NW-ZX900, comes in at $1,899.99 with a 5-inch display. Pre-orders opened in the US through Sony's direct sales site and electronics retailers, with distribution beginning October 16.
All three run Android 16 — a meaningful detail, since it means these are streaming-native devices rather than purely offline music boxes. Sony lists LDAC and aptX Adaptive Bluetooth support, Wi-Fi streaming, USB Type-C, and its own S-Master HX amplification with DSD upsampling and DSEE Ultimate upscaling. The flagship quotes 60mW + 60mW from the standard headphone output and 250mW + 250mW balanced, with oxygen-free copper internal wiring and gold-plated connectors.
Battery figures are the quiet surprise. The WM1ZM3 and WM1AM3 are rated at up to 35 hours of MP3 playback and 31 hours of streaming, while the cheaper ZX900 actually outlasts both at up to 40 hours of local playback and 35 hours streaming — the cost of driving a bigger screen and a more power-hungry amp stage.
The insider take
What's striking from Tokyo isn't the price so much as the sequencing: a Japanese company announced its most expensive Walkman ever in the United States first, with no domestic price or date attached. Sony has been doing more of this lately, and the reason is unglamorous — a weak yen makes Japan-first pricing awkward for a product whose bill of materials is dominated by precious metals and copper. Expect the domestic figure to arrive separately and to generate the usual round of grumbling on Japanese audio forums and at Akihabara's e-earphone, where the previous-generation WM1ZM2 launched at a fraction of this. The high-end Walkman long ago stopped being a mass product and became a kind of craft object for the Asian audiophile market — and at nearly a million yen, Sony is testing exactly how far that logic stretches.
Originally reported by はてなブックマーク (Japanese).