New ZX2 announced at CES

[c.simon]

...as an upgraded version of the NWZ-ZX1. But with a less-premium, even toy look, the upgrade of Android from 4.1 to 4.2, no increase in onboard memory but the addition of a 128GB card slot, is it really worth twice the price of the ZX1 (at least, in the UK - the web site is today quoting £949), when actually the ZX1 needed extra memory, upgrade to the at least Android 4.4, but also a price cut?

£949 is an absolute joke. I'd pay £200-£300 for this device, but it's incredibly overpriced and outdated.

[Anonymous]

Your welcome - Not Crikey!  But well done for identifying some of the issues and what you would like to see

[c.simon]

PS. Hate to be negative but...

http://www.trustedreviews.com/news/android-bug-leaves-nearly-one-billion-handsets-vulnerable

All the reviews/press releases I've seen so far have said that it has Android 4.2, only one has said 4.4.  If it's 4.2 then it is already vulnerable to the above security flaw, which is not going to be fixed by Google.  Owners of devices that have old versions of Android are advised to upgrade...

[c.simon]

Press Release, on T3

Astell & Kern have released a new premium player. At £2,500 it's obviously two and half times better than the Sony NWZ-ZX2. They've got something that Sony haven't thought of. According the this article, the case improves the sound quality because it has more grounding points.  Then again, I think I prefer the idea of Sony's noiseless SD card and am really happy to pay three times the price of a normal SD card for it. I'd like to make a suggestion that Sony now looks into noiseless glass for the screen for their next player to get another huge improvement in sound quality (it must vibrate a hell of a lot, which can affect the quality of the music), then they can start charging £5,000 for it as it will be twice as good as the A&K player. It astounds me that music can sound as good as it does because of all these noisy electronic components inside everything, I mean how can anyone stand to listen to such a cocophany produced by any piece of equipment, they'd be better off switching everything off so they can listen to the natural world around them in complete silence. There must be so many parts of even the NWZ-ZX2 that are causing huge problems in sound quality, to the extent that there can be so many improvements made every year, together with the doubling of the price.

Sorry for the sarcastic post, but I think this game is just complete rubbish now and has jumped the shark. Does anyone actually believe this tripe that companies are spouting in order to justify a ridiculous price tag?

[jumpsuit]

That's a difficult one to answer.

I know if I left my house wearing pricey headphones and a £1000 Walkman

I probably wouldn't own them for long lol.

I don't know if the effort / technology / manufacturing cost makes the item so high priced but its clear this is not marketed for the common people, rather executives etc. who have a bit of money spare to buy nice gadgets.

I'm hoping that in the next ten years the price may drop (in the same way that laptops / televisions have) and then I can have a listen