Sony confirms touchscreen X-series Walkman

We won't be seeing a touchscreen MP3 player from Sony all that soon. You're going to have to wait until May to get your hands on the X-series Walkman, which was officially announced at CES 2009.

(Credit: Sony)

While this player has some sweet features, there's something about the look of it that comes off as just a touch generic. Still, Sony tends to do a good job of giving its portables a nice, solid feel, so we suppose we'll wait to cast our final judgement until tomorrow.

In the meantime, about those features: there are a lot of them. The X-series Walkman offers a 3-inch OLED display with widescreen-format compatibility. While the majority of control is taken care of on the touchscreen, the player also offers an array of tactile keys, including a dedicated volume toggle and a prominent home button; Sony calls this a "hybrid operation system". Extras include an FM tuner and integrated Wi-Fi, which will allow for automatic podcast updating and streaming from content providers such as YouTube, which you may recall is not presently available on the iPod Touch. The X-series will offer a fairly wide array of content support — MP3, WMA, AAC and L-PCM (WAV) on the audio side and AVC (H.264/AVC), MPEG-4 and WMV for video (and that WMV includes the protected variety offered by sites such as Amazon Video On Demand).

Considering the already-impressive audio quality offered by the Sony Walkman line, we weren't expecting much of an improvement in this area on the X-series. However, Sony asserts that this player will sound even better than any predecessors, thanks to its new Digital Clear Audio Technologies and "S-Master" Digital Amplifier. Also, as with the S-series, the X-series will offer integrated noise-cancelling functionality and complementing headphones.

The X-series will be available in 16GB and 32GB capacities, and while Sony wouldn't release an estimated manufacturer suggested retail price (MSRP) due to fluctuating flash pricing, we were able to confirm that it will be priced competitively when compared to the iPod Touch.