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If you’re of the sporty persuasion and wish that you could take your tunes to the pool without having a funny-looking contraption strapped to your goggles or having your earphones fall out every other stroke, Sony’s newest addition to the Walkman series will definitely be of interest.

Scheduled for a February 16 release in Japan, the new NWD-W270 series features a compact, lightweight design and boasts 4GB of onboard storage space. Plenty of delicious images and details after the break.

Waterproof headphones and MP3 players have existed for some time now, but few rival Sony’s streamlined, no-nonsense design which does away with long wires than can become tangled, and keeps all of the technological wizardry in earphones themselves, meaning that swimmers don’t have to find somewhere to clip their waterproof player.

The NWD-W273 is water resistant to a depth of two metres, so while you won’t be doing any deep-sea diving with it any time soon, you’ll have no problems powering up and down the pool with your favourite tracks blasting out. And of course, with this being Sony, there are three colours to choose from: sleek black, Hatsune Miku-style blue, and clean white.

While comparing the new Walkman with Sony’s existing W263 model, Japanese tech site AV Watch remarked how light it is, weighing in at just 29 grams and being 30% smaller than the old model. Thanks to this sleeker design, swimmers are able to glide through the water with less resistance than before, and, with a new adjustable neck-band, the unit is sure to stay firmly in place no matter how large your movements in and out of the water are.

▼The neckband will keep the unit snug and secure

The W273 is compatible with both Mac and Windows XP,  Vista, 7 and 8, and – especially for those who aren’t fond of iTunes – offers a very simple drag and drop UI. The Walkman connects to a computer via a standard USB cable for both charging and data transfer, with just three minutes of charging providing up to 60 minutes of playback time.

Sony also plans to launch a dedicated Walkman case alongside its new swim-friendly earphones, which will go on sale at around the 2,000 yen (US$23) mark. We don’t usually go for extras and add-ons, but we have to admit that this case looks pretty snappy and would no doubt look perfectly at home nestling among the contents of even the trendiest fitness fan’s sports bag.

Sony has not fixed an official price for the new Walkman itself, but has suggested that it go on sale for “close to 10,000 yen”, meaning that it’s probably safe to assume the unit will be available for less than US$170 when it hits stores in February. There’s not much time left to save those pennies, but with a reasonable price tag like this, it probably won’t require too many paper rounds to gather the cash.

We’ll leave you with a handful of sexy close-up images of the new Walkman so you can choose which of the three colours you like best. I’m quite partial to the black model, personally. Now all I need to do is learn how to swim…

Scource: AV Watch