Sony has confirmed the debut of its latest Flash-based E-series Walkman music players, announcing this morning that the multi-coloured line-up for 512MB, 1GB and 2GB devices will ship across Europe at the end of the month.

The manufacturer touted the devices' fast charge time: three hours' playback capacity after just three minutes connected to a power source, be it AC adaptor or a computer hooked up via the player's built in USB connector. Sony claimed the players can operate for 28 hours on a full charge, though that's for ATRAC 3-encoded songs - MP3s yield 27 hours' operation.

The 25g, 7.9cm-long gadget has a five-band equaliser, single-line OLED screen and, on the 1GB and 2GB models, an optional FM tuner. Consumers can choose from pink, violet, blue, silver, black and lime green versions, too, all of which come bundled with Sony's SonicStage 3.4 software.

Sony did not provide pricing details. ®

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