Why Sony Still Makes a Walkman

Sony’s new Walkman are the kind of machines that make you glad the company still builds digital audio products. The flagship NW-WM1ZM3 has a machined copper body plated in gold, with obsessive attention paid to the wiring and power circuits inside. There’s just one problem: it costs $5,899. For anyone who remembers carrying a Walkman to school or buying one before a long trip, that price can seem insanely disconnected from the product they grew up with.

Walkman became familiar because pretty much everyone owned one. The first TPS-L2 cost the equivalent of about US$150 in Japan in 1979, and by the mid-1980s, basic models cost around US$50. The name became part of everyday life, and Sony carried it into CD players, MiniDisc recorders and digital music players.

Inevitably, a new Walkman hits the feeds of people who grew up with one, even if hardly any of them are the target audience. The market for dedicated players is now tiny.

That specialist audience has supported a market of its own for more than a decade. As phones took over everyday listening, boutique brands began offering luxury digital audio players with the materials and circuitry of hi-fi components, at prices to match. Buyers could choose models with separate digital-to-analog converters for the left and right channels, balanced headphone outputs and machined metal bodies with carbon-fiber panels. With a suitable line output, a player could also feed a home hi-fi system. Someone who has spent $20,000 on a system has a reason to care about the source feeding it.

Sony made its ambitions clear in September 2016 with the Signature Series. The gold-plated copper NW-WM1Z cost $3,199.99 and appeared alongside the MDR-Z1R headphones and TA-ZH1ES headphone amplifier.

By then, specialist audio manufacturers were helping define what a dedicated player could become after phones had absorbed much of its old audience. Sony could leave the most ambitious machines to them, or keep building equipment to put beside theirs. The Walkman name would get a player noticed. Its performance and construction would still have to compete.

I suspect pride helps explain Sony’s choice to stay. For a company so closely associated with personal music, leaving the most ambitious players to other manufacturers would be a conspicuous retreat. The gold Walkman keeps Sony competing at the top of a category it created. That is its role as a halo product, even for people who will never buy one.

Sony introduced two other models alongside the flagship. The $2,999.99 NW-WM1AM3 shares the NW-WM1ZM3’s 5.5-inch screen, with 128 GB of storage and an aluminum main chassis paired with a gold-plated copper rear chassis. Both use two large solid high-polymer capacitors in a revised power supply intended to improve power delivery and reduce noise.

The $1,899.99 NW-ZX900 succeeds the NW-ZX707 with 64 GB of storage and a smaller 5-inch display. It uses the same aluminum-and-copper chassis arrangement as the WM1AM3 and inherits the WM1 models’ low-noise regulator and crystal oscillators.

Across the 2026 Walkman lineup, Sony has extended its DSD Remastering Engine to streamed music as well as downloaded files. All three use S-Master HX amplification with look-ahead noise shaping. The announcement renews an entire premium range, with the gold model attracting attention to work shared across less expensive hardware. Even the lowest price in this new group is nearly $1,900.

We’ve spent more than a decade watching familiar Sony products disappear. The company could easily have walked away from portable players and concentrated on headphones. Instead, it has stayed and chosen to compete in the luxury market, with engineers still working on what a Walkman can be.

In an era where every improvement seems to come from software, there is something reassuring about Sony still putting this much care into the hardware. I just wish more of us could afford the result.