Sony Unveils Slick Walkman X Series. Enough to Challenge the iPod?

Today, Sony lifted the curtain on its latest portable media player: the Walkman X series. The music and video player features a 3-inch OLED touchscreen display, Wi-Fi connectivity, a wide 180-degree viewing angle, and integrated digital noise-canceling–but that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Sony has packed some rather interesting features under the hood of the X series including “Scene Scroll” (which lets uses select their preferred time increment in a video, and move forward and backward through scenes with a swipe of the finger in a very Cover Flow-like fashion), Slacker Radio (which buffers and caches up to three of your favorite stations), and YouTube.

Users can interact with the Walkman X series via the aforementioned touch interface, or dedicated buttons for those that prefer physical keys.  It supports protected WMV, H.264, and MPEG-4, and is rated for up to 33 hours of music playback and up to 9 hours of video playback. The Sony Walkman X ($284.81) players are available now for pre-order, and come in two capacities: 16GB ($299) and 32GB ($399), the same prices as similar-sized iPod touches.

Question: If you’re in the hunt for a new PMP, does the Walkman offer enough features (as nice they are)  to sway you away from an iPod?