Great sounds, vibrant colour

SONY welcomes the upcoming festive season with the launch of the NW-A35, a new High-Resolution Audio Walkman player that offers superior sound quality, bold design and stylish colours.
The A35, like other products in the electronics giant’s h.ear range, comes in Lime Yellow, Viridian Blue, Charcoal Black, Bordeaux Pink and Cinnabar Red complete with matching headphones and Bluetooth speakers. 
I got to test the A35 with the SRS-HG1 portable Bluetooth speaker in stylish blue.
Despite its compact body – measuring a mere 55.9 x 97.5 x 10.9 mm – the Walkman sounds great. 
It has a much larger display than the earlier Hi-Res Walkman players in the A series – 3.1-inches as opposed to 2,2 inches – and it’s a touch screen too with 800 x 480 pixels.
That larger display allows the album cover to be displayed while a song is being played. |The touch screen function |means that the A35 does not need a navigation button as the intuitive touch display allows you to access various functions simply by touching the icons, making navigating through folders and music albums a breeze.

The A35 has internal storage of 16 gigabytes and can be expanded with a micro SD card. Remember to get a fast micro SD card to expand the storage because Hi-Res songs need high data bandwidth. Sony says the storage can be expanded by up to 192 GB.
The A35 supports several Hi-Res audio formats, including the popular FLAC 24bit/192kHz format. Most of all, the player supports the high-quality DSD (Direct Stream Digital) format, which offers warm and high-resolution sounds just like the original. DSD is used by Sony and Philips in their Super Audio CD.
The A35 uses the S-Maser HX digital amplifier to power headphones connected to its 3.5mm stereo jack. Sony says its S-Master HX amp can cut distortion and noise across a wide range of frequencies.
If you have a huge collection of non-Hi-Res Audio MP3 files, you can turn on the DSEE HX function to upscale your existing music to near high-resolution quality.
The A35 has good battery life. It takes four hours to charge and can play MP3 songs for up to 45 hours. 
If you play FLAC 24bit/192kHz files, the playback time is about 30 hours.
In addition to the touch screen controls, you also use the control buttons on its right side. These are a power on/off button that can be used to wake up the display as well as play/pause button and buttons for skipping to the next track and returning to the previous one. 
There is also a volume increase and decrease button and a button to put others on hold while you are playing music on the go to prevent other buttons from being accidentally pressed.
The A35 has High-Resolution Bluetooth connection in LDAC, a new Bluetooth codec, can stream music at 990kbps, thus allowing Hi-Res Audio songs to be streamed wirelessly at 96kHz/24bit resolution. The A35 has NFC (near field communication) function to assist with Bluetooth connection.
During the test, I connected the A35 to h.ear go SRS-HG1 with ease simply by touching the NFC mark at the back of the A35 to the NFC mark on the top of the Bluetooth speaker. The A35 streamed Hi-res Audio songs to be played on the HG1 with good quality.
To enjoy the Hi-Res Audio song quality, you need Hi-Res Audio headphones. And if used with Sony MDR-NW750N noise-cancelling earphones,|the A35 player can activate its built-in noise cancelling function.
I tested the A35 with Sony MDR-1ABT phones and was impressed by the music quality. The music has very good details as well as a powerful and deep bass.
For example, when I played “Never Too Much” by Luther Vandross in DSD format, |I could hear the guitar, bass, backup violin, drum and percussion individually and |very clearly. And when the |A35 plays a Hi-Res Audio |song, it will display the HR icon on the playing display to let you know.
Sony NW-A35 retails for Bt7,190.

- OS: Sony original OS
- Display: 3.1-ich touch TFT |display with 800x480 (WVGA) pixels
- Audio formats: AAC (Non-DRM), AIFF, ALAC, DSD, FLAC, HE-AAC, Linear PCM, MP3, WMA (Non-DRM)
- Music searching method: |All songs, Album, Artist, Genre, Release year, Composer, Playlists, Hi-Res, Recent |transfers, Folder, SensMe Channels
- Interface: USB 2.0, 22-pin WM-port, Bluetooth, NFC
- Storage: 16GB, expandable with micro SD
- Battery: four-hour charging, 45 hours MP3 128kbps |playback
- Dimensions: |55.9 x 97.5 x 10.9 mm
- Weight: 98g