X marks the spot where digital Walkman takes on iPod

INBOX:Sony launched personal music players in the 1970s. Now it's trying to target the digital sector, writes MIKE BUTCHER

SONY IGNITED the personal music revolution in the late 1970s with the Walkman cassette player and, until the MP3 player came along, it reigned pretty much supreme.

But the Walkman’s thunder was gradually stolen, first by the iPod, then the iPhone and the iPod Touch. And it’s the iPod Touch that Sony has returned to target with the Walkman X, due out this summer.

Alongside the ability to play many music file formats and the FM radio, the Walkman X sports the “slacker radio” feature, which allows you to select up to three stations, while hundreds of songs are pushed to your device free of charge.

The built-in Wi-Fi allows access to the web via a decent browser, YouTube videos and content updates. But at about €236 for the 16GB and €315 for the 32GB model, this is not a cheap device.

If you just want something to listen to music, then look elsewhere.

The play/pause and skip buttons are easy to access up top, alongside the 3.5mm headphone jack, reset and volume. The inbuilt noise cancellation controls and software mean the sound quality is great, though this does not mean you get noise-cancelling with any headphones, only with the EX headphones supplied.

And there’s one thing that reminds you of the iPod Touch: a large home button on the front which takes you back to the start screen from any application. Definitely familiar. A large semi-circular hold slider is on the back.

So far so good. However, Sony shares its love of proprietary connections with Apple. With other media players now sporting simple USB connections, the Walkman X has a non-standard one. It’s all rather tedious. At least the Walkman shows up as a mass storage device, which means you can drag and drop music and files onto it. And the granite-finished casing is sturdy.

However, it’s the Organic Light Emitting Diode (OLED) screen that is the draw here. At three inches, the 432 x 240 screen can be touched to be controlled. This is not a multitouch interface in the same manner as the iPod Touch but video, photos and album art are made to shine on this amazing screen.

OLED screens are a long-winded way of saying that they do not require a backlight to function, unlike LCDs. That means they draw less power and the device’s battery can last longer. Without the need for a backlight, an OLED display can also be much thinner than a normal LCD panel. In theory, there is a lot about a device that has an OLED screen which could start threatening the iPod Touch.

There is also a slight issue here, to do with the future for personal media players like this: to what extent should they become mini-computers? The iPod Touch can already run third-party applications from a very well populated iTunes store.

Sony has no such store at present, which limits the Walkman X to the applications it comes with.

I think we can be confident that Sony won’t be resting on its laurels on that score, but until then the iPod Touch is still the one to beat.