The Last Tape Walkman(s) ?

Hundreds of articles have been written about the very first Sony Walkman the TPS-L2 but what was the last Tape Walkman and when was it made ? I started wondering this after reading about new personal stereos being released.

Wikipedia isn't very helpful noting that "In October 2010, it was reported that manufacturing of the cassette-based Walkman would cease in Japan, but that Sony would continue production of the device in China to accommodate users abroad, including in the United States, Europe, and some Asian countries"

In the UK the large retailer Argos had two tape Walkmans in their catalogue until
2012. Interestingly they were still there after all the Sony Discmans had disappeared.


The WM-EX194 (cassette only) and WM-FX290 (cassette + radio) first appeared sometime between 2004 and 2007. I have a gap between my 2003 and 2007 catalogues so can't be more precise. Compared to the early days of the Walkman, when models got replaced every couple of years, their lifetime of 5 years or longer might make them some of the longest lasting models in the Walkman range. However when the competition was MP3 players I guess Sony knew that a redesign would do nothing for sales.

Walkmans that came a bit before these include the WM-EX180 (1999) and the WM-EX190 which is in the 2003 Argos catalogue for a bargain £11.49. Was a genuine Walkman. ever cheaper ? It wouldn't surprise me if these all use the same mechanism.

It was a failure to get a WM-FX290 when I wanted to buy one new that started my interest in collecting personal stereos. In 2011 my girlfriend was ill in hospital so I made her a mixtape. I stopped in Argos to buy her the Walkman to play it on but they didn't have one in stock so I ended up with a cheap Goodmans, best described as better than nothing. They must have got more stock in to list the same Walkman in the 2012 catalogue, since if Argos discontinue a line it disappears from the next catalogue (published every 6 months) and any remaining stock is sold off cheaply.

The recent news about the RTM Personal Stereo and the indifferent reviews made me think I should buy a WM-FX290 to see what it was like. Luckily I was the only bidder on the first auction I bid on and got a mint in box one for just £10 + postage. Not surprisingly the one I got originally came from Argos as the box has a sticker with their distinctive catalogue number on the side.



What can I say about it apart from "It's a (cheap Chinese made) Sony Walkman"

There aren't many features above what you would expect on a cheap player.

• It does have rewind and a Digitally tuned Radio.
• Megabass can be selected using a menu option.
• It came with a wodge of manuals to cover just about every significant market

• It adopts the style taken by many late personal stereos where the controls are on the opposite side to the cassette door precluding a belt clip

• It did come with a case to protect it, which has a belt clip attached to it. An improvement over the WM-FX479 case
• I was surprised to find it all runs from one AA battery from which they claim a battery life of "up to 35 hours"
• The tape transport controls feel positive.
• The numbers on the display are very small even compared to the size of the LCD
• It has plenty of treble although I then realised I was listening to a Dolby B encoded tape
• The menu system works in exactly the same way as earlier Walkmans and Discmans I have had e.g the WM-FX479. Therefore there is nothing to suggest this wasn't designed by Sony. An oddity on both these Walkmans is that the word Preset appears on the display whenever a battery is fitted, presumably drawing a slight amount of power.

As I have already commented it would be interesting to compare the quality of this with the quality of current tape personal stereos. However, I have no intention of paying five times what I paid for this one to find out.

Finally, having been struggling to update my Media Center PC to Windows 8 to get another three years life out of it a photo illustrating the stability and longetivity of cassettes


38 years could separate the Tape (Published 1974) and the Player (made until 2012).

 

I sort of agree, which is why I wasn't prepared to spend much money on one. However, I am even less enthusiastic about new cassette players like the RTM one. Why buy an imitation Walkman when for much less money you can get a real one that is less than ten years old ? It would be interesting to compare the performance of the two, and maybe something like a WM22, which was a 1980s budget player. However, I don't really have the expertise to do that. I'm hoping someone who does have like Hugo will give it a go sometime.

 

Hi Longman. I have the Sony 2007/2008 (Autumn/Winter) catalogue here and the only Walkmans listed are the WM-FX290 and the WM-FX197/EX194. In the 2008/2009 there are no walkmans listed only the Sony MZ-RH1 mini-disc player and a couple of portable CD-walkmans. Do not have any other recent catalogues after that so I dont know if Sony made any more. Maybe for the Chinese market I just don't know.

 

If I were one of the engineers who designed it, I would feel very sad. Consider this: it has similar tape functions — or lack of thereof — as the very first Walkman (no Dolby, no 120/70 EQ switch, no tone controls), but it adds digital radio, and it is almost as small as fancy aluminum clamshell models, while still reusing the mechanism from 1995. The capstan is driven by a rubber belt, but it has automatic speed control, so does not have a speed adjustment pot. And it works from a single AA battery for 35 hours, how's that.

I have one. W&F is 0.17% WRMS, tape speed is 2998 Hz using a 3000 Hz tape. When I see people posting similar W&F numbers of their DDs or of some fancy slim metal one, I cannot help wondering: how is this one worse?

Peter Vis did a teardown of it and came out very impressed by tight packaging and quality electronics.

Just because its body is made of plastic, and because instead of screws it uses plastic "claws", does not mean that it is garbage. Yes, it was sold for $30 or less exactly because it was designed to be mass-produced in large quantities, yet to be reasonably decent and reliable.

In the U.S. this model was the last one: it was the only Walkman offered by Sony in 2010, and I could not find later snapshots of the walkman section of the U.S. Sony's website.

Are you sure it was made in 2012, not earlier?

 

anyway, refering to the thread‘s title all of those would be the very last Walkman i would ever buy...

 

Thanks for the link to the Peter Vis article which I hadn't seen. Interesting information.
Yes I have double checked and the WM-FX290 was in the Spring Summer 2012 Argos catalogue.
It took some finding being at the bottom of a page of cheap radios.
Of course the Sony Walkman in the same catalogue in prime position which both Sony and Argos hoped you would buy was

I never knew they did a Walkman with HDMI. I wonder if they will still "Sync with iTunes"?
A bit more information this evening when I come back from work.

 

It was in the catalogue, but was it still being produced at that time? Maybe this was just the remaining stock?

 

Only Sony and or Argos know the answer to that.
Since you are in the USA you probably don't know who Argos is. Retromash explains it well along with some scans of old catalogues which will include that years Walkmans
https://retromash.com/argos/

In 2012 they had 748 stores in the U.K. Even if they only expected to sell 1 Walkman per month per store they would need almost 9000 of them. Maybe they or Sony had a container load stacked in a warehouse, or maybe Sony were still making them. When they stop being the latest thing some Sony products have a surprisingly long life with the ICF-SW2010 radio being made for 17 years !

What I do know is that any products Argos couldn't reliably supply got removed from the new catalogue and sold off in an "End of Catalogue Clearance Sale" with its own specially printed newsheets promoting the bargains. Usually that meant you local store has no stock but I did get a half price Casio pocket computer in one clearance sale.

I use the past tense above as last year due to a shift online they announced they wouldn't be doing any more catalogues and some stand-alone shops would be closing.
The business should still be healthy having been bought in 2016 for £1.4 Billion by Sainsburys, a Supermatket chain the same size as Wal-Mart (Asda) in the U.K.

Going online I wondered what they are selling in terms of cassette player now.

A Sony CD Radio Cassette https://www.argos.co.uk/product/5740176?clickSR=slp:term:cassette:2:32:1

Their own brand Cassettes https://www.argos.co.uk/product/5583388?clickSR=slp:term:cassette:5:32:1

and their own brand of portable cassette player https://www.argos.co.uk/product/5045864?clickSR=slp:term:cassette:4:32:1

The feedback shows the level of interest in just being able to buy something that works playing cassette, and comes with a guarantee.
I suspect that like with the Radio Cassette they would put a real Sony Cassette Walkman back in the catalogue if one was available

 

I've made a video about the FX290.

 

An interesting video. In the U.K. the even cheaper WM-EX194 without the radio was being sold at the same time as shown in the catalogue scan above. I just noticed that it uses two AA batteries. I might have to get one to try.

 

Peter Vis has the EX194 disassembled too. I like reading his blog because he does not treat these walkmans like a fanboy ("this one is rare and worth keeping, while that one was made in the millions and is garbage"), but more like an engineer, assessing the quality of the design, taking into account the intended market and price point. In particular, he writes, "I thought this was an extremely well designed and engineered product for the budget-end of the market."

The EX194 has more traditional look than the FX290 with the cassette door in the front. The user manual found on Sony UK dates this model to 2004. Interesting, Sony reused an older style belt clip from a prior generation. A newer style clip found, say, on FX435 or FX455 is flexible and does not break off as easily as the old one.

The WM-FX193 which he also took apart, looks very similar outside and inside, also uses two AA batteries and the same old-style clip, but was first released in 1999. So, the eX194 is basically the FX193 without radio, made five years later. Some progress He writes, "The Sony WM-FX193 has an extremely well engineered printed circuit board (PCB), and they are using surface-mount device (SMD) components to fit them all into a tight space. This is a wonderful example of PCB artwork and layout, a skill in which the Japanese arm of Sony always excelled. The construction of this PCB would have required automation, with very little manual labour for soldering the external wires."

The FX290, which is capable to work for 35 hours from just one AA battery, seems to have more advanced electronics than both the EX194/FX193.

He lists prices like £5.00 on eBay. Nowadays these are sold for about $20 (which is still affordable, nevertheless, the prices went up).

 

I have seen them go for far more than that
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Sony-WM-...125747&hash=item343b0eff93:g:Y8QAAOSwZ9ZgDaQW
although there are also "Buy it Nows" for around £20. That has reminded me that last time I looked the EX194 seemed to consistently go for more money than the FX290. Maybe people are swayed by the Ebay reviews that are approaching five stars https://www.ebay.co.uk/p/58125747
Last night I found I have a WM-FX10 which is another basic, clip together, Walkman. I wonder where that fits into the timeline. A Youtube video claims 1991, Unfortunately mine isn't sealed like this one
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Sony-Wal...393442?hash=item48ec32bce2:g:808AAOSwkt9fSosU
A shame that you can't read the price label properly. European Ferries is exactly the sort of place you would expect these to have been sold as an impulse buy. I bet they had tapes like REM "Out of Time", and Simply Red "Stars" to go with them.

 

I believe that the FX10 is the first, or one of the very first walkmans in this family. The EX10/FX0 were first made in 1990. I would never pay £190 for it

 

I think mine was £3 at a car boot sale. The problem with a sealed pack like that is that when you open it you lose £150 of the value. Then you find that the belts have gone. I can't remember if mine needed a new belt.

 

I was up in the loft and found the Autumn Winter 2012 Argos catalogue.


The two Sony Walkmans are still in there, next to a Philips Shoebox recorder costing twice the price of the EX194.

Quite a few pages earlier there is another "Classic" at ten times the price of the EX194.

Interesting this is one of the few Argos catalogues with no blank cassettes (except VHS) and nothing to play an LP on. I guess it was before the Vinyl revival started.

 

So, it seems there were two last Walkmans in the U.K. - the EX194 and the FX290

 

I've always liked the 194, lightweight and with a more modern mechanism so there's barely any sound from the motor running.

 

First: thanks for your research and share.

In my research the EX651 was the last Walkman developed by Sony and was launched in the second semester of 2004.

Attention for the difference between:
- produced (assembled);
- developed (launched)
- sales
- discontinued

GX788 - last flagship launched by Sony, released in 2003
GX410 - last recorder/player built-in speakers released 2004
WM-FX202 - Released on November, 2002. This model remained until the end, but production was finally completed in 2010.

Check here the last walkmans in Japanese online store, if you click on images a message appears: " sales was closed in April 1st 2011"
The EX-651 still appears also.
https://www.sony.jp/walkman/lineup/tape/
About the FX-290, the service manual have a release date February/2004 so maybe this model was released in 2003 or early.
Argos catalog, is just an old stock reminiscent in UK. Maybe the last and special final order to de factory in 2010/11.