Sony still makes Walkmans. And on October 15, it unveiled the most extravagant one yet: the NW-WM1ZM3, a Signature Series player with a precision-machined chassis of 99.99% pure oxygen-free copper, gold-plated, with a suggested price of $5,899. Sony’s official announcement puts it at the top of a three-player refresh that proves the dedicated music player refuses to die.
Gold you can hear (supposedly)
The flagship’s entire body is milled from oxygen-free copper and then gold-plated — a construction Sony says delivers a more stable electrical ground and lower noise. Even the screws get a gold-plated treatment exclusive to this model. Inside, thick KIMBER KABLE wiring inherited from Sony’s DMP-Z1 preserves signal integrity, dual large solid high-polymer capacitors replace the previous single capacitor for cleaner power, and an OFC milled block over the digital section carries roughly 34% more mass than the last generation.
The result weighs about 670 grams — nearly a pound and a half, per The Walkman Blog. That’s more than three times a typical smartphone, and you will feel every gram in a jacket pocket.
The full lineup: $1,899 to $5,899
The $2,999.99 NW-WM1AM3 shares most of the flagship’s audio architecture but swaps the copper shell for an aluminum-alloy chassis with a gold-plated copper rear section. The $1,899.99 NW-ZX900 is the “entry-level” option — 5-inch screen, up to 40 hours of MP3 playback, and trickle-down premium parts including the same crystal oscillators as the flagships.
All three run Sony’s DSD Remastering Engine, which upsamples PCM audio into an 11.2MHz DSD stream for a more analog-like character — and for the first time, it works on music streamed over Wi-Fi, not just downloaded files. The WM1 pair also gets an updated S-Master HX digital amplifier with a look-ahead noise shaper, larger 5.5-inch screens, 35 hours of local playback and 31 hours of streaming battery life.
Preorders are open now in the US
Technobezz reports preorders are live: the WM1ZM3 from Sony, B&H, and Crutchfield, with the WM1AM3 and ZX900 also available through Amazon. Sony hasn’t given a shipping date yet.
Meanwhile in Gadgets: HTC’s first AI-powered smart glasses and Meta’s Ray-Ban audio glasses.
Why this matters
The punchline writes itself — a $5,899 MP3 player in the streaming era — but that misses what’s actually happening. Sony keeps investing in dedicated players because the audiophile niche never died; it just got wealthier. A gold-plated chassis isn’t about sound most ears can hear. It’s a luxury-goods play: in a market the phone already won, Sony is selling sound you can weigh. The genuinely new technology isn’t the gold, either — it’s the DSD engine finally working on streamed music, which is where almost everyone actually listens now.
