A Sony Walkman for the Spotify Era

For more than a decade, my phone has been my primary way of listening to music. I’d throw on some headphones or earbuds, open Spotify, and start shuffling through one of my finely curated playlists. Somewhere along the way, though, it became a less personal experience as I succumbed to the algorithm and listened to whatever Spotify thought I might like rather than seeking out new music on my own. Even when I did find something I liked, I was usually doing something else on my phone — scrolling my RSS feeds, replying to group chats, or saving things on Etsy — so I rarely let myself truly focus on and enjoy tracks the way I used to.

To break the habit of passively listening, I started buying used CDs from a local record shop and burning them to my computer. But listening to these files on my phone meant that I was still distracted by constant notification pings, and even with it frequently set on Do Not Disturb, just pulling my phone out of my pocket to change tracks risked the temptation of replying to messages instead of staying focused on my music. So I started looking at digital audio players (DAPs). After ruling out modded iPod Classics — they look great, but you’re dealing with outdated hardware that’s no longer supported — I came across several appealing options, including Sony’s high-end, Android-powered Walkman NW-A306. It has audiophile-level components and can’t receive texts or calls, and its small screen isn’t conducive for social-media usage or even replying to emails. This thing is strictly about listening to music, and it’s my new favorite way to do so.

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The Walkman NW-A306 is made of aluminum and has a matte finish that’s nice and grippy — a welcome change compared to the slippery metals Apple uses for its iPhones. It’s small enough to fit snugly in your palm. The back and left side of the device have a ridged texture that makes it both easy to hold and pleasant to fiddle with while listening to music. On the front is a 3.6-inch display, which is bright enough to see in direct sunlight and vibrant enough to make album artwork pop.

In addition to the touchscreen, there are physical buttons on the right side of the Walkman. They’re a lot more satisfying to use than tapping the screen, and they make it easy to control playback without having to pull the Walkman out of your pocket. There’s also a switch to lock all of the buttons so you don’t accidentally press them.

On the bottom of the device is a 3.5-mm. headphone jack (you can also pair headphones and earbuds over Bluetooth), a USB-C port for charging and data transfer only, a loop for a lanyard, and a micro SD card slot for expandable storage. The device has 32 GB of onboard storage, but only about 18 GB of that is actually usable. If you have a lot of lossless audio files, that extra space will be gone in no time, making external storage a necessity. The micro SD card slot supports cards up to 2 TB, so you can store plenty of songs, but that’s an additional cost to an already pricey music player. I wish it came with more storage, but my iPhone’s storage isn’t expandable at all, so the slot is a welcome inclusion.

While it’s true that your phone is a perfectly fine music player, the NW-A306 has some features that make it a far more enjoyable way to listen to tunes. Sony’s music app — which is pretty bare-bones overall — has direct integration with the Walkman’s hardware that third-party apps lack, making it the best way to listen to local files. By default, the Walkman produces an overall warm, balanced sound with a refreshing amount of detail, even when using a cheap pair of in-ear monitors. Sony’s app allows you to turn the Walkman into a DAC (digital-to-analog converter), so you can plug it into your TV or computer and listen through your headphones. It’s a handy feature that I’m glad Sony included, as DACs can be quite expensive, but I wish that it weren’t hidden on the second page of an app that’s mostly designed for listening to on-device music.

If you want to customize the sound, Sony included a separate sound-adjustment app that lets you toggle between presets and intelligent audio features or just fine-tune things yourself. There’s an equalizer with five presets and two custom slots, as well as features for strengthening lower-frequency sounds, keeping the volume consistent between songs, and enhancing vocals, among others. Sony also included something called Vinyl Processor, which attempts to replicate the rich, warm sound you get with a turntable. While there isn’t a stark difference with this enabled, it’s noticeable enough and fun to turn on when sitting down to listen to an album front to back. Finally, there’s a feature called DSEE (Digital Sound Enhancement Engine) Ultimate, which uses an algorithm to make compressed audio files sound closer to CD quality. It works, though the difference may be negligible unless you’re using high-end headphones.

That may all seem like overkill if you’re used to simply streaming things from Spotify to your phone, but the added granularity allows you to create a sound profile that’s tuned specifically to your ears. While most of my music library is composed of lossless files, I managed to make my handful of compressed MP3 files sound richer than they do on my iPhone 17 Pro just by spending a few minutes fiddling with the Walkman’s sound-adjustment app.

The Walkman is best appreciated with a good pair of wired headphones, but its support for Sony’s LDAC codec means that even over Bluetooth, you can get near lossless-quality audio. It’s a noticeable jump in quality compared to streaming the same tracks over the same music service in the same high-resolution format on my iPhone.

The Walkman runs Android 14 and supports Google Play Services, which means you can install apps right from the Google Play Store just as you would with a phone. Everything you need to use it as a music player is included on the device, but you can easily install third-party streaming services like Spotify, Apple Music, Tidal, or Qobuz, as well as pretty much any other app. I get my music from a variety of sources, so it’s nice being able to have them all on a dedicated music player.

That said, you can still install apps like TikTok or Instagram on it, leaving it nearly as ripe for distractions as your phone. They don’t all look particularly great — the toolbar in Readwise Reader gets cut off so you can’t easily access every panel — and because of the device’s overall choppy performance, it’s not always a pleasant experience. Even typing on the Walkman’s tiny screen gets cumbersome quickly; this truly is meant for listening to music while spending as little time looking at a screen as possible. Plus, that storage space is better used saving a few more albums than giving you another way to check your friends’ Stories.

That lag is a nice deterrent for distracting apps like social media and games, but it can also make some of the core functions of the Walkman frustratingly slow. Even swiping up on the device’s lock screen can cause a second or two of lag, and there’s often a delay between selecting a track and starting to play. It’s not enough to ruin the experience — it still looks and sounds great — but I sighed every time I had to wait for a menu element to pop up or a new song to start playing. For such an expensive device, I wish the performance were at least a tad snappier.

While I’ve definitely been listening to more music since picking up the NW-A306, it’s hard to ignore the $400 price tag. But for your money, you get a premium-feeling music player that can run third-party apps, so you can truly listen to whatever you want with better-sounding hardware than your phone is equipped with. You can find cheaper music players on Amazon, but they won’t sound as good as the Sony without additional gear.

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