- Cheryl Tan
Sony NW-ZX707 Walkman Review: MUST WATCH BEFORE YOU BUY!
Updated: Dec 19, 2023
If you’re living in the US, EU, Canada or Singapore, do NOT buy this audio player in your country. We have the Sony NW-ZX707 Walkman audio player with us today, and while it is a good player, if you’re living in the aforementioned countries, it’s best for you not to buy the player in your country. Let’s talk about why.
When I first got this unit, I plugged in some earphones and took a listen. The first thing that struck me was how soft it was. I had to turn the volume up to around 80 out of 120 to get it to a listenable volume. And that’s saying a lot for me, someone who listens to earbuds around 30% volume on average. But, I did try them with other earphones and the results were somewhat irregular, with my custom IEMs only needing around 55/120 volume to be more than loud enough. So I started Googling to see if anybody else had this issue. And I found out that there are actually two versions of the ZX707 Walkman. One that has a max power output of 50+50mW single-ended or 230+230mW balanced at 16ohms, and one that has 0.4-1.1mW at 32ohms.
And if you guessed it, that’s right. There’s no high-gain option. So the power output for the second model is severely limited and you can’t do anything about it. And if you’re in the US, EU, Canada or Singapore, this is the model that’s on sale. So if you’re planning on buying this DAP for full-fledged headphones, you should either import a model from Japan, Malaysia or Hong Kong, or look for another player because this model with no high gain option will not be able to drive it adequately. For easily driven IEMs, this might be fine, but as far as my testing went, it’s really hit or miss. The Sennheiser IE200 was quite underpowered and soft, while my Noble K10 was perfectly fine at a lower volume and the IE600 was in the middle, all using single-ended cables.
This is partly due to hearing protection laws I suppose, but it’s not clearly stated on Sony’s website unless you go into the specifications list and look for it. Now that that’s cleared up, let’s talk about the player itself.
Design first, I have to say I really like it. There’s a textured back that’s nice in the hand, although I’m not a fan of the sharp edges at the top, which do have the propensity to leave dings in soft plastic. You get both a 4.4mm balanced output as well as a 3.5mm single-ended output here, so that’s good. All the control buttons are on the right edge, from top to bottom it’s power or the screen lock button, volume up, volume down, track skip forward, play/pause and track skip backwards. There is a raised bump on both the volume up and play/pause buttons for easy tactile recognition.
On the left side, you get a MicroSD slot and at the bottom, there’s a USB-C port as well as a lanyard hole. Inside, while we don’t know what chip it’s using, we can see that there’s 4GB of RAM. Honestly, the performance is a little hit or miss too. When operating at the base level, opening apps and such, it’s relatively snappy. The issue comes when I’m skipping tracks on the Sony Music Player. Sometimes it’s really fast, others, there’s a 5 to 6-second delay before the button press registers and the track skips. Not great, but again, it’s not the case for every instance.
The player is running on Android 12 and comes with a 5-inch touchscreen display. You’ll be able to download streaming apps like Tidal or Apple Music and stream to your wireless earbuds if you so prefer. There’s an equaliser built-in, along with DSEE Ultimate upscaling, a vinyl processor option, DSD remastering and more. Additionally, if you’re using the Sony Music Player app, it can unfold MQA files as well.
As for battery life, Sony claims up to 25 hours of 44.1kHz FLAC playback and up to 23 hours of 96kHz FLAC playback when using the Sony Music Player or up to 22 hours in offline mode, even when streaming music. I found that’s generally accurate, if a bit on the high side seeing that I had to boost the volume up, which meant I got a little less battery life than expected at around 17 hours with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth turned on, and around 20-ish hours when they’re turned off.
But let’s talk about sound quality because that’s really what’s most important. Sony has always had a pretty identifiable sound, warm, lush and more dynamic than analytical. And that warmth is what you’ll most likely notice first here. The ZX707 isn’t quite as detail-focused as some other DAPs can be, but the bass response is tight with a relatively quick decay and very decent slam. The mids are lush and warm with clear, expressive vocals, while there’s plenty of air and sparkle in the highs.
The soundstage is wide, but more than that, it manages to be sufficiently deep and high as well. It’s overall a very musical, clean sound that, I feel, pairs very well with equipment that’s on the warmer side. I absolutely loved it with my K10s, and it paired well with the IE600 I had on hand as well.
At US$899.99 or S$1,199, it's not cheap by any means and that missing high-gain option is the kicker in the teeth. If you absolutely want this player, it only makes sense to import it to get the one with the high-gain option.