What's inside Sony's $5,900 Walkman for obsessive audiophiles?

As Sony's lineup of portable audio devices has evolved over the years, it's veered towards more discerning listeners. It's just dropped its most expensive Walkman yet: the US$5,900 NW-WM1ZM3.

That's nearly twice the price of the other model it released just a rung lower, the $3,000 NW-WM1AM3. Its predecessor from 2023, the ZM2, went for about $3,700.

Why the wacko pricing, you ask? Chalk it up to premium materials and componentry to deliver pristine, noise-free sound from lossless digital media.

By premium, I mean the chassis is painstakingly machined out of gold-plated, 99.99% oxygen-free copper (OFC). That helps with digital grounding and rigidity, making for better sound quality than conventional metals. Sony says you can expect "powerful bass, an expansive soundstage, and smooth, extended high frequencies."

There are a bunch more bits in this flagship model that help deliver top-shelf sound:

• Thick Kimber Kable wiring from the amp base to the 4.4-mm balanced headphone jack reduces noise.
• Dual large solid high-polymer capacitors in the power supply architecture provide the amplifier with stable power.
• A large copper coil with flat wire in the inductor-capacitor filter reduces switching noise and distortion.
• The low-dropout regulator which converts battery voltage into a steady supply is specifically engineered to avoid adding noise.
• The chassis' front and rear sections are fastened using low-resistance, gold-plated screws for a stable ground connection.

In case it wasn't clear, a lot of effort has gone into cutting out near-imperceptible noise before your music reaches your eardrums. Between these and all the various high-grade resistors and capacitors, the ZM3 is built to deliver exceptional sound.

They're aided by Sony's S-Master HX digital amp tech which amplifies the signal from your audio source without any transmission loss, optimizes for quantization noise for clear sound. There's also an updated DSD Remastering Engine, which converts streaming or downloaded music files in the usual formats to a 11.2-MHz DSD stream for characterful analog-like reproduction.

It all comes together in a slick design with a 5.5-inch screen and physical buttons on the side. It runs on Android 16, so you can use your favorite streaming services' apps and easily queue up lossless files from the built-in 256-GB storage and microSD card.

A 4.5-hour charge nets you up to 33 hours of hi-res playback time. It's a lot thicker than any phone at 21 mm (0.8 in), and weighs more than two iPhone 18 Pros together at 490 g (17.3 oz).

I imagine even seasoned audiophiles will have a hard time spotting the difference in sound quality between the ZM2 and ZM3, as the predecessor also used an OFC chassis. So yeah, don't bother shopping for one of these unless you've worked your way up to this grade of kit.

If you're dead set on a Walkman but find this too rich for your blood, Sony's also got the $3,000 NW-WM1AM3, and the NW-ZX900 at $2,659. They look similar to the flagship, but feature an aluminum-alloy main chassis with a gold-plated OFC rear chassis.

Find the ZM3 on Sony's site, along with the AM3 and the ZX900.

Source: Sony via PR Newswire