The WalkmanS Series is a series of portable media players, designed and developed by Sony, with an accent on the high quality sound. The first models made their debut in Japan in the fall of 2006 and later were launched in North America, Europe and the rest of Asia. Although the first generation of models had generic displays, all next generations of players of the S Series, starting with S510/S610/S710 lines, had TFT color displays and supported high quality video playback. Noise cancelling function was introduced with S700 series and consolidated in later generation models, such as NWZ-S718 that came out in 2007, NWZ-S739F from 2008, NW-S746 from 2009, as well as in post-2010 Japan-only models such as NWZ-S756, NW-S766, NW-S775 and NW-S786. The first model with built-in speakers was NWZ-S543/B, that had a capacity of 4 GB. It had a 2.4" LCD screen with a resolution of 320 X 240 pixels. The 8 GB model NWZ-S764/B was launched in 2011. Although it had a smaller screen of 2", it had Bluetooth connectivity and a greater battery life. Bluetooth connectivity remained present in the next two generations of players.
Design
The NWZ-S543/B Walkman has a considerably larger screen than its predecessors. It has a 2" or a 2.4" QVGALCD display. A slightly bigger chassis allows two speakers to be accommodated at either side of the screen. It measures 44 mm by 97 mm by 8 mm and because of the dimensions it is a little unfriendly for the pocket. Below the screen, Sony has built its trademark circular control pad which has a standard four-way directional button surrounding a central play/pause key. This is flanked by two additional buttons, back and option. The NWZ-S543/B Walkman is made mostly of plastic but has a shiny metallic topcoat, which gives it a sleek look. At the sides are buttons for the volume control, locking the controls and toggling between headphones and speakers. The headphone jack and the USB port are located at the bottom most side. Starting with the 3rd generation models, all S Series players had the so-called "Mickey Mouse" look, because of the specific positioning of the main buttons.
Performance
The S Series Walkman has a built-in rechargeable Li-ion battery, with a life of up to 42 hours/ 50 hours for more recent models and 17 hours for audio. A 6.5 hours/ 10 hours and 5 hours playback is available for the videos. Although the speakers on NWZ-S543/B are tiny and anaemic, they produce crystal clear sound. The FM reception is also well above average and the voice recorder, records crystal clear voices. The player supports nearly all types of music, video and image formats.
