Sony MZ-E35 (1998)
Four ounces, barely bigger than the disc it plays, and a stick remote that keeps the whole thing in your pocket.
Overview
The MZ-E35 is a playback-only MiniDisc Walkman, and its dimensions tell the story better than any spec sheet could. At roughly 3¼ by 3¼ inches, the body is barely larger than a MiniDisc itself, and Sony's own operating instructions describe it as "almost the size of a MiniDisc jacket" — the kind of thing that disappears into a shirt pocket. The weight is the other half of the pitch: four ounces. Hold a couple of AA batteries in your hand and you've got the idea.
That portability came with a deliberate trade-off. This is a player, not a recorder — no line-in, no mic input, no way to make an MD. The MZ-E35 assumes you've already got a home deck doing the recording. What it does instead is put the controls where your hand already is. The supplied stick-style remote sits on the headphone cord with its own LCD, showing track numbers, elapsed time, and — on electronically labeled discs — track and disc names. The manual is careful to note that names only appear on MDs that have been electronically labeled, which is the sort of fine print that separated a good experience from a frustrating one in the MiniDisc era. A shuttle dial on the remote handles navigation while the main unit stays buried in a pocket, and the DISPLAY button cycles through elapsed time, track name, and disc name.
The anti-shock buffer is the feature that made portable MD genuinely usable on the move: a 40-second memory buffer that offsets optical read errors, so jostling the player doesn't produce the skipping that plagued portable CD. Power comes from a single AA — either the "chewing-gum" rechargeable or, with the supplied battery case attached, one LR6 alkaline, which Sony rates at about eight hours of consecutive playback. There's also a DC IN 1.5V jack on the battery case for the optional AC-E15L adaptor, though the manual is blunt that no other adaptor should be used. Frequency response is specified at 20 Hz to 20 kHz, ±3 dB.
The everyday controls are all here and all sensible. A HOLD cover on the main unit locks the buttons so pocket pressure doesn't skip tracks; the remote has its own sliding HOLD switch. Play modes run through normal, all-repeat, single-repeat, and shuffle-repeat. The DIGITAL MEGA BASS switch offers two steps of bass boost, and the AVLS (Automatic Volume Limiter System) caps volume at a moderate level for anyone worried about their ears. When the battery runs down, a flashing indicator warns you, and "LoBATT" appears on the remote display before the power cuts out.
The pricing story is messier than the engineering. Audio (November 1998, p.18) listed the MZ-E35 at $399.95, while HiFi-Stereo (April 1998, p.77) reported it at $450 as part of Sony's ten-model MiniDisc push tied to the company's multimillion-dollar CES pledge to relaunch the format in the U.S. That same report had the portable and home units slated for store shelves in May and August respectively. Collectors should treat the exact launch figure with some caution — the two contemporary reports don't agree, and the difference is large enough to matter. What's not in dispute is the positioning: this was a premium-priced portable in a format Sony was spending heavily to establish, and the MZ-E35 was one of the ten models carrying that bet.
For anyone buying one today, the appeal is the physical object as much as the sound. The playback-only design means there's no recording mechanism to fail, and the AA-based power sidesteps the dead-rechargeable problem that plagues so many late-90s portables. The stick remote is the part to check carefully on a used example — it's essential to the experience, and a player without it is a much less interesting thing. Beyond that, the usual MiniDisc caveats apply: the format's library is what you make of it, and the MZ-E35 plays what you feed it.
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