Sony's original Walkman TPS-L2 went on sale July 1, 1979, the walkman brand used by Sony to market its portable audio players. It was then that people began carrying their own choice of music with them, forming an entirely different level of people who drastically changed their music listening habits. In And Sony never entered the race again, until Sony's most recent digital audio, "Sony's NW (Network Walkman)-HD1", a hard-drive digital audio play supporting MP3 format arrived. Now, another MP3 player has been added to the Sony which was out October 2005, the NW-HD2.

Between the two NW-HDs, there are listed on the Internet four main differences - with color being the first one. The original HDs were silver and black. No color was offered earlier, yet the latest players will see lots of color, such as silver, blue, pink, and green. The backlight color has also been changed from green to blue. Technically, the largest change is charging the player from the power cord by using a small interface adapter. It used to be in a cradle in order to charge it. Another change is the in-line remote control, which is gone from the headphone cord. The new player features a 20GB hard drive, and software is included for the conversion of songs. But the top of the line change is the lower price.

The Sony Walkman, redesigned 27 years after its original one, is easy to use through its appealing user interface, and an advanced organic EL display which is 2" on the 20GB with 1.5" on the 50GB. Both Walkmans features two new shuffle functions, where the player will select the most listened to 100 songs, playing them at random.

With the Sony Walkman Core MP3 Player you get 512MB (or 345 songs) worth of memory with an awesome 50 hours of battery life. The battery charger boasts a quick charge time where you can get three hours of playing time from charging for just three minutes. The Sony Walkman Core also has an FM tuner. Sony also offers the Sony Walkman Bean, a truly compact MP3 player with a built-in USB connector, in 512MB and 1GB size. The Walkman Bean gives the same exceptional battery life as the Walkman Core, the fast charging 50 hour battery. Sony's Walkman Bean also comes with the FM tuner and retails for around $89.95 for the 512MB and $119.95 for the 1GB.

The third option Sony has for MP3 consumers is the Walkman Circ, a round and sporty compact digital player. With the Walkman Circ you get 70 hours of battery life with the 512MB memory and a backlit LCD display, with the Sony's Walkman Circ not offering an FM tuner.

Sony's line of MP3 players provides a great example for why the digital audio player race is so complex. The people at Sony are no doubt one of the elite players in electronics, but they are lagging in this race. With difficult software and fragile flash drive players the initial reputation for Sony in the digital audio world is weak. But no one cannot say they have the reputation to pick it up, especially since they started the race anyway.