First the good news, the Sony Walkman Z1000 Series media player looks great and has some nice sound enhancing features. The bad news is that everything else about this new Android powered media player doesn't stand out from the crowds. There seems to be more missing from this great looking player than has been added. The feature-set that is included seems to be moving towards the iPod mode. This Walkman Z1000 is being more geared as a portal to 'pay' services. The 4.3” touchscreen PMP adds support for quite a few, but not all, of the most popular music and video formats. The Nvidia 1Ghz Tegra 2 processor should deliver shutter free playback on every one. Sony's display technology is always top notch and the Z should be no exception. The continual inclusion of micro-HDMI output on portable devices is mystifying. Who is using this? The Walkman Z1000 series sails even further off the map enabling you to DLNA stream content off your portable device to other (more capable) devices on your network. Sony has sadly removed the memory card slot altogether; shame, after only briefly entertaining cards besides Memory Stick. The connectivity options are good with both 802.11b/g/n as well as Bluetooth. And the availability of the full Android Marketplace for apps and content is nice. At $250 (8GB) and $330 (32GB), you are getting some upgrades over competitors like Archos but at the loss of some of the vendor independent freedom. It should prove a worthy competitor to the audiophiles that are currently homogenized into an iPod touch for music. While the loss of these features saddens us early adopters, this is very nearly standard in the new cloud market. We are very hopeful that Sony will catch up and outpace its competition shortly.
