The Sony Walkman
| Designer | Sony,Kihara Nobutoshi born 1926 |
| Dates | Marketed in 1979 |
Description
The Walkman has developed in to a beautiful piece of design. With the development of new technology’s coming in tape has evolved to include CD’s, mini-disc and mp3/mp4 players and have been incorporated in to mobile phone technology . The Sony walk man is all about simplicity and style. The buttons are obvious without being too dominant, the menu is user friendly with a very logical system of music selection. The overall design is clean and contemporary using brushed aluminium and modern plastics with a choice of colour’s. It is a fashion statement.
There are many other portable devices on the market; Sony’s biggest rival is the iPod. Developed by apple it is also a very nice piece of equipment, stylish and also simple to use it has a large fan base. If you want a top of the range portable media device you really only have to choose between Sony and iPod. There is a price difference with Sony generally being substantially cheaper than iPods. iPods range between £60-£300 depending on what model you go for and Sony’s between £80-£200.
A Personal View
I like the Sony Walkman as a brand not just as one individual media device. I have owned several Sony Walkmans ranging from the cassette players to the mp3 players and I’m seriously considering investing in a new mp4 player. They are well designed using sleek materials and a good range of colours but at the same time are not too loud (meaning over designed, in use of colour combinations and complexity) as some other brands are.
The Sony Bean was one of my best, the interesting shape with is organic curves sat smoothly in your palm. It felt good to hold and was very easy to use. It was made of a hard polymer and was very resistant to shock, as I found out. It survived being dropped on a number of occasions with nothing more than a few scratches; there was no reduction in sound quality. I owned this mp3 player for about 5 years and it still works to this day. The memory on it was excellent holding up to 50 albums worth of music. It had a direct USB link and doubled as a memory pen. The battery life was amazing lasting for 50 hours total and a 3 minute charge would give approximately 3 hours of playback. There were no other mp3 players that could match this at the time, but it is no longer in production due to the fact that mp4 players are the new gadgets to have.
Context
The Sony Walkman was one of the first portable music systems. After its release in Japan on the 1st of July it went from strength to strength. However there have been a few legal battles as to who invented the original portable cassette device, with Sony agreeing to a settlement with the possible original inventor German-Brazilian Andreas Pavel. The settlement was for a estimated $10,000,000 and was agreed in 2003.
The Sony Walkman is an amazing piece of design, ask any one the name and they will know what product you car speaking about. Built using state of the art materials and with constantly improving technology are the reasons the Sony Walkman stayed at the top of its game for so long. The walkman logo has been well advertised to a point that a large percentage of people will recognise the logo alone.
The original Sony Walkman the TPS-L2 set the standard for portable music. Features included stereo playback and two headphone jacks allowing multiple listeners, a “hotline” button that activated a microphone letting the two users speak over the music to talk to one another. A simple design of metal body but affective in its small and portable nature.
Sony started to produce Walkmans that could also record sound; the best of these was the 1984 Walkman Professional WM-D6C. Complete with a bright LED level meter and manual level controls for sound recording. This was powered by 4 AA batteries or could be mains powered. This product remained unchanged through 20 years of production.
Features developed by Sony Walkman include the playback only (play back is the option to play the reverse side of the tape at the press of a button) , using two separate motors to insure the correct playback speed.
Materials used for walkmans has not changed a great deal, the necessity of a metal case to protect the delicate electronics has limited the choice up until the last 20 years with the development of strong plastics and modern light weight metals.
Links
Official Sony audio - Sony Walkman, portable audio
The story behind the Sony Walkman - An in-depth history of the rise and development of Sony Walkman
Sony Ericsson Walkman Phones - A very interesting website showing all the mobile phones that include the Walkman technology
Walkman display screen editor - edit and create your own screen savers
Sony plans Walkman to rival iPod - a BBC news story about the battle betwen Sony and ipod
Walkman v iPod - a story by the Times about the battle between Sony and iPod
| Author: | Mark Fowler | Date: | 12 March 2008 |