Engineering:Walkman Bean

Sony Walkman plugged to USB port

Sony Walkman Bean

The Walkman Bean was a flash memory-based portable media player by Sony. The name refers to its shape, which was modelled after a jellybean, and its ancestor, the original Sony Walkman portable cassette player. The product was released in October 2005, and production ceased in April 2006.

The player was available in three versions: the basic model with 512MB capacity (model NW-E205), the basic model with an inbuilt FM radio (model NW-E305), and a higher-capacity 1GB model (model NW-E307). It was also available in four colours, named after jellybean flavours - Tropical Ice (blue), Cotton Candy (pink), Licorice (black) and Coconut (white).

The Walkman Bean featured a 'pop-out' USB port for file transfer. One of its major selling points was the battery's fast charge speed, with Sony stating that a 3-minute charge would give 3 hours of playback. Sony claimed that a fully charged Bean playing Sony's own compressed audio format, ATRAC, can operate for 50 hours, or 40 hours for audio compressed as MP3. Of course,to get the ATRAC files on to the bean,proprietary software was needed,which people hated more than the somewhat controversial iTunes.