Walkman Bean

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A black Walkman Bean, demonstrating its "pop-out" USB connector
Enlarge
A black Walkman Bean, demonstrating its "pop-out" USB connector

The Walkman Bean was a flash memory-based MP3 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 Bean has recently ceased production. [1]

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-E207). 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 speeds - Sony claims that one can "charge it for 3 minutes to get 3 hours’ playback from it". 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. [2]

[edit] External links