After accumulating a bit of a Walkman collection recently, I decided I would miniaturise and modernise a little bit. I went on eBay and bought a Sony MiniDisc Walkman (An MZ-G750) and a SanDisk Clip Jam MP3 Player.

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I must say I rather like the MiniDisc Walkman. It is nice and small, the buttons are nice and easy to find and press, and the sound quality is excellent. I recorded a load of audio from CDs via a TOSLINK connection in LP2 mode, and the sound quality is hardly distinguishable from a CD (LP2 mode gives about 145 minutes on one disc). This model has an AM/FM radio, but the actual radio circuit itself is located in the remote control which is annoying. It wouldn't have made the Walkman that much bigger if they'd incorporated the radio into the Walkman like they did on the cassette models.

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I got the SanDisk Clip Jam MP3 player off ebay for abut £25. Came shipped from Switzerland . It is very tiny. Too tiny in fact. The small size makes it difficult to hold and the buttons quite hard to press. As well as the small buttons, it is also a bit too menu driven for my liking. Sound quality is quite good though. It plays lots of different formats, including FLAC (which they don't advertise). The 1" OLED screen is nice and easy to read. It has an FM radio which is adequate, but the lack of an AM radio is annoying, though few MP3 players seem to have an AM radio. It also has a MicroSD card slot which I haven't tried yet, but will probably be useful (as long as I don't loose the miniscule cards ).

I think the MP3 player will be useful to have, but I'll stick to the MiniDisc and cassette Walkmans mostly I think . They do seem a bit more pleasant to use for someone who likes devices with easy to press buttons .

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