Sony Launches CE-P MP3 Players

Sony has announced the launch of a new set of MP3 players under the name, the CE-P series.

The new walkman has built-in flash memory instead of hard drives or Hi-MD media, with models ranging in capacity from 512MB to 1GB and 2GB. With the 1GB and 512 MB players, an FM Tuner is optionally available giving users a wide variety of audio options.
As with most players featuring radio, the CE-P series allows direct recording on to memory for future playback.


Visually the CE-P is about 1.8-inches wide and about 3-inches tall, and features a 1.5-inch 260,000 color OLED display with a resolution of 128x128 pixels. The CE-P has a USB 2.0 interface to connect to PCs for transferring media, although there is no word of PlayForSure compatibility.

The player offers easy download capabilities by direct connection through the USB port, and each player comes with the latest SonicStage 3.4 software version for easy music management and transfer of listeners favourite tracks. The player features two languages; simplified Chinese and English.

The walkman is compatible with most commonly used digital music formats like MP3, ATRAC and unsecured WMA files, along with BMP and JPEG viewing capabilities. The new MP3 player boasts 28 hours playback when using the ATRAC3 format, and has a quick-charge functionality giving three hours of battery life in just three minutes.

Jeffry Van Ede, vice president, Sony Europe, said that with the new player the company is offering owners a winning combination of style, ease-of-use and functionality.

The new slimline walkman builds on the design success of its predecessors, by providing a compact polycarbonate "stick" in a range of vibrant colours including pink, blue, silver, violet, black, and lime green.

Sony has also launched a series of accessories to accompany the new players including neck strap headphones, protective case, and an armband case for listeners on-the-go.

Although Sony has yet to fix the prices for players in the UK and US, these will be available from the end of April 2006 across Europe.