Intro

In today's video we will be talking about Sony's latest Walkman series audio
player the NW-A306. So in January Sony released two of the latest Walkman
series audio players, first being the NW- ZX707, which is the flagship amongst
the two and the one that I'm gonna be talking about today is the NW-A306.
Now Sony, if you would have followed them as a brand, the Walkman series is
one of the most iconic products from the brand. In the 90s, when the first
Walkman was released, it really revolutionised the way people consume music
and the effects of those Walkman series or those particular devices are still
reflected today in the way we consume music. Now with the release of these
two players and especially the A306, what Sony has done is they've really
invested a lot in the digital signal processing and also increase the battery life
so that you the user can get the best listening experience possible, in the most
portable form factor ever.

Sony NW-A306 - Tech Inside

Alright so let's talk about the Sony NW-A306 player. Now this is a audio player
that's really designed for the discerning audiophile or music enthusiast who
really want to experience the music at the highest quality possible. Now if you
look at the design this is a fairly compact device but the amount of technology
and the amount of engineering that has gone into it is just phenomenal. Now off
the top of my head the one thing that I really want to talk about is the DSEE
Ultimate Engine that has been embedded into this player. Now what this
essentially is it's a digital signal enhancement engine. Now what it simply does,
to put it into simpler words, is it upscales your compressed audio files and it
really reproduces the entire frequency range and the dynamic response quite
faithfully. Now say for an example if you were to listen to an MP3 file and have
this DSEE Ultimate Engine enabled, you're gonna hear the difference between
the original and the upscaled version. Now we do not encourage or recommend
you to listen to music on MP3 files but if you so have to do so, do enable the
DSEE Engine, but in either case we highly recommend you listen to your music
in Hi-Res or Lossless quality for the best experience. Now there's another
technology that's present in the NW-A306 Walkman player, it’s something
called the Clear Audio Plus feature. Now this is also sort of an upscaling feature
within this player but when combined with the S-Master HX Amplifier on this
device, what this really does is it reduces the distortion within the music or
while you're listening to your music to a bare minimum. This feature is when
enabled, distortion really drops down to a level where it's not audible at all and
this really really elevates the music listening experience.

S-Master HX Amplification

Now as I've mentioned about the S-Master HX Amplification stage - on this now
this is quite capable and I've tried to pair a lot of IEMs and some of the easier to
drive headphones and I've had no problems whatsoever in driving them. Now
this is an amplification stage that allows you to push your IEMs and get the best
from them, while also maintaining the clarity within your music. There is literally
no amount of digital distortion that's been introduced and this is a great thing.

User Experience

All right so if I were to talk about the user experience on this player, it is
fantastic the NW-A306 comes bundle with the Android 12 operating system
and with this, the operating experience on this device becomes really really
smooth. Now it also comes with a dedicated Walkman player. Now what this
player does is allows you to play locally stored files through this particular
player. Now there's one very nostalgic element to this player, so when you're
playing a particular track you can enable a wallpaper that literally gives you a
visual of a cassette playing and this is quite quite nostalgic to people who've
owned a Walkman. Another thing that I personally really like is the tactile
buttons on the side. Now this is also something directly borrowed from the
original Walkman and without even starting the player or putting the screen on,
you can play your music, pause your music, you can skip onto the next track or
you can really move back on the track that you heard prior. Now this is really
really good and it really really gives a very tactile feel.

Build Quality + Internal Design

Another thing that I would really like to mention is the build quality of this player
is really really good. It's made out of aluminium and another special thing about
the internals is what the engineers at Sony have done is instead of using
common metals for the soldering, what they've done is they've used gold as
this holding element and that really helps the conductivity within the player to
reach a different height. Now what this essentially means is your audio is going
to be as clean as possible.

Storage

All right so talking about the storage, this player comes with an internal storage
of 32 gigs, so right off the bat you can start operating it, you can download a
bunch of your favourite streaming apps and you can even load some of your
offline files. If you so happen to run out of space, what you can do is you can
load up an external SD card with the slot provided and there you have all your
offline files in one single place.

Battery Life

Now one thing that I really want to talk about and something that Sony has
really like emphasised is the battery life. Now I've been using this player for
over a week now and I've managed to get almost over a day's worth of music
listening and I've been streaming music, I've been listening to offline files and
I've not had any problems in terms of battery. Now considering the fact that I've
been using this on Wi-Fi, I've been connecting it and I've been using and
listening to a lot of Hi-Res files, 24 hours plus battery life is really great. I really
don't think so there are any audio players out there that really promise to give
you a battery life like this one.

Sony NW-ZX707 & NW-A306 Compared

Alright so now what I really want to do is talk about some commonalities and
some differences between the Sony NW-A306 and the NW-ZX707. Now a lot of
the things or the technologies between both the players are in common like the
DSEE Ultimate Engine, a bunch of the amplification circuitry, they are all in
common but where these two players really are different from each other is the
screen size. Of course the NW-ZX707 is a bigger five point something inch
screen while this is a 3.6 inches screen. The other thing that you get in the NWZX707 is a 4.4 mm balanced connection. Now the NW-A306 only has a 3.5 mm
connection but with the DSEE Ultimate Engine and the Clear Plus Engine, are
you really not gonna miss out on the best music experience that you could get.

Conclusion

So having spoken about all the features and what the Sony NW-A306 has to
offer, if you were to ask me my honest opinion, I have literally no complaints
with this audio player. This is a player that delivers every single thing that it
promises and the one thing that it really excels in is the audio listening
experience. There are very few audio players that deliver the kind of hassle-free
bloat free experience that this player does. Now this is as I mentioned the
perfect upgrade for a beginner or even for someone who wants to you know
take their listening experience to the next level and with everything that it offers
with the digital enhancement features, with the long battery life, with the sturdy
build this is just perfect and if you're someone who's looking for your next
device to take your listening experience to the next level, this is it! Just go for it
without thinking twice. So having said that if you would like to try the Sony NWA306 you're more than welcome to drop by at our experience studio and you
could even drop by at a Headphone Connect event happening at a city near
you. So that's it for today and I'll see you in the next one.