D-82

The D-82 is one of Sony's earliest attempts to build a player around the 8 cm mini-CD format. It accepted only the smaller discs, which immediately limited its usefulness, but that restriction allowed the body to shrink well beyond what a full-size portable CD player could manage at the time.

The compromise is obvious from the start. Sony is chasing size by leaning into a format the market had not fully committed to yet, which gave the D-82 a slightly experimental feel even if the engineering itself is serious. It is part of the same family of late-1980s machines that tested how far compact disc could be miniaturized before practicality pushed back.