Sony unveiled its noise-canceling Walkman at CES

Developments by consumer electronics companies are now somewhat one-way, especially in the area of ​​portable players: the touch-sensitive display and video playback are the primary goals, so in most cases the traditional function of playing music takes precedence. Fortunately, Sony offers a way out of this paradox.

The main virtue of the NWZ-1000 series lies in the sound quality: a whole range of technologies ensures that the audio files encoded with lossy compression are reproduced in excellent quality. To do this, Sony has built a digital amplifier into the sleek player: a solution known as the S-MASTER has already been proven in a number of car headunits, as has DSEE, a sound image correction process. To complement all this, the device also has digital noise filtering, which - with the help of special EX earphones - can neutralize a significant part of external noise.

Of course, video capabilities aren’t compromised either: the 3-inch, touch-sensitive display is OLED-based, ensuring excellent picture quality with low power consumption.

The device, which is also equipped with integrated Wi-Fi, is expected to hit store shelves at the end of the second quarter, in 16- and 32GB versions, respectively.