Sony’s current-generation Walkman lineup, including the NW-A306 and the higher-end NW-ZX707 originally announced in January 2023, has quietly disappeared from retail channels in several regions. The withdrawal points to an impending product refresh, with industry sources now indicating that a next-generation high-resolution audio player is on the horizon.
Successor model expected in late 2026 or early 2027
According to a report from The Walkman Blog, the upcoming device will be branded as the Sony Walkman NW-ZX900 and is tentatively slated for launch in late 2026 or early 2027. The player is already said to be registered on Sony’s internal servers, though detailed specifications beyond core computing hardware remain undisclosed.
A significant leap in processing power
Under the hood, the NW-ZX900 is expected to deliver a major performance uplift. A benchmark leak from late 2025 indicates Sony is moving away from the Qualcomm Dragonwing QCS4290 platform—based on the Snapdragon 660—in favor of a chip built around the Qualcomm Snapdragon 7s Gen 3. The new silicon features four ARM Cortex-A720 performance cores and four Cortex-A520 efficiency cores manufactured on a modern 4 nm process, replacing the older 11 nm node. Sony is pairing this processor with 8 GB of RAM.
Projections suggest the NW-ZX900 will offer more than twice the processing performance of the outgoing NW-ZX707. The efficiency gains from the 4 nm architecture are expected to translate into longer battery life, while the inclusion of Wi-Fi 6E should enable significantly faster music transfers and application downloads. Further details on the player’s remaining hardware upgrades have not yet surfaced.
Source: thewalkmanblog.com