Sony S2  - The oft-overlooked 2000s audio sports portable redux

'It could probably do with another 23:29 taken out, then it would really fly by' - your wit never fails 😁 I imagine the intro and then you throwing the WM-S555 into the canal, walking away, and the credits.

Regarding the port on top of the walkman: I am sure it can act as a pressure release valve as you mentioned. But I got my hands on a non-functioning unit (perished belt, indeed) and opening it up revealed a small pot, consistent with the service manual citing a speed adjustment.

I'm sure I had some of those thinner headphones (in black) in the 80s, a step up from the orange spongy Koss-like ones you've shown before. I do recall them making your ears sore pretty quickly though.

The only thing I can't figure out is how a CD player you hold in your hand while you are jogging would ever do anything but skip. What am I missing?

When I worked at RadioShack in 2002/2003, we only had a single one of these which was the MD player. I looked at it many times, and eventually bought it myself (with the employee discount) and sold it to my stepson who was living with us at the time. It was in a blister pack and there was never any carrying case around it (though who knows maybe there were other packages for other markets that might have had a case). I never saw another one again but that particular one is still working as far as I know. It looks like yours is a little bit yellowed like the boombox. Personally, this is absolutely not my style. I like my audio/video equipment with straight lines and lots of symmetry. But I have to admit if you have a collection of them, they probably sort of grow on you.

Just looked up that bicycle radio and it doubles as a bike computer/speedo, complete with wheel sensor magnet! If only they weren't super rare.

Very nice video and interesting too. I don't remember at all this line of Sony but I rarely do as Sony was out of my range... I checked them now though, because that boom box could be exactly what I am looking for. A boom box for the balcony, not too powerful but a bit rugged. The cd player, md and cassette....are also interesting!!!! Oh boy this video is getting expensive

As always, a wonderful video! thank you for all your hard work creating these !!!

Is it possible, that some of the struggling sound in playing, could be due to the fact that the noise on the cd cover is from the cover rubbing against the cd itself and thus causing the cd to run slower than it's supposed to? maybe just tape down the lid until it's silent and then see how it's playing ?

"Meet & Fu"...who else wondered what that title would resolve to??

I do remember seeing Sony's S2 products, as well as their equally ugly and badly named Psyc and Xplod products. But some passed me by, including their "Liv" radios, a name they resurrected years later for a streaming service in India.

Very impressive the amount of research and patient purchasing that must've gone on beforehand to make this video possible -- and it was an excellent final result, thanks!

Ah yes, ATRAC… Sony’s self-sabotaging attempt to ensure that nobody would buy their solid state mp3 players (or should that be ATRAC players?). That awful software to convert tracks, indescribably bad and unreliable as I recall.

God I miss product design. My black rectangle can do most everything I will ever need or want it to do... so why do I feel like yawning every time I look at it? Love the video on a line sold here in the states that I totally forgot about .

Great video, thank you. I would absolutely love a repair and review episode featuring the WM-FS555

Thank you for the video, I enjoyed it! Back in the days, I bought the CD player for my then girlfriend. It was pretty cool, at that time :)

Great video Mat - thanks! Dying to know what on earth the TV/Weather functionality was though? (Apols if its been asked already)

I remember seeing S2 branded (cassette) Walkmans on the bus to school, c.2001. Pretty sure I remember seeing them in Argos or Index catalogue too.

Awesome episode, and comment that I wanted to leave (but not on YT) - I had one or two of these, a CD player or two I think, and moved off them to the iPod because of the lack of skipping. Really wish I'd seen that awesome black cylinder MP3 player back then, I'd have been all about it.

Great video. Maybe you could team up with the 8-Bit Guy to Retrobrite those yellowed Sony S2 products!

The design holds up pretty well. The armband radio looks a bit like a medical device, though. At least it wouldn't look particularly out of place as a blood pressure monitor (a good looking one, I might add). 20 FM presets are plenty. My Sony XDR-S61D (a kitchen radio designed in 2017) has a meagre five presets for 60 or so DAB stations and another five for FM. It seems as if Sony had put more thought into its audio products back then. This product line also completely passed me by. But at the time when these things were current, it was already a challenge for me to cover my running costs, so I had other priorities. Anyway, thanks for the nicely done introduction to one of the last audio product lines that still offered some of quality.

is there a good audiobook about sony ? specially how they managed the engineering and product lines. the amount of product this company made very year is mind boggling. keeping track of it all must have been a huge task.

The rest of the Sony ZS range of Boomboxes from this era also have futuristic styling, and as you might expect MD link connectors (except for the ones that actually incorporate MD decks). Check out the Sony ZS-D55 for the most futuristic styling. They used to sell those in Comet (long defunct U.K. retailer). Unfortunately that model seems to have failure prone CD mechanisms.

I had two of the yellow Walkmans back in the late 80s to early 90s. Because of the promotional material, I had assumed that the Sports line would make the devices better at avoiding wow and flutter when walking or running, but neither of them were much better than a standard Walkman in that regard.

• 'Promised/threatened' - threaten me with videos as much as you like, please. 😀 • Thanks very much for putting this together. I appreciate the unusual designs, although their suscceptibilty to tobacco teeth yellowing is a distinct put-off. • I never knew UK radio options excluded TV and weather bands; I learn something every week on your channel. I don't remember seeing these in the early 2000's, but at the time I was too busy graduating from college and starting my first professional job. • I like the orange S2 logo; the white, not so much. • I loved the Spock and 'Vin Diesel' cameos. Made me laugh quite a bit. • Nicely done video; your brief jaunt to the back garden with the boombox was a fun inclusion. If anyone wants an NOS WM-FS222 in original packaging (for a completely outrageous price 😛): https://www.ebay.com/itm/196354306274 Inspiration only for a thumbnail variation: https://ibb.co/7GXnVCN Take care 🤍 🤍

Very nice video. Very nice music player range.

Thanks for a great video. Frankly, I wasn't in the market for these kinds of devices when they came out. It seems to me that Sony was trying to hold on the 'glory days of yore' with technology that wasn't the coolest out. I asked my Google A.I. thingy, "What was the coolest tech in the 2000s?" It responded with iPod, Blackberry, Nintendo DS, but the only Sony was the PlayStation 2. By the way, I thought boom boxes were set up with different power management based on whether the device was plugged in, or ran off batteries. It's likely your boombox battery management has some tired electronics that are bypassed when plugged in.

A classic episode, Mat, thanks.

I got the radio in this line from a Goodwill not too long ago, in the Chicago suburbs.

I wonder how effective Retrobright would be at un-yellowing the case.

Never burned a disc using ATRAC3Plus. I thought this was only used for MDs. These and the YPPY line are probably the last reliable cassette players with decent built quality.

By the time these were out, I had not enough money to buy CDs but just enough money to buy a 6gb MP3 player. By this time, my dad and I had started ripping our CDs into 64kbps WMA files and stealing music from the internet. That's of course, the problem. This was the grand shittification in quality of popular music with destructive FM compression, CD loudening, and everyone having the ability to play the highest quality music but without the setup. By 2002, limited space MP3 players drove people to compress the shit out of music down to merely listenable quality. I should know; I still do it if it's music I don't care about, and I still use type 1 tapes for music I DO care about. We didn't start getting reliably good quality music until maybe 2017, when bandwidth and storage became sufficiently cheap that it could be streamed. Around this time, buying a good product like these to listen to your shitty burned CDs through your shitty headphones was a waste. I, probably like most people, kept my old electronics for tapes, CDs, and radios, and spent new money on new tech. These just flew by. That being said, by 2004 I lived in Luxembourg and was running a beautiful HP smartphone with Windows Mobile so I had evolved beyond even the need for an MP3 player (though I did have one for my massive music collection). Everyone else who was into tech was running Nokia or Ericsson with Symbian, so they ALSO had MP3 players with them. In fact, my girlfriend circa 2005 when she got her first phone with her own money, bought an Ericsson W800 with this same design language, even with the joystick. It was Walkman branded. Couldn't believe it. It was just not the right time for the people tech centric enough to want these products were already off the market, and the people who weren't we're getting by with cheaper shittier stuff.

Don’t recall this one but by the early mid 90s I was happily in the MD world with a MZ-R3 and wasn’t looking at other options until MP3 players made it big. I do like the white styling though, very clean.

All the best Matt, hopefully the weather is getting nicer up there in them there northern parts! (From a sunny Cambridgshire)

I remember seeing them advertised, but think I only ever saw the MD once in somebody's hands. The CD I saw in a store display, but never out in the wilds.