The NW-S200 series WALKMAN combines sports-friendly features, ranging from a stop watch to a G-sensor to measure steps, distance and calories, in a stylish water-resistant body, boasting a unique easy to use design. The NW-S200 series WALKMAN is a compact, sophisticated digital music player that allows you to get on with life. You want something that won’t slow you down or break your concentration. The new WALKMAN is lightweight with an aluminium body which is not only tiny, but completely seamless and water-resistant. Whether you’re hitting the slopes, riding your bike off road or battling the rain, the NW-S200 series won’t ever skip or drown.

Throw in a bright display, and you’ve got one seriously hot-looking WALKMAN. It’s the first WALKMAN to boast this stylish new look. The easy-to-use navigational facility means you can quickly skip to the next cool track without ever missing a beat. All functions are easily operated via the jog dial shuttle.

Navigating the NW-S200 is pretty straightforward, and certainly more intuitive than with the NW-E000. The mode button takes you to the main menu, where you can select from several icon-based options. Twisting the aforementioned knob flips through the selections: search, sports mode, stopwatch, all songs, FM, playlist, and settings. If you push the knob all the way in toward the player, it activates the hold function; if you pull it all the way out, you can use it to navigate by album. (In the neutral position, it scrubs through tracks.)

One look at the NW-S200′s extras immediately reveals its athletic intention. The player is packaged with an armband and sport-style earbuds. And it’s water resistant, so it can withstand sweat and even rainfall. But the star of the show is the built-in G-Sensor, which allows you to use the NW-S200 as a pedometer. Of course, you can also input your height, weight, age, and stride so that the player will keep track of calories burned. And there’s a built-in stopwatch with interval capability, which will automatically stop your music when a time-related goal has been reached. In sports mode, a short push of the mode button let’s you shuttle between steps taken, calories burned, and time remaining.

Sony used to be synonymous with portable entertainment: its Walkman range was the brand that all products aspired to. After losing ground with the digital generation Sony is out to mount a comeback with the NW-A800 – its first Walkman that can handle both audio and video playback on the go.

While we wait twiddling our thumbs in the States to get ahold of Sony’s new supposed hotness, the NW-A800, French DAP site GenerationMP3 has snagged itself the first review of the player. They seem to have good things to say, but unfortunately they’re all in French. From what we gleaned, there’s some good stuff going on here, with the 2-inch QVGA screen setting it well apart from the nano, and a good feel to the controls and shape of the player. The battery is apparently much easier to get at than that of the iPod — though still a bit of a chore to replace. On the software side, Sony’s made some big improvements, since they’ve not only spruced up SonicStage, with transcoding and the like, but also allow you to manage your player completely without it. Sony also has a new RSS app, for subscribing to podcasts, photo streams and videos to place on your player, but GenerationMP3 ran into some trouble areas with it.

The NW-A800 is a small slim player, measuring 8.8 x 4.4cm and just 9mm thick. It’s light too, weighing in at just 53g so you won’t have a problem carrying it around with you. The fashion conscious will be happy to know it’s available in a range of four colours. The standard black and white version are catered for, along with a blue/violet model and a pink one for the more adventurous.

On the front of the unit there’s a four-way control pad for navigating around the menu screens and a play/pause button for making selections. There’s also an Option button, which brings up a sub-menu relating to the current screen you’re on and a Back button for retracing your steps. The rest of the front is taking up by the comparatively large 2in screen, which fills around half of the space available.