Hands-on: Sony Walkman ZX505

I’d been using the Sony Walkman ZX300a China version the whole time before this, and honestly I was pretty happy with it. In theory, two years later Sony puts out its upgraded Walkman ZX505, and I should be excited and upgrade ASAP. But I wasn’t. The upgrade points were too few:

• The system switched to Android (but it’s just a player — Android is useless here)
• The port switched to Type-C (a good thing, but not enough to drive an upgrade; I already have way too many Walkman cables)
• A bigger non-matte screen with higher resolution (who was it that hyped matte screens back then?)
• Some features that look nostalgic (who actually uses that Walkman cassette playback mode? Besides buying it to show off)
• More for the same price (slightly cheaper than the ZX300 preorder, but still not as good as the FiiO you’d compare it against)

But in the end I still decided to replace the ZX300a. The reason is simple:

• Because the ZX505 runs Android by default, the built-in player supports “all formats” of JPG and PNG

For the ZX300a, the album art embedded in music is limited. It only supports these three:

• Baseline JPEG
• Non-interlaced PNG
• Maximum size: 4,096 × 4,096

You can refer to Sony’s official page:

https://helpguide.sony.net/dmp/nwzx300/v1/en/contents/TP0001449032.html

Everyone knows I’m an OCD cheapskate. To solve this problem of often not seeing the cover art in the player, I decided to throw money at it.

In the end I sold the ZX300A on Xianyu (the second-hand marketplace) and bought the ZX505 on Taobao in installments. So far I’m fairly satisfied, but there’s plenty to complain about. Let me run through it:

• I think battery life is better than the ZX300a. A lot of people say the Android system ruins standby and battery life, but I don’t agree. I was using Android players back when the Sony F800 came out. You just disable all the “non-music-playing” features and turn on airplane mode, and the battery holds up really well.
• The main thing that hurts standby on Android players is not being able to “shut down when idle.” The ZX505 added this: after a few hours of no use it fully powers off, saving power completely. So battery life isn’t an issue for me.
• A lot of people want to install NetEase Cloud Music on Android. Honestly, why not just use your phone for that?
• The ZX505 screen resolution is decent, seems like 720p, but the colors are too cool. Not as comfortable to look at as the ZX300a, though you get used to it. Maybe Sony cut corners again.
• The Type-C port is genuinely convenient — nobody who’s used it needs convincing.
• The “Bluetooth amplifier” feature is gone. The Walkman ZX505 can’t serve as a Bluetooth DAC like the ZX300a could. I used that a few times, but it’s not essential. Whatever.
• The Hold button on the ZX505 is basically useless. It only locks the physical buttons; it does nothing for the touchscreen. Countless times I’ve been in Hold state and still casually operated the touchscreen for ages, forgetting I’d even set Hold. Why can’t it lock the touchscreen too, like the old F800?
• The default system looks like AOSP with some tweaks — it even inherited the crossed-out Wi-Fi icon. You can fix it with a firmware update, but I don’t care. It’s just a player; I don’t even bother connecting to the internet except for OTA.
• That 40th-anniversary cassette playback screen — I couldn’t even be bothered to test it.
• With a case on, it looks so similar to the ZX300a that most people can’t tell I got a new machine. Including my wife.
• Sound improvement? Man, it’s 2020. You should know by now that the source gear makes an extremely limited difference. I’ll just say it has a bit more power than the ZX300a, still the 4.4mm balanced output.

Of course, there’s my biggest motivation for switching: album art finally displays perfectly!

Worth it!