Sony enjoys nostalgia with its 40th anniversary Walkman (now without cassette!)

On the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the original Walkman, Sony publishes an anniversary edition of the iconic cassette player that has made portable music revealed at the IFA Thursday. Only he does not read the tapes, so do not destroy your collection. And it will cost you about three times more than in 1979.

The Sony NW-A100TPS (which does not exactly have the same ring, is not it?) Marks the company's latest attempt to revitalize the Walkman brand, and this time they seem having given up pretending that it was something other than a nostalgia money clip While Sony would have manufactured a cassette with a storage capacity that would shame his brothers of the 20th century, the company decided to give up the magnetic strip with its new design.

Instead, an Android music player stores up to 16 GB of your favorite songs. It lacks a SIM card but you can connect to the Wifi and use Android applications via its touchscreen Itty Bitty 3.6 inches. For the full nostalgia factor, the device has a screen saver that looks like a conventional cassette player, except that the color changes depending on the type of music file being played. A soft case that accompanies it looks quite like an old Walkman. So when you view this screen saver and close the case, you'll feel like you're back in the 80s. Or, for those of our readers too young to remember the golden age of the Walkman (like me), you will feel as if you were in an episode of Strange things.

If you want to go into retro mode, this special edition of the Walkman also has a headphone jack. But you can also simply connect to Bluetooth as a normal person.

Unlike the era, when a Walkman costed around $ 150, this special edition Walkman will go on sale at $ 599 in Australia and £ 440 / £ 400 in Europe in December. That's between US $ 400 and US $ 500 once converted into US dollars, although Sony has not yet set any details for a release date or a reasonable price in the US.

But I mean, can you really put a price on the first truly portable music player? A device that has released the vinyl of its cultural relevance (at least at the time) by selling 200 million units during its lifetime? The predecessor of the iPod, smartphones and all kinds of gadgets that consume our lives now? For this consumer, yes. Yes, you can absolutely. And it's a grand half more than I'm willing to spend.