No, you can’t touch my FiiO: why this hi-res ‘MP3 player’ is still trouncing my old iPod Classic a year on

I'm not sure if I voiced it at the time (it's still raw; I don't talk about it much) but just over a year ago, my beloved iPod Classic and musical companion of 17 years finally bit the dust. Try as I might, I couldn't revive it.

What happened is that while I was listening using my Cambridge Audio Melomania P100 in wired mode, my iPod sort of ground to a halt – all the buttons stopped working; the screen went into a sort of slow, painful meltdown. I tried a full reset (a simultaneous press of the top menu key and the circular button in the center of the wheel, but you knew that) and nothing. Nothing will revive it, to this day… although I'm all ears for suggestions in the comments.

Yes, I have most of the CDs in storage. Thing is, we moved in November of last year and general life keeps getting in the way of me sorting mine out. But in the short-term, I needed an alternative player. What I got, after much deliberation, was the FiiO M23. And oh, is it a beast of a performer!

Don't get me wrong, I still almost cried upon readying a feature from my colleague Tom Bedford, a lucky so-and-so who actually found his old iPod in a shoe-box, but we live.

In fact, if I were to paraphrase Arnold Schwarzenegger in the Terminator franchise (still his best work aside from Conan and possibly The Running Man, and I will die on that hill), my header above might read: Buy the FiiO hi-res player if you want to live: iPod Classic will not be back…

It's actually pronounced 'Fee-oh'

I mispronounced the company's name for a while (thus making me look a bit silly at big hi-fi events) but in case you're not familiar, this likeable Chinese audio specialist makes some of the most gifted DACs, splendid affordable wired in-ears, portable CD players, outstanding just-add-speakers music hubs and even a gloriously cheap ode to the original cassette Walkman.

But this player is something else. You'll find it in our best MP3 players guide as 'best elite-priced player'. Yes, let me be abundantly clear: it is not cheap. It is absolutely an investment and one you'll not want to upgrade for many years, once you've got it fully loaded and set up to your liking. But to justify the cost just a little, it's not much more expensive than a set of Apple AirPods Max – and many elite IEMs cost a lot more. Just sayin'…

Here, you get the best FiiO can do with hi-res audio, either streamed from your preferred site (I use Apple Music, Qobuz and Tidal regularly) or downloaded – and FiiO's best is very very good indeed. Internal memory is 64GB, but a microSD slot on the bottom of the player will accept cards of up to 2TB. Obviously, the M23 will also access your favourite music streaming service(s) as well as loading up and keeping content on its local memory. Like all FiiO digital audio players, you're getting a tweaked and carved out version of Android as a working platform – Android 12 in this instance.

Digital-to-analog conversion is handled by a pair of AKM DAC chipsets, which allow the M23 to deal with digital audio files of almost every type (including MQA) up to a resolution of 24bit/384kHz and DSD256. So, it's good.

These are merely the headlines and hi-res music chops where the M23 is concerned. You can of course head to our full review to decide whether it's viable for you, but know this: FiiO has never been anything other than meticulously thorough where its digital audio players are concerned, and the M23 emphatically enjoys those same levels of engineering effort.

I've been using mine for a year now and I won't travel without it. Another favorite? The volume touch-pad on the side, but there's also a hold switch so you won't do it inadvertently.

I won't wax lyrical on the sound versus my old iPod – it wouldn't be fair. Those were different times. And as much as I'd still bite your arm off if you handed me back my working iPod Classic, this player runs rings around it sonically. Hooked up to my Campfire Audio Clara IEMs, there's simply no comparison. It's detailed, expansive, layered, agile, neutral and exciting.

I know, it's very expensive – really, I do. But music has saved me on many occasions in life, and continues to do so. If you're lucky enough to be able to consider this player, it will not disappoint you.