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Review: Sony's Tenth Anniversary Walkmans have always been special. Their 10th anniversary cassette walkman had a beatiful titanium shell and cleverly hid the chewing gum-stick battery inside the tape compartment. It was desirably small and light, and extremely well-featured. The 10th anniversary Minidisc carries on in this tradition. It is less than the width of two minidiscs stacked on top of each other, and only marginally bigger than the external dimensions of the disc. It's so small and thin that it doesn't have an external battery; there's a lithium polymer battery right within the casing which alleges to give 40hrs+ of playback. However, there's no way to extend that if, for example, you're going travelling on a long holiday by adding on a standard battery. It does come with a nice charging stand, but you have to use it as the whole stand which could be an extra bulk if you're going away. It performs extremely well, and combined with the right headphones and music you'll probably not get a better musical "image". Has enough features, too, to adjust the sound should you desire. It doesn't allow you to plug the headphones straight in to the player - it has a non-standard remote jack which you can either plug in the supplied remote (this nearly doubles the weight of the player, that's how light the thing is) or a supplied adaptor cord which extends a couple of centimetres from the player giving you a standard 3.5mm socket. This is a beautiful machine, but the lack of standard headphone socket was enough to put me off buying it initially. I eventually justified my purchase by giving it to my wife for a birthday present to replace her ageing MD player. She absolutely loves it, and carries it everywhere as it's no real burden in her purse. | 
Audio HiFi
