TOKYO, Feb 13 — By selling its Walkman devices submerged inside bottles of water, Sony has found the clearest way to answer the question about how waterproof its Walkmans are.

Not only are they floating about inside bottles of water, the bottles are being stocked in vending machines alongside energy drinks and snacks in vending machines in gyms in New Zealand.

As well as highlighting the Walkman W NWZ-W273 Mp3 player's hydrophilic credentials, the clever marketing campaign is also getting the products in front of the people who might actually want to use them — serious fitness enthusiasts.

Away from the bottled water gimmick, the self-contained headset/music player is actually a great piece of kit for anyone who wants to listen to music while swimming or simply working up a sweat.

They can store 4GB or 8GB of music — which is simply dragged and dropped via a connected computer — and last for roughly 8 hours on a full charge. What's more, there's no point using “I was going to go for a workout but the batteries on the Walkman are dead” as an excuse because they can be quick-charged in just three minutes for an hour or so of use (a full charge takes three hours). All of the control buttons for skipping forward and back, pausing, pumping up the volume or jumping between playlists are built into the left or right headphone, so there's no need to clip on a separate remote control unit or fiddle with another piece of kit when it could distract from training. Sony's waterproof Walkman is on sale now, starting at US$100 for the 4GB version. — AFP-Relaxnews