D-700

The D-700 is a compact high-fidelity CD player positioned as one of the smallest units in Sony's early home-oriented CD range. Front-loading and AC-powered, it offered automatic music search, shuffle and repeat functions, a digital display, and a line output with its own rotary volume control, all inside a chassis that behaved closer to a miniature component for a desk or bedside table than a battery-driven portable.

Sony is still figuring out how far compact disc could be shrunk without fully turning it into a handheld category. The D-700 sat in that overlap period where the portable line and the compact home line had not fully split apart yet. It is less of a Discman in the everyday sense than a compact domestic machine built during the same early rush.