Electronics manufacturer Sony unveiled its new line of latest audio products at the ongoing IFA 2017, in Berlin on August 31st, Thursday. The President of Sony Europe, Shigeru Kumekawa revealed its new products at the Sony Press Conference:
“By continuing to deliver revolutionary products that resonate at a deep emotional level, Sony stands at the “last one inch” between our customers and the experiences they seek. We are achieving steady profit growth in our electronics business here in Europe by focusing on the high value-added market, and are well positioned for the remainder of 2017 and beyond,” Kumekawa said.
Let’s take a look at those products which will make a difference in the sound ‘eco-system’ for the customers.
Speaker
Sony announced its first ever wireless speaker LF-S50G, with the in-built Google Assistant. The company says that it will allow the users to have high fidelity music and 360-degree sound from any corner of their room. It also features ‘Gesture Control’, allowing users to adjust volume and skipping to next track without actually touching the speaker-they can also do it via ‘waving their hands’, being nearby.
Other features include JIS-compliant IPX310 splash-proof capability, that enables the speaker to be used even in the kitchen. The speaker supports Bluetooth and NFC and also supporting both Android OS and iOS devices.
Battery is going to last longer if you want to have a party time with your friends. There are three different power supply modes to make the battery last more than your expectations. Plus, you can also connect other devices with this speaker wirelessly!
The LF-S50G will be available for sale by November, in the UK at a price of around £299.
Headphones
Next product from Sony are the latest Hi-Res wireless stereo headphones, which are the successors to the previous MDR-1000X, which were also announced at the IFA only, last year. All in all, the company has launched three types of models in the headphone section, namely, the headband style WH-1000XM2, the behind-the-neck style WI-1000X, and the truly wireless WF-1000X; and they all possess the industry-leading noise-cancellation levels for the Bluetooth Headphones.
These models are equipped with world’s first Adaptive Sound Control, that can recognize the user’s actions to automatically switch on or off, the noise cancellation feature, depending on a usage situation.
Among the other products, Sony also revealed its h.ear headphones. The h.ear on 2 Mini Wireless (WH-H800), h.ear on 2 Wireless NC (WH-H900N), and h.ear on 2 Wireless (WI-H700). About the h.ear headphones, the company said, “h.ear is engineered for maximum comfort while remaining stylish, these wireless BLUETOOTH® headphones have a high sound quality, for perfect listening while making you the envy of your friends and fellow commuters.”
The company claims that these h.ear headphones can deliver a powerful duration as far as their battery life is concerned.
Telling about the availability of the headphones, the company said told that WH-H900N can be expected to appear in the markets from this month, at a price of around £250/€300 (approximately Rs. 22,761). While, WH-H800 will be priced at around £200/€250 (approximately Rs. 18,968), and available from this month only. Lastly, the WI-H700 will also be available from September, being priced at around £150/€190 (approximately Rs. 14,415).
Audio System
Moving on to the next release, there is a High-Power Audio System MHC-V90DW. It is large and offers great quality of sound and lighting. But it also has its own Japanese name, “MUTEKI”, which means ‘soul shaking sound’ and ‘massive design’.
With the height of around 170 cm, the V90DW supports music services like Spotify and Chromecast, which is built-in. Its touch-panel user interface is backlit, and the system consists of speaker lights and multi color space-illuminating lighting, that can sync with the music’s beats!
For handling and moving, it has built-in casters and a handle to take it anywhere in the house-place-to-place, corner-to-corner.
The MHC-V90DW audio system will be available from this month, being priced at around £1,200/€1,499 (approx. Rs. 1,13,733).
Sony Walkman
Among the portable audio devices, Sony also unveiled its newest ZX Walkman series-the NW-ZX300. The NW-ZX300 comes with a neat and classy looking music player and a premium quality audio experience-delivering a balanced output. It delivers a High Resolution Audio with S-Master HX digital amplifier and newly soldered with high-quality sound lead-free solder balls.
With the help of both 11.2MHz DSD native playback and 384kHz/32bit PCM playback, the users will now be able to enjoy the music just the way the artist thought to deliver! And for getting a brilliant feel of the music, the ZX300 has been made of aluminium chassis. For providing more transparent vocals and solid bass notes, the FTCAP (Conductive Polymer Aluminium Solid Capacitors) and the new film capacitor have also been instilled in it.
To reduce the magnetic distorton, high-quality audio resistor has been used as the LC filter. Thus, it all results into an expansive, high transparent sound quality. ZX300 features a touch-screen interface with a staggering 30 hours of battery life. It also has an in-built storage of 64 GB-which can be extended via external memory card.
Connectivity is enabled via Bluetooth, and NFC (near field communication) and the ZX300 is also compatible with Qualcomm aptX HD audio.
Talking about its pricing, ZX300 Walkman will be priced at around £600 / €879 (roughly Rs.66,692), and made available from October, 2017 in stores across Europe.
4K OLED Bravia TV
Sony TVs are always in accordance with the trending technology and deliver what they promise, among the consumers, worldwide. Keeping that thing in the mind, at this year’s IFA, Sony released its brand new Bravia Series A1, the 4K OLED TV.
Bravia A1 OLED TV sports a 77inch huge display resolution and is powered by Sony’s unique 4K HDR processor X1TMExtreme as well as Acoustic SurfaceTM technology-enabling the display to vibrate and letting the TV deliver the output straight from the screen! It supports HDR10, HLG, and Dolby Vision (it will be added later this year via firmware update), so that consumers can view the growing library of HDR content.
Visual experience will become enormously excellent with around 8 million self-illuminating pixels, and black levels, rich and lifelike color, dynamic contrast, blur-less image and a wide viewing angle.
The Bravia OLED 4K HDR TV is powered by the Android TV which let the users get all the content from around the world, whether it be TV shows, thousands of apps and movies, of course. Not to say, that with its enriching display and fantastic visuals, you can also use it for gaming too!
The 4K Bravia HDR OLDED TV will be made available from late September, at a price of around £19,999/€24,499 (Irish price).
In-Car Audio System
And to wrap up the line-up of its new audio products, Sony also announced its latest In-Car Audio System, to give the users a much better control over music even while being on the go. The newly released systems called XAV-AX200 and XAV-AX200, come in two options. On one hand, there is an AV Receiver with smart features and the other one is the DAB version.
“XAV-AX200 will feature all the integral tools for entertaining car journeys whether users prefer videos or audio, there are plenty of options to choose from,” said the company. It has a responsive touch screen of 6.4inch.
Consumers, in their vehicles will be able to enjoy a great quality of music with EXTRA BASS and Dynamic Stage Organizer (DSO), featuring a punchy and clear bass while also improving the stereo positioning. So, what it does is that the music feels like, it’s coming straight from the dashboard!
Most importantly, the Car system comes with an Apple Car-Play and Android Auto Integration and camera input support for up to three externally connected cameras. Plus, there is also a DVD player too, being added this time by Sony.
Connectivity is enabled via Bluetooth and SiriusXM Radio and the system supports FLAC audio format files.
Availability of XAV-AX200 will be made from this month across Europe, but its price has not been revealed yet. However, the DAB version of XAV-AX200 will be arriving in March, 2018.
