Best 50 walkmans of all time

agree on
TPS-L2
WM-2
WM-10
D6C
HS-JX3000

partially agree on :
HS-G08, I think HS-J600 is better alternative
CX-V9, adding TV to walkman was a great feature

disagree on
WM-DD :
- I love this model and have several series of it, but it is not the best for any criteria:
- quality is not the best, most of DD series including DD30-DD33, DD100.... are better quality
- But I have to admit it when it comes to beauty the blue, green, red and gold champagne version are extremely beutiful
WM-701-c :
- I don't have any reason to include it in "best walkman category
- again I love this model and its features, but not in my top 10 list as best walkman

WM-F5:
- it only carry the name of best sport cassette walkman , not enough to be in my top 10


my list for top 5:
TPS-L2
DD-100
DD-9
D6C
Wm-2

 

Me too doesn't see a place for Sony WM-701C on the 10 best list. I have 3, none of them work, 3 were to service but they were so broken that with a lot of work maybe you could make 1 out of them. And that would be expensive. They looking outside like new or almost like new and tempting. Worst spend money.
I should have spend it to service second WM-501 or to buy one serviced.
And that's the model I would put on the list. Mechanically better (can't say sonically), easier to repair, just a bit bigger than cassette box.
For this I would choose it over Sony WM-10 (afaik WM-20 is upgraded version, not the same exact model).

My Top 10 list (only consist of those models I have/had and heard), not in this exact order - I would be just happy having any from this models:

Panasonic
RQ-S55 - great sound
RQ-SX5/7(vibration sound is really something, SX7 has wireless pilot)

Aiwa:
HS PX101 - great sounding
HS PX303 - probably even better sounding, but I'm not audiophile
HS PC202 - almost as great sounding as PX101, but a lot easier to maitain for me (I must say that original is better than MkII or MKIII)

Sony:
WM D6C - really nice sounding but too big for me to be portable
WM-501 - nice sounding and when I see one I just scream 'Walkman'
WM-505 - bigger than 501 but with wireless headphones

FX811 - easy maintenance, sounding nicely enough, runs 20+ hours on battery, memory for 7 radio stations, in my opinion number one in the category 'very good at everything it can do'.
I don't have any other model from manufactures like Toshiba, Sanyo etc, so I can't vote on them.

 

Top 10 best walkman based on my opinion/understanding from what you explained as the criteria to be eligible to be the best:

SONY TPS-L2
SONY DD-100
SONY DD-9
SONY D6C
SONY WM-2
Sanyo JJ-P101
SONY WM-W800
AIWA J600 or G08 (to make you happy)
AIWA JX3000
SONY D3

 

the reason I placed W800 in the top 10 is its ability of recording. There was a time that people like myself didnt have money to buy cassettes and duplicating cassettes with double deck wasa big deal. When this capability came to walkman units it became a dream for me to have one and still love this unit.

 

I think Sony Wm-701c is well deserving of its place in the top 10...The device has a wonderful design, it is the smallest and lightest Walkman Sony made, I have experienced when I have friends at home, I show them the Tps-l2 and then I put the 701c on it, explaining to them that 10 years separate these 2 Walkmans, and everyone is still very surprised and impressed by this technical prowess...I own currently two 701c and the very rare 703c which work perfectly well after a belt change and maintenance/adjustment.
For me, the 701c represents a major step forward in the history of Walkmans.

Another Walkman, the Wm-7 should not be forgotten, given the technology deployed in 1982 to make this jewel, touch controls, autoreverse, remote control on the helmet, etc...

 

@ Patex: agree 100% - WM-701/2 etc. and family definitively, milestone, same as WM-7 (my favourite,Sony), first with full-logic and three motors…

the TPS-L2 off course for starting the Walkman-era.

as a long year collector (…since ~1995 ) i have had and seen plenty models. i don‘t own that many anymore (forget the Cloneman-bunch ), for my understanding, if we do not reduce this on units named „Walkman“, means include all other brands: my no.1 is the 1971 UHER CR-124. it was designed as a reporter-type, size of a car-radio, portable, with battery-compartement and featured a stereo headphonejack - it was the first ever portable hifi stereo cassetteplayer and featured besides hifi playback and recording even autoreverse. those units are better made than the most above listed units. just mainly unknown, as they weren‘t designed to sell a fooking lifestyle, but for professional use. no lousy protagonist wears it in any scify action comedy, nor was it ever aveilable with bling-bling buttons and metallic spraypainted plastic-covers, they never came with big lettered stickers, promising the greatest hifi ever. they were just there and bravely did their daily job.
b.t.w. those and their later derivates CR-134 (or even later 210,240 -then without a/r) are still around for sale a lot for decent prices. to me an absolute must for any serious Walkman-collector…


anyway, i dislike list like that (top ten etc.), because they aren‘t personal an they are never objective. collecting technic, if done serious, is as individual or personalized as your taste of music or taste of cars or bicycles etc., or at least it should be.

 

for me the best walkmans were any walkman with dolby c which kinda misses out on the whole point of this thread lol early walkmans were just to big imho autoreverser that is NOT a walkman you have posted it makes the d6c look small lol.....for me i had all the cheap plastic walkmans of the 90's with mega bass as i was more into boomboxes and the best hifi i could afford.....the first walkman i had with dolby c was the d6c which i swapped for a saga megadrive and then had the walkman repaired but even this walkman is far to big imho had dozens of walkmans with dolby c since then, i wonder where they all went lol

 

What I meant to explain by calling his list rubbish, is that the walkmans he cited really aren't important to the history of the walkman. Its like saying "Oh your car collection needs a corvette" and then getting a mid-70's butt-ugly C3 model that looks terrible and is just an average car with a monster engine. Yeah, it might be cheap & easy to procure but it did absolutely nothing to change the world. What changed the world was the original 1953 corvette C1 and later C2 models, and perhaps the 2019 ZR1, with a whole lot of nothing in-between.

Similarly, I don't even care about TPS-L2 because it really had no impact on portable stereo cassette players - it didn't sell well - only 15k a month - and nobody had ever heard of it until the guardians of the galaxy movie hype. The most important fact about the TPS-L2 is that it didn't fail.

Three of the main events in Walkman history were WM-2 (1.5M in sales over ~3Y), WM-10 and WM-31/33/41/43 and their F-siblings. Sony really didn't understand the walkmans until these models succeeded. You see lots of experiments like the WM-DC6 and the WM-R2 an WM-F7 which really weren't very popular and didn't last very long. Although they are a modern curiosity, they were not impactful on the world.

Did the DD walkmans matter AT ALL? Can you buy a DD cassette-drive anything today? Can you?

I think the first truly compact AM/FM walkman belongs on the list, because you could put a full stereo system in your pocket, mic drop. You could buy externally powered speakers and build a micro hifi system for less than $100, and I did that. Quite possibly it's the WM-F8 in 1984. I bought one in 1984 when my WM-2 was stolen. I suspect it was the #1 four-battery seller of all time. For the first time, a Walkman did everything a home stereo would do, except record.

Sony seems to agree with me - somewhat, listing WM-2 and WM-20 (=WM-10) as some of their top innovations. https://www.sony.com/en/SonyInfo/CorporateInfo/History/sonyhistory-e.html

Another from that sony website list is the WM-101 because it introduced the rechargeable memory stick. Maybe this is where SONY got the idea they could create a bunch of proprietary standards like Beta tapes and MemorySticks and mistakes from other makers like HD-DVD which went nowhere, all of these formats losing out to AA nicads, VHS, SD cards, and Blu-rays. If I were putting together a collection to show off, an early memory stick model would definitely appear.

 

@systemBuilder , first I want to welcome you to the forum. I guess I didn't see your introduction post or maybe you missed. We welcome all music and vintage electronic enthusiast in our forum.

there is nothing wrong to have a different ideas. By listening to different ideas we gain more knowledge and at the same time we can challenge each other But we don't disrespect each other. calling someone's list rubbish probably is not the best way of expressing your opinion. If you see, I had a different opinion than Hugo and placed my list and other members expressed different opinion.

Also it is funny that you said Sony didn't understand the walkman until the .....
To my no entity knew walkman better than Sony at the beginning until AIWA advanced models populated the market and Sony had no choice but to buy the whole AIWA company. again this is just an opinion and we do not need to agree on this .

and by the way, no one knows walkman units better than @walkman archive , He has extensive knowledge of walkmans by testing them in details.

 

Thanks for the re-welcoming, my new member introduction was 15 months ago :

https://stereo2go.com/forums/threads/new-member-introduction.7942/​

I apologize if my language is too strong - being from the US I guess "rubbish" is probably a much stronger word than I knew (substituting for something much worse?)

When I said "Sony didn't understand the walkman" it's based on my readings of articles such as this one about the WM-F2, "Even sony didn't understand the walkman at this stage." Sony tried gads and gads of experiments in the walkman market but in the end they seemed to settle upon AM/FM and small as possible and then load up on features (rugged, auto-reverse, amorphous heads, dolby, station presets, clocks, ...).

There were two grade-levels of AM/FM walkmans - "Full Plastic" and (almost) "All Metal" - the latter were sold mostly in Japan, especially after the Yen had a HUGE revaluation due to US pressure - from 250/$ to 125/$ from mid-1985 to December 1987, making most of the metal models too expensive for the USA market. I remember this time with sadness. Soon XBR televisions also started to disappear from stores and all the really fantastic high-end stuff that Sony used to make was sent to fewer and fewer American stores and only in the very richest parts of the richest cities. Yen revaluation certainly had a huge impact on Walkman construction principles!

There is no such thing as a "Best 50 Walkmans" list, you have to qualify it with "What is your criterion?" Are you trying to get the firsts, that changed the market direction(which is sort of my list)? Are you trying to get one walkman with each feature (which is probably what the base message was trying to do?) I think that as a museum curator or a collector you could argue that each approach is valid.

 

An interesting discussion. Many good points and opinions so far!

(Here is my very peculiar opinion: I fixate on D6 and D6C due to audio quality, build quality, capability, durability and repair-ability. These qualities found in the D6 and D6C represent the ideal to me. I love the "brick" form factor. I've never listened to portable audio out in public (!) and so the marginally bigger brick form is of no concern. Strange eh? )

 

For professional equipment as D6C I would make sure the reverse polarity or slight difference of voltage won't destroy it. It was sold to reporters and used everywhere in the World. Is it the peak of recording walkmans? Probably. It's the peak of player walkmans? No

 

the pinnacle of the walkman are the 90's ones with dolby c imho at least they fit in you're pocket amongst other things

had most of the good walkmaans but nothing beats the d6c for recording, a friend i had many moons ago used mine in his recording studio