NW-E7

The NW-E7 introduced MP3 support to the E Series flash Walkman line. It provides 64MB built-in storage for both MP3 and ATRAC playback on its LCD display and offers greatly extended battery life of up to 70 hours from a single AAA battery. It shipped with a new USB cradle for transfers. This model and its siblings represented an important step toward broader format compatibility in the flash memory players.

This unit is the flash Walkman where Sony finally started loosening its grip a little. It brought MP3 support into a product line that had spent years orbiting ATRAC and Sony's own preferred software workflow. Earlier Network Walkman often felt like they had been built to enforce Sony's ecosystem first and serve the user second.

This model still belonged to that world, but it also suggested Sony had started recognizing how people actually wanted to use these things. It is not freedom yet. SonicStage was still very much in the room. But this was part of the points where the flash Walkman stopped feeling quite so doctrinaire.