The company that popularized the portable music player nearly four decades ago is back in the game with a new "Walkman." Sony's new NWZ-ZX1 won't play cassettes like the original Walkman introduced in 1979, but unlike other digital music players like Apple's iPod, it is a bit of a throwback in terms of its bulky dimensions and relatively hefty weight.

Just as hefty is the ZX1's price tag of $700.

While The Wall Street Journal called the resurrected Walkman a "niche product" for Sony, the high-end music player has reportedly been selling very well in Japan. The ZX1 has actually been available since last December in Japan, and can also be had in a few other Asian and European countries. Sony hasn't revealed any plans to introduce the device in the United States any time soon.

The ZX1 weighs in at 139 grams, making it about 37 percent heavier than Apple's biggest music player, the iPod Touch. Sony's device has roughly the same screen dimensions as the iPod Touch, but with a depth of 13.5 millimeters, the ZX1 is more than twice as thick around the middle as Apple's music playerwhich incidentally, is about $500 cheaper than Sony's new gadget.

So why would anybody want to pay such a high price for such a clunky gizmo? Possibly because the ZX1 packs the most powerful musical punch currently available in a portable device.

The ZX1 plays 24-bit, 192kHz Free Lossless Audio Codec (FLAC) audio files, the ultra-high resolution audio format that will also be supported by the Neil Young-backed, Kickstarter-funded PonoPlayer due out in October. Like the PonoPlayer, Sony's device also 128GB of internal storage, contributing to the expensive price tag.

Of course, Young and his partners say they'll sell the PonoPlayer for just $399. Where Sony may be justifying the ZX1's much steeper price is with particulars like its noise-dampening case, "manually carved from a block of expensive aluminum," according to the Journal.

The four-inch touchscreen-sporting ZX1 is also more than just a music player. It's also built to store and showcase photos, as well as playing back several video formats on its 854-by-480 resolution TFT color display. The device also packs a 5-band equalizer, dynamic normalizer, and Clear Bass and Clear Stereo technology, as well as shipping with quality headphones.

Sony promises a whopping 32 hours of battery life with the ZX1, which takes about three hours to fully charge, the company said.

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