Love the focus on pocket-sized or even palm-sized When I put my MZ-N910 Mini-Discman in my shirt or pants pocket, it fits. The super thin D-EJ925 Discman does not. Maybe I should buy different clothes.
One of the articles I posted explained that most Japanese traveled by train, bus, bike and they needed the electronics as small as possible. I've always said one of the reason mini-stereos never took off here was we wanted everything bigger and badder, huge tape decks, that were mostly filled with air, giant cars with seats that could fit eight, etc.
On 1001 Hifi I found an article about the WM-F701C: https://www.1001hifi.info/2020/09/sony-walkman-1989-making-of.html Plenty of pictures of the plant and production line, albeit in low resolution. In the text you can find a reference to a Sony document from 1989 dedicated to the 10th anniversary of the Walkman. Would anybody have this document/book? Scans are obviously okay too
Old but good posted a video, in which he compares several CD and cassette portables. The Sanyo Espera EP-7 ultra thin Walkman, and also a Sanyo Espera discman that I have not seen before. Compared to the older boxy units, really small!
A couple of these are for sale on Ebay, I thought about it because it's a neat looking kind of different model. I just found this review for the Magnavox CK 1050CH, it was $449 USD in 1989! Big money when Casio was taking over the market, anybody know what's special about this one? I might end up getting one, perfect for the holidays.
3" was quite a big screen for the time. Most of the Casios were about 2". Don't forget 3" is about twice the screen area. This was from 1990 It doesn't mention it but if the screen was TFT but that would have also significantly increased the price. TFT was a selling point on much later high end Casios.
Here is the Philips version https://www.radiomuseum.org/r/philips_lcd_pocket_color_television_3lc2050_10g.html Apparently, in the 1960s the Philips name was deemed to be too close to that of the American company Philco, so they used names like Norelco then Magnavox. Back to the Magnavox/Philips TV this site says it won a design award in 1991 http://www.guenthoer.de/e-history.htm
I've lost some of those links over the years and they don't rank high on searches anymore, great information on Frank's Website.
"One can't expect too much for the price, and once this is borne in mind the sets don't sound too bad." - What a load of BS. Bad is bad, no matter the price. The question is whether one can tolerate a certain level of crappiness by saving a jackson. But you still will be hearing that noise and wow & flutter every day, and it will never leave, it will eat you inside. You will remember that you were cheap and bought a cheap machine and now you have to suffer through it. Or maybe it will be ok if you don't care much, but then the whole idea of "too bad" or "not too bad" makes no sense whatsoever as long as it works at all. $425 for the WM-D3 in 1987 - yikes! This makes me less apprehensive about current prices for these machines
Koss from 1984, The Singapore Monitor I only have the Koss Music Box, the center one, I don't see any red light on mine. I wonder how tied into the headphones it is.
I always thought this was earlier but here's a release (Playboy) from 1983, the Olympus XR. I wonder if any came with the kind-of-hard to find radio....
