Sony is finally entering the Android PMP field with a Walkman, which means they’re taking it seriously. What really sets the Walkman apart? FM radio. iPod touch’s camera is very capable of producing very good pictures; the colors and values are outstanding. You can back up thousands of Google Photos from all devices and perfect for viewing offline at any time. Which has better sound quality – iPod touch vs Sony Walkman?
NEW Apple iPod Touch 6th 7th Generation 32/64/128/256GB All Colors
Pros & Cons – iPod touch vs Sony Walkman
iPod touch
Pros
- 3.5mm headphone jack
- A dedicated music device
- A four-inch form factor
- AR support on an iPod touch
- A dedicated gaming device
- An entertainment device for the kids
- To spend the least amount of money on a brand new Apple device
Cons
- No Touch ID
- Apps feel rather cramped
- Tiny screen and big bezels
Sony Walkman
Pros
- Impressive audio quality
- Tegra 2 provides snappy performance
- Plethora of sound options w/ Sony apps
Cons
- Hardware chips easily
- Walkman features limited to included apps
- Relatively expensive
- No transfer software for Macs
Specs – iPod touch vs Sony Walkman
Apple iPod Touch (32GB)
- Item: Apple iPod Touch 7th Generation
- Price : 32GB $199 / 128GB $299 / 256GB$399
- A10 Fusion chip
- Battery life 40 hours (music), 8 hours (video)
- Bluetooth version 4.1
- 3.5mm jack Yes
- Internal storage 32GB, 128GB, 256GB
- Dimensions (hwd) 12.3 x 5.9 x 0.6cm
- Weight 88g
Retina display
- 4-inch (diagonal) widescreen display with Multi-Touch IPS technology
- 800:1 contrast ratio (typical)
- 1136-by-640-pixel resolution at 326 ppi
- Fingerprint-resistant oleophobic coating
- 500 cd/m2 max brightness (typical)
Video recording feature
- Tap to focus while recording
- 1080p HD video recording at 25 fps, 30 fps, or 60 fps
- Time-lapse video
- Slo-mo video (120 fps)
- 3x zoom
- Cinematic video stabilization
- Video formats recorded: HEVC and H.264
- Video geotagging over Wi-Fi
Camera feature
- Autofocus
- 8MP camera
- Five-element lens
- ƒ/2.4 aperture
- Hybrid IR filter
- Auto image stabilization
- HDR for photos
- Backside illumination
- Burst mode
- Tap to focus
- Photo geotagging over Wi-Fi
- Timer mode
- Exposure control
- Panorama (up to 43MP)
- Image formats captured: HEIF and JPEG
FaceTime HD cmaera
- Auto HDR for videos
- Burst mode
- ƒ/2.2 aperture
- 1.2MP photos
- Backside illumination sensor
- 720p HD video recording
- Exposure control
- Timer mode
Sony Walkman
- 4.3-inch, 800-by-480-pixel-resolution
- weighs 0.34 pound
- Built-in FM radio
- Supports MP4 and WMV video, as well as AAC-LC, L-PCM, MP3, and WMA audio
- Dual-core 1GHz Tegra 2 processor
- 1GB of RAM
- Bluetooth with A2DP and AVRCP.
iPod touch vs Sony Walkman Price comparison
The new iPod touch (7th generation) is available to buy now, with the price varying depending on how much storage you opt for.
If you do decide to grab one, I recommend the 32GB model for $199 which puts 4,000 songs in your pocket (after you figure iOS takes up 10-12GB of space). That price makes it the most affordable iOS device you can buy new from Apple. If you are tempted by one of the pricier options, grab a new iPhone 7 instead for just a bit more. Apple sells the top of the line iPod Touch for $399 and the iPhone 7 for $449.
But Sony has a premium starting price of $250 for the 8GB model, and doesn’t match the iPod’s 64GB model in any way. At every price point Apple beats out Sony, by $50 for the base model, and by $20 for the 32GB unit. And for app fanatics, music junkies, or movie hounds the iPod is the only way to get the maximum amount of data storage.
iPod touch vs Sony Walkman review
Design
Apple iPod Touch (32GB) – Gold (latest model) comes with a four-inch display and a sleek, lightweight build. At just 88g, the new iPod touch feels incredibly light, while its 4-inch display means it’s easy to hold it and navigate the touchscreen with one hand, making it accessible for kids as well as adults.
The Walkman Z is preposterously thick at 11.1mm, nearly 4mm thicker than the iPod, and thicker than many of today’s smartphones. However, it’s a 4.3″ screen compared to a 3.5″ display. The Walkman is larger in every way, and 50% heavier than the iPod to boot.
Buttons
At the bottom of the iPod touch you’ll find the home button. the on/off button is situated on the top of the iPod, while you’ll find the volume buttons on the left-hand side of the display. There are also front- and rear-facing cameras – more on those later.
When held in portrait orientation, the power button is on the left side of the top edge, out my fingers’ reach when I held the player in my left hand. The volume rocker and the Walkman button occupy the right edge–a location that made them much easier for me to press.
Display
The screen size 4-inch. The 1136 x 640 pixel display is definitely a step down from the color-accurate OLED display utilized by the iPhone X, but it’s worth remembering that the cheapest new iPod touch model is only a fifth of the price of Apple’s latest smartphone.
There are only two differences: the Walkman is a 4.3″ screen and the iPod has a 3.5″ screen, and the iPod is much more dense with a resolution of 960×640, compared to 800×480. The former point helps out the Walkman, while the latter is a boon for the iPod.
Both the Walkman and iPod use the same type of display technology, TFT panels. These high quality panels produce accurate colors and are bright enough to see in bright settings and even direct sunlight.
Aspect ratio
The Walkman is a 16:9 widescreen display and the iPod is 4:3, so watching video will always be better on the Walkman. So while reading text will be easier on the iPod, the Walkman will produce better video because it won’t have black bars on the top and bottom and use the full 4.3″ display to do it.
Memory and storage
with double the RAM of its predecessor (2GB to be exact), the 7th-gen iPod touch has a lot more memory to run the increasingly complex titles available to mobile gamers. The Walkman Z is more expensive for the base model but becomes cheaper when adding additional memory. The Walkman comes in three sizes: 8GB, 16GB and 32GB, compared to the iPod’s 8GB, 32GB and 64GB.
Music apps
It’s actually not bad for music, which is what the iPod Touch is primarily for anyway. Apple Music, Spotify and similar apps work fine here, without many on-screen controls to clutter up the interface. The 7th generation of this device continues its strong traditions as a music player, and you have the usual support for standards like AirPlay and Chromecast (in compatible apps) too.
Audio
The bottom edge of the iPod touch houses a built-in speaker, Lightning port, and, puzzlingly, a 3.5mm headphone jack – Apple stopped including headphone jacks on its smartphones a long time ago in favor of its own multi-purpose Lightning port.
True wireless earbuds, Bluetooth earbuds, and wireless headphones are getting better all the time, and there are plenty of Lightning-enabled cans on the market if you still prefer a wired connection.
In Sony Walkman Z, the headphone jack does bulge out a few millimeters from the back and the bottom, but we were happy to have the extra thickness in the occasional times when we snagged our headphones’ cable while walking.
Gaming
With Apple’s A10 Fusion chip built in, the new iPod touch is optimized for gaming, including what Apple calls, “immersive augmented reality (AR) experiences”.
According to Ars Technica, the A10 Fusion chip’s built-in GPU delivers “about 56% the performance of the A12”, the chip that’s used in the latest iPhones, but we didn’t experience any latency issues while playing this rather complex game, and we found the graphics ran smoothly, with the iPod touch’s bright and sharp display handling the realistic military-style graphics of PUBG just as well as the colorful, cartoonish graphics of Whale Trail.
Camera function
The camera hardware itself is exactly the same as its predecessor’s: on the front of the iPod touch is a 1.2MP FaceTime HD camera, while the rear sports a more advanced 8MP camera that supports autofocus, auto image stabilization and a f/2.4 aperture.
Modern luxuries like 4K video recording and Portrait Mode are nowhere to be found on the iPod touch, which does feel like a step backwards.
Sony Walkman series purely lack this feature.
Battery life
Apple says the battery life of the iPod touch (7th generation) is up to 40 hours, and is good for up to eight hours of video playback. 20 hours of continuous music playback on the Z compared to 40 on the iPod, and 5 hours of video compared to 7.
Compare Performance review – iPod touch vs Sony Walkman
iPod touch
Using a Hi-Res Audio playback app for iOS called Vox, we listened to Mozart’s Requiem in D Minor. The strings had a warm and natural quality, while soprano vocal duets soared sweetly above the mix without ever sounding harsh.
CSR Racing, a game that’s known for its incredibly detailed realism in graphics, plays like its riding on rails on the iPod touch (did you get my Pretty Woman reference there?). How it looks, however, isn’t quite so smooth. It’s not bad or ugly, it’s just not as good as the amazing graphics on the iPhone XS. It’s like we stepped back in time, graphically, to about 2017.
Sony Walkman
WiFi on (not connected), looping a video at 50 percent brightness, the Z managed to stay strong for five hours and 29 minutes — just six minutes more than the Galaxy Player 4.0 lasted in the same test. All told, Sony rates the Z at five hours for video playback and 20 hours for audio (14 with Bluetooth enabled). Still, Apple claims up to 40 hours of music playback / seven hours of video on its current iPod touch, so it’s something to keep in mind. We were usually able to go for a few days without plugging in while using the Z as our secondary media player.
iPod touch vs Sony Walkman alternative
Astell & Kern Kann Alpha
Listening to hi-res music on the Kann Alpha is a pure joy.
SPECIFICATIONS
Storage: 64GB + microSD expandableScreen size: 4.1-inchBattery life: 14.5 hrsDimensions: 11.7 x 6.8 x 2.5cmWeight: 316g
REASONS TO BUY
+Expansive presentation+Punchy bass+Good levels of detail
REASONS TO AVOID
-Clunky streaming service integration
The Kann Alpha is the third player in the Kann series, yet the first Astell & Kern player to implement Bluetooth 5.0. It boasts a more powerful built-in headphone amplifier than the previous Kann series players it succeeds, too. And thanks to the rearrangement of various components and the use of smaller resistors and capacitors, it promises added power in a smaller and more portable chassis.
Sonically, it’s suitably impressive. The presentation is expansive, and we’re bowled over by its low-end capabilities. It handles difficult and detailed musical passages with a masterful hand, and live recordings are leant a degree of spaciousness and realism rarely heard. The closest we’ll get to a gig for some time yet.
It’s still bulky, but will fit in a coat pocket, and supports most music file formats, including MQA, FLAC, ALAC, AIFF, WAV and native DSD256. It’s similarly wide-ranging when it comes to wireless codec support (LDAC, aptX HD, aptX, AAC and, naturally, SBC Bluetooth). The Alpha also supports MQA-CD playback, by way of Astell & Kern’s CD-Ripper.
