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The Walkman forms an iconic part of technology history, having been the height of innovation in the late 1970s, before becoming the must-have accessory of the 80s and 90s.
Then along came MP3, and crucially the iPod, unceremoniously shoving the Walkman from the limelight.
Well now Sony is bringing it back in a whole new guise.
Oh, and the firm has been testing it out with the help of an Olympic medallist.
Sony got us to the running track in London’s Regent’s Park to go through a workout session with Olympic silver medallist and former 110m hurdles world champion and world record holder, Colin Jackson to test out what it calls the Sony Smart B-Trainer. No pressure then.
Despite obvious nerves over trying to keep up with someone who can do 110m hurdles in about 12 seconds the B-Trainer caught the eye. Having been first unveiled at CES at the beginning of the year, the headset looks like two small Bluetooth earpieces connected by a rubber strap. The earbuds then slip straight into your ear and can be resized accordingly so they stay there when you run.
This is what it looks like on.
And when you do start moving the device can be linked to your phone via Bluetooth and an official app, and it’s here that things start to get very interesting. The B-Trainer is loaded with sensors that track GPS and heart rate but also your elevation, pace and length of your stride. All of this is logged and can be looked at in the app.
There are different workout programs on offer too, for example fat burning or endurance, and these each have pace and heart rate parameters. Should your exercise slip out of these – moving too fast or too slow – the trainer’s voice will tell you through the earpiece.
Audio is unsurprisingly a big part of how the B-Trainer works. The device will alter your playlist to suit the pace you’re running at – playing something more up tempo if you’re slowing down too much for example.
Arguably the best feature of the B-Trainer is that as well as the Bluetooth link, the device has 16GB of internal storage – enough space for almost 4,000 songs. So if you don’t want to take your phone with you when you run, you don’t have to. It’s also waterproof so would be fine to swim in.
Comfort-wise the B-Trainer scores well – but it is definitely worth spending time before you start using it getting the fit right. As with anything earbud based this is a very personal thing, but given the amount of jolting the headset receives as you run, spend time fitting properly before you start to save an annoyance later.
With smartwatches, including the Apple Watch, on the rise, the B-Trainer offers an interesting alternative. It also means that if you want, you can leave those annoying smartphone armbands behind when you run. The price may seem at little steep at £230, but the running fanatics out there will appreciate the freedom such an intimate device actually gives them.
More importantly, we survived a training session with an Olympic hurdler.
