Customer Ratings & Reviews

The Sony NW-A306 Walkman A Series in Black is a solid choice for music enthusiasts looking for a high-quality portable music player. It has excellent sound quality, sleek design, ample storage, and impressive battery life to provide a premium listening experience.

This product is really good. Good sound, great battery life when using my wireless earbuds. Glad i bought it. The only thing that upset me is that i bought it thinking i would have close to 32 GB for song storage. And it actually only has 18GB available for storage and you wouldnt know that until you dug really deep in the product info. Thats close to what i was working with before on memory and was very upset that I'll now have to buy a memory card to get the kind of GBs that are advertised in the product title. That just seems like very misleading advertising.

I always have been a fan of Sony electronics and over the years owned many of their excellent equipment. I unfortunately cannot say the same for the NW-A306 Walkman. While the device is clearly well-constructed feeling solid in hand, the audio quality playback is good, but not great, for both lossy and loss-less music. Sony’s sound enhancements, though, are a nice touch and do work well depending on the type of music formats. I found the Android OS to be clunky, cumbersome and slow like several other reviewers noted. Sony, why Android and not your own OS? I also found the touchscreen was not especially responsive and the device heated up fairly quickly without much use. Moreover, the battery life is no where on par with purported specs when connected to a Bluetooth headset or set of speakers. The deal-breaker for me and why I returned the NW-A306 though is the fact that the U.S. version limits (i.e., “restricts”) audio output to 50% when streaming audio to a Bluetooth headset (in my case a decent Sony BT headset) while the Japanese version does not. Can someone please explain the logic behind that decision, Sony? If the restricted audio is purely a software fix, then Sony, please release a patch fixing the issue for the U.S. version. I so wanted to keep this little digital music player but could not justify the cost in relation to the lack of noted benefits. As a result, I returned the NW-A306 and at this time cannot recommend the music player to others under the current configuration.

Easy to install music files. Volume level is good. As Sony installed a sound equalizer, I don't see that adding another is necessary. It could use more bass. Battery life between charging is very good. Walkman plays while charging. I wish Sony had continued to make a player that didn't run on Android. I think it was a stretch at $350. It paired up quickly to earbuds. Takes 1 minute 27 seconds to reach play mode which is similar to other Android devices.

I wanted to like this Sony device, but the Android OS is slow, clunky, and not everything is visible on the screen due to the aspect ratio. The side buttons are hard to differentiate when the device is in your pocket. The size and weight are excellent, but the implementation of Android OS is awful. I returned it and bought the Fiio M11 Plus and I am much happier. If you are willing to tolerate the slow OS, it will work for you. If you want a device that feels smooth, upgrade to a Fiio or something a bit more expensive.

I like it! It's nice how portable it is especially with not too many choices out there anymore in terms of phone size. Plus having an audio jack is the main reason I bought it. There are a couple of things that bug me a little, the storage that the Android systems take up is insane! I could have doubled my downloaded liked songs on Spotify (4,000 songs) if it had taken up less room. Also, when I was first setting up my device it asked if I wanted to have a set turn-off time and I accidentally clicked an hour, I haven't figured out how to turn off this feature (even with googling it) so if you know I would love to know! Besides those it's not a bad purchase for the price and I'm happy to have it so I don't always have to listen to the radio on road trips!

Great product. I'm not really one who listens to music through my phone since i do so much other stuff with it. Was looking for something that I can throw in my pocket and go. Can stream through Spotify and other apps but it also allows me to click & drag songs from my computer. Small enough to fit in just about any pocket. Battery life is excellent. More than enough space. Highly recommend this to anyone who isn't into putting music on their phone.

I was very disappointed. The bass was horrible. Even after the update the bass was flat. No depth to the music at all. A lot of apps I would never use. I don’t need a calendar or calculator on my music player. Battery life was only a fraction of stated. Even with the Bluetooth & Wi-Fi off. The volume is limited by design in the US. This is a deal breaker for me. I don’t listen at deafening levels but with this player I couldn’t. Album art work was not transferred for most of my FLAC files ripped from CDs. I put the exact same micro SD card in a different player and the art work transferred just fine. I have been a big Walkman fan since the CD Walkman & minidisc Walkman. This is not worthy of the name.

My husband had one of these that we used on each of our vacations. Sadly, it got washed into the ocean on a trip. It was out of stock for a while, I was thrilled to see it was finally available for purchase. This is a bit smaller than the original item he owned but offers all of the same features. He loves it and uses it with Bluetooth often to do an assortment of tasks. Great sound, great item worth every penny.

Excellent device. I am enjoying my music and the streaming services too. Sony places music in a high-end level. The android system is quick and gives stability to the unit. Very easy to use and the cassette screensaver will add a retro element that any X gen love. But do not forget the password because it does not have a way to factory reset, and you will need to send it to a Sony Technical Service Support.

Overall, this unit is working as we wanted. The interface with the music app is a little slow. Very compact.

Good quality device. Fairly easy to ise. Easy to set up playlists and recall songs and artists. I had some slight difficulty connecting blue tooth headphones, but eventually got it worked out. Sound quality is exceptional. Worth the higher price.

Great item for audiophiles on a budget. I bought the music player about a month or 2 ago but had an ongoing software issue where the bass was forced creating a muffled feel to it. This was fixed a month ago so I can truly recommend it now. Only thing I will say is that I’d pay to get the JP/HK version imported as the volume isn’t capped

Great option for people who value music sound quality and practicality.

Awesome product. I am impressed with the sound, along with theease of accessing the internet and apps.

The sound is great, but the worst thing about it is that it's a slow Android device. Some of the menus are hard to use and feel clunky, and there's no back button or home button, so most of the time you'll have to spam the back arrows to go through every page you've opened just to close an app. For $300+, it's a bit of a disappointing user experience. On the other hand, compared to my phone, the sound is great.

It really rocks with lossless music and digital (USB-C) wired headphones but the speed of the interface is very laggy, especially when first started. It also has rebooted on me a couple times while in use, and the "turn off after xx time" doesn't work well on mine, it keeps going dead. Overall I wish I'd bought something better.

Volume is really low. very pricey had to get more memory

Great sound and graphic. Easy to use and confident to carry

Sound quality is much higher than what I was getting from my phone. I downloaded my Amazon Music library to a 256GB memory card and did find the process a bit quirky. I had expected these issues due to mentions in other reviews. After I worked out the kinks, I'm very happy with it.