• We Are Rewind's WE-001 tape player gets a limited-edition The Dark Side of the Moon edition with a custom design
• Includes the first tape version of the album's 50th anniversary remastered edition in the box
• Available today for $199 / £159 (about U$310)

Every so often, I'll receive an email about products that a product launch that actually makes me say "Oh damn!" out loud. And seeing the first images of We Are Rewind's new version of its cassette player decked out in Pink Floyd livery was one of those occasions.

The limited-edition 'Pink Floyd X We Are Rewind' version of the WE-001 portable cassette player (which I first got my hands on in its regular edition back at CES 2025) is obviously super-tempting for its beautiful The Dark Side of the Moon imagery on the front (with a Pink Floyd logo on the back), but it also comes with a certificate and a tape version of Dark Side in the box.

The cassette is especially interesting, because it's the first time the 50th anniversary remaster of the album has ever been available on tape — and might well be the only time.

Pink Floyd's Nick Mason joked, "I still have my Nakamichi on the shelf and look forward to testing it with the new The Dark Side of the Moon cassette. Am I correct in assuming that the next major issue will be The Dark Side of the Moon in a large package consisting of the album divided up into 78 RPM discs?"

I already have a WE-001 sitting on my shelf at home, next to my amp, and yet I find myself extremely tempted to pick this new version up anyway.

The WE-001 player is modernized tape player, with a cool aluminum design, and Bluetooth 5.1 support as well as an audio jack for wired headphones. A release from We Are Rewind says there's a "unique headphone amplifier designed with cassette playback in mind" — and it sounds nice, I have to say, though if you're picking up vintage tapes the quality may vary depending more on the tape than what's inside the player.

Even more pleasing is that if you want to get back into mixtape culture (and I do! I've written about wishing streaming services offered more options around this in playlists), there's a line-in — so you can record to tape from another player.

But my desire for this version isn't really about anything the player can do or what it sounds like. I just want that thing on my shelf.

If you feel the same way, it's available to buy now (while it lasts) for $199 / £159 (about U$310). The non-Floyd version of the WE-001 costs $159 / £129 /AU$269.

If prog rock isn't your thing, you might also be drawn in by another We Are Rewind special edition with quite a different look: the jewel-encrusted Duran Duran version.

• Ruark unveils R710 Music Console and Talisman-R floorstanding speakers
• The R710 is Ruark's 'most powerful' console yet, with CD player and phono stage
• It costs £2,199 (about $3,000, AU$4,000); Talisman-R is £1,499 (around $2,000, AU$2,800)

Let me be clear: UK audio specialist Ruark is a master of compact hi-fi products — just see the five-star MR1 Mk3 petite powered desktop speakers for starters.

Although the duo of products that Ruark has just unveiled at High End Vienna may look heritage, they're chock full of thoroughly modern tech (and also some slightly older tech too) under their delightful exteriors. And yes, they absolutely can be purchased together to make a beautifully simple, space-conscious hi-fi system.

Those slim floorstanding speakers put me in mind of the electrostatic designs Quad made in collaboration with the BBC in the 1960s, but Ruark tells me they actually hark back to one of the company's own original flagship designs, first launched in 1990.

Both new products, says the company, have been designed "make high-end hi-fi accessible" and as a further celebration of Ruark's 40th year in trading (following two stunning 'radiogram' options at the start of the year), it's a gorgeous offering indeed.

Ruark R710 Music Console and Talisman-R floorstanders: key specs and pricing

The R710 is an update to the firm's Ruark R610 console (and Sabre-R bookshelf speakers) that I adored when I saw them in the flesh, back in 2024.

Alongside its built-in CD player, phono stage (so your vinyl-spinner can be added as a source) and onboard dual 200W Class-D amplifiers, high-resolution music file support and streaming is here, at up to 24-bit 384kHz, thanks to R710's quad-core CPU, with Spotify Connect, Qobuz Connect, Tidal Connect, Apple AirPlay, Google Cast, Internet Radio and apt-X HD Bluetooth all baked in.

For local music libraries, R710 also supports playback from both networked media servers and attached USB storage devices — and if you want to hear your film soundtracks through it, R710 adds an HDMI ARC/eARC connection for TV connectivity too. And while you get a gorgeous rotary Bluetooth remote with your purchase, to make playback control easier (it's not too dissimilar to something the aspirational amplification brand Moon might offer), a huge selling point for me is that large front-mounted color display for album artwork and text.

And those Talisman-R speakers? You're looking at a two-way, bass-reflex passive wired system, comprising a 27mm Ruark silk-dome tweeter and 6.5-inch long throw woofer with a lovely long, slim profile and sloped front baffle — although take note, they still weigh a reassuringly hefty 17.6kg each.

Ultimately, Ruark wants you to consider the R710 and Talisman-R speakers as a beautiful system — and I get it. Both products are available in Fused Walnut or Satin Charcoal lacquer, and the R710 is priced at £2,199 (so around $2,000 or AU$4,000, as rough guesstimates) with Talisman-R at £1,499 (which is $2,000 or AU$2,800, or thereabouts).

• YBA unveils Design One, a new SACD player
• Claims it's the first "transportable" such model ever made
• It's not exactly an easily-portable model though

Despite the format dividing audiophiles, Super Audio CDs are apparently making a comeback, and the clear bellwether sign of a retro resurgence is when hi-fi brands start making tech to play retired formats. Well, that's happening with SACDs, sure enough.

French hi-fi brand YBA has just unveiled its Design One, which is apparently the world's first-ever "transportable" SACD player, running on its built-in batteries, and the company claims you can bring it to cafes and offices to use.

Banish from your mind the kind of retro-inspired compact model or feature-packed portable player that we've been covering quite frequently over the last few months — those are pocketable, but this one is not so much.

It weighs 1.34kg, measures 18.8 x 16.6 x 4cm, and has quite an angular body with sharp corners and easy-to-accidentally-press buttons. I don't see myself slipping this in my backpack when I'm off to do some work at the cafe, but then I feel less strongly about SACD compared to some in the TechRadar office.

Perhaps that's why it's billed as a "transportable" model rather than a 'portable' one; an elephant is technically transportable if you have enough tranquilizer and a crane, but you wouldn't call one portable. But beyond the eyebrow-raising description, it seems like it has a few specs that'll impress certain audiophiles.

A feature-packed SACD player

The Design One has quite a few outputs for a portable model: you can output through 3.5mm or 4.4mm for headphones, RCA, SPDIF coax and USB-C (though it doesn't support SACD on the latter).

It has an AKM DAC, frequency response of 20Hz-40kHz, output impedance of 0.4 ohms (that's with 3.5mm; it's 0.8 ohms for 4.4mm) and a signal-to-noise ratio at 125 decibels.

The unit will, apparently, last for up to 5.5 hours on a single charge, and can be plugged in via USB-C to power (via a separate port than the USB-C audio out, so you can do both at the same time). There's a 2.79-inch screen, and beautifully retro mechanical switches which can be customized in use.

Given the shape and size of Design One, it's hard to view it as being a portable CD player akin to many of the other new models being released. But it does still clearly to have value as a smaller-sized player of SACDs, and regular old CDs. It could fit quite nicely into a desktop set-up, or in a compact hi-fi setup, to save you buying a bigger option...

...if you can stomach the price. It's set to cost $1,699 (about £1,250, AU$2,500) when it goes on sale later in May. So it's certainly not a budget model.

• Shanling releases new, retro EC Play portable CD player
• Lightweight, but with many connection options
• Sells in May for $199 / £209 (about AU$420)

CD players have remained in vogue despite the rise (and fall?) of streaming, but now retro audio tech is making a comeback (including cassette players, somehow), so too are '90s-inspired CD players.

Chinese hi-fi company Shanling has just announced the EC Play, a new and understated disk machine coming in silver, black or green.

It's set to sell from May, for $199 / £209 (about AU$420), less than the firm's higher-end portable players like the ECZero AKM which goes for $319 (about £244 / AU$490).

As you'd hope for a portable CD player, it's a little thing. It measures 14.2 x 12.5 x 2.6 cm — little more than a CD itself — and weighs 418g. That makes it lighter than the average regulation FIFA soccer ball, which are allowed to be between 410g and 450g. [Editor's note: I have no idea why we are now measuring our CD players in soccer balls, but I have decided to allow it.]

It has a clean shell, rather like the FiiO DM13, without the see-through section or design flair we often see from this kind of tech.

Yet a glance at the above picture shows various buttons, displays and ports. The thing may be lightweight, but it hides plenty of features.

A CD player with plenty of tricks

The Shanling EC Play doesn't just work with your standard 3.5mm headphones, but also has a 4.4mm port, and a Coax output too.

If you like retro but you've not gone all the way to the wired-only life, it also handles Bluetooth playback. It supports AAC, LDAC and SBC codecs, and is on the Bluetooth 6.0 standard.

The Cirrus Logic DAC supposedly is designed for a "natural and fun sound", and there's a built-in dual headphone amp that can cater for IEMs and headphones that need a bit more oomph, as well as your standard wired bud.

You can also plug the player into a PC, laptop or phone via USB, and it'll act as a DAC for PCM 32-bit/384kHz and DSD256 playback.

The EC Play's battery life is, according to Shanling, 12 hours. Naturally this'll vary based on how you listen to your music, but it's above average for this kind of gadget.

According to Shanling, the EC Play is designed not for top-end audio specs and unique features, but "to recreate the days of old", which is apparently "when portable CD players were convenient and a common part of daily life".

I'm not holding my breath to see this kind of tech commonly used on public transport, but Shanling's right in one way. Its EC Play seems convenient to use on the go or at home, with that versatility likely to win over some buyers.

I didn’t realise how much I missed owning an iPod until I held something that felt exactly like one.

The Innioasis Y1 music player is pretty much as close to a carbon-copy iPod Classic as you can imagine — and when another member of the team recently dug their original out of an old shoe box, the whole team got jealous.

Here, in this dupe that launched in December 2025, you’re getting the click wheel navigation (right down to the optional clicky sound), a similar interface and comparable size and weight. I’m honestly a bit surprised Apple’s lawyers haven’t noticed.

In almost every meaningful way, this is a clone of the iPod Classic device Apple killed off over a decade ago — although it's true that the last surviving iPod Touch was only consigned to oblivion in 2022 (and some people are still trading those avidly, online).

The joy of Innioasis' tiny gadget isn’t only the muscle memory and nostalgia (even if that’s definitely a big part of its charm), though; it’s that it helps promote a different relationship with your music. It’s not promising the higher quality audio that other players charge thousands for, it’s more about being an affordable, fun and convenient way to listen to music offline and without distractions.

It looks exactly like an iPod – and that's the point

If you not-so-secretly yearn to have an iPod again, grabbing the Y1 is probably a better idea than attempting to sift through the world of refurbished iPods. With those, you’d still be buying old hardware, plus refurbished iPods are still pricey, and you may not get the convenience of Bluetooth or USB-C connectivity, depending on how they’ve been modified.

The Y1 is cheap – $60/£50/AU$89 for 64GB of storage, or a tenner more for 128GB – it connects via USB-C and is as easy-to-use as it gets. You just connect it to your laptop, it shows up as a storage drive, and you then drag-and-drop your files onto it. Like many of us, I’ve got an old iTunes library gathering dust, so it was easy enough to pull that over.

You’ll obviously need to own your own tracks or go through the process of digitising your CD collection, but once you have, it can happily live on the Y1. There’s a 3.5mm audio jack here and some wired earbuds in the box (of dubious quality), but I’ve been using it mostly with a few of my favourite IEMs like the Meze Audio Alba, Moondrop Chu 2, and Sennheiser IE200. Wireless headphones work with it via Bluetooth, too, and I’ve had no trouble using my Beyerdynamic Amiron 300s and Sennheiser Momentum True Wireless 4s with this.

Leave your phone behind

The key benefit, though, is that the Y1 isn’t your smartphone. This isn’t necessarily marketed like some of the other top MP3 players aimed at hardware collectors and audiophiles. Those promise you perks such as Wi-Fi streaming, Apple's AirPlay, Tidal/Qobuz Connect, hi-res audio performance, and balanced 4.4mm or 2.5mm outputs.

There’s none of that here. This little device is about keeping things a lot simpler; there’s a lightweight interface that any iPod fan will instinctively know how to use, simple wired headphone or Bluetooth connections, support for a wide range of audio formats, and no Android OS or streaming apps in sight.

For me, it’s been ideal for listening while I’m reading. I’m a bit notorious for getting distracted by my phone mid-chapter, even when I’m hooked on a book, so I’ve taken to putting on background music like Max Richter’s Sleep or a film soundtrack while making my way through the Red Rising series.

I’ve also found the Y1 handy for music while I cook or do chores around the house, as those are other times when I’d rather my phone didn’t interrupt the flow. It’s great if you’d like to get stuck into an album without pausing it halfway through to doomscroll.In short, it’s absolutely perfect for those times when you want to put your phone in another room and go fully distraction-free. No messages, no alerts, no reminders, and none of the other irritants from your phone. And, unlike some other music players, there are no ads, forced software updates or clunky controls to reckon with, too.

The Y1 is ideal for kids

For all those reasons, this is a great pick if you’re after a child-friendly music player too. If you’re raising a music lover, this is a better option than so much of what else is out there, as a focused, single-purpose device for music, audiobooks or videos you might watch on a tiny screen.

It has a solid 35-hour battery life that seems pretty accurate in my three weeks of use, and it recharges quickly in around 90 minutes. It also weighs less than 65 grams, which makes it an even lighter product than the iPod nano!

Parents can hand this to kids with confidence that they won’t be able to make any random in-app purchases, that there’s no inappropriate content, that the volume doesn’t get too loud, and that it’s simple enough for them to learn how to use

The downsides aren’t total dealbreakers

It isn’t faultless, though. At this low price, you’d be surprised if it were. If you’re getting the Innioasis Y1 for yourself, you should know it’s not an ideal experience for music discovery or for staying on top of your podcast queue, since it has no app support. You’ll have to leave Spotify or Apple Music for another device.

There’s also no microSD slot, so you’re stuck with the storage you pick, and I have occasionally found it frustrating to dial in the volume. It tends to land on either a little too loud or too quiet. The Bluetooth is old-school Bluetooth 4, too, so you shouldn’t expect high-res codecs, plus it oddly doesn’t support audio over USB-C. And, lastly, it does just feel a little cheap and plastic if you compare it to an aluminium iPod, with its menus and interface being a bit unrefined and buggy.

None of this is actually disastrous, to be clear, especially given the bargain price. The Innioasis Y1 does the job that it’s designed for, and it does it well.

Ultimately, if you’re keen on the retro iPod experience but aren’t interested in spending loads on a modded one, this is the answer. It can hold thousands of songs in your pocket, has great battery life, the convenience of Bluetooth, and all the nostalgic iPod vibes I’d been missing. For $60/£50, I wouldn’t ask for much more, and I’ll genuinely continue using this little player for all those times I’d rather leave my phone in another room.

• The Repod is a 'mech suit' for your old Apple Watch
• Ultra version is titanium, with a scroll wheel, but no headphone jack
• Designed to replace your smartphone

It's safe to say that the tech world maintains a healthy obsession with the 'classic' model of iPod, created back before gadgets were a smorgasbord of subscription services and addictive social apps — I personally dusted mine off and wrote about it last year, and someone made a cheap dupe of it recently, complete with Clickwheel-style controls. Another newly-unveiled piece of tech brings the iPod into the modern day, with quite a few twists.

A company simply called WGP has begun selling on Kickstarter (via Notebookcheck) a device called the RePod Ultra. The incredibly-low initial funding goal of HK$10,000 (roughly $1,200 / £940 / AU$1,820) was surpassed almost immediately, so the device is officially funded. It's due to ship in April, though never count your Kickstarter chickens before they hatch.

The RePod Ultra is essentially a 'mech suit' for an Apple Watch Ultra body. You house the wearable in a titanium frame, turning it into a pseudo-iPod, complete with a big scrolling wheel and its own side crown. It costs $159 (around £130, AU$260) and comes in silver, black or 'natural' colors, which are described as "bold" but… well, that's now how I would describe the hues.

Not the proud owner of a dust-gathering Ultra smartwatch? The Kickstarter also offers the RePod C1, designed for Apple Watches since Series 3, or Apple Watch SE models. This costs $99 (roughly £80, AU$160) and doesn't seem to be made of metal, but plastic or silicone (the listing doesn't say). So you have options if you own others of the best Apple Watches.

iPod, therefore iAm

According to WGP's posting, the RePod turns your Apple Watch into an iPod-looking ersatz phone. It can play games, do contactless payments, navigate with Apple Maps, set alarms and reminders, check your messages and, of course, stream music. Via Bluetooth, of course; this isn't a headphone jack-toting iPod.

In a way, that makes a lot of sense. The RePod offers a half-step digital detox, for people who find their phone too addicting but still want most of its features. However WGP's listing makes a few eyebrow-raising claims.

The product hinges on your owning an Apple Watch that you don't currently use. That's quite possible with the older and cheaper models, but still – I don't know about you, but if I owned the $799 Apple Watch Ultra, it probably would be on my wrist at every moment, so it could justify that eye-watering price tag. And if I had a new one, I'm not sure I'd have just left the old one gathering dust.

I'm curious to see how well the scroll wheel can be used to manipulate Watch OS, beyond moving through the main menu. WGP promises it can help with "volume adjustment, game interaction, option selection" as well, however it also says "no tapping" – old iPod owners will remember that the swipe wheel doubled as a D-pad, and I can't tell whether the RePod Ultra does the same.

The RePod was designed to add an extra lease of life to Apple Watches you no longer use, and I'm interested to see whether it'd encourage people to start using their wearable regularly again as a kind of super-advanced iPod nano, or if it'd inspire a brief resurgence in interest and then become a paperweight.

I'd certainly say I'm skeptical of the claim on the Kickstarter that "Held in your hand, Apple Watch Ultra becomes easier to manage" – the Apple Watch definitely works well as something designed for the wrist – but if it's good, this could be a great anti-e-waste device: don't throw out an old gadget you no longer wear, turn it into something else.

And it could be especially handy if your Apple Watch is no longer usable as a watch, but still works for other functions; if the heart rate scanner is busted, or the strap connector no longer holds the strap, you could use the RePod to ensure it's still handy.

This isn't the first such gadget to offer the same conversion. The TinyPod came out about a year prior, and it does just about the same thing; it turns your Apple Watch into an iPod, with the main difference being that it's a thin plastic device instead of a large titanium one. That comes in three sizes, for different models of watch, and has a Lite alternative that misses the scroll wheel.

FiiO M27: Two-minute review

If there’s a stone FiiO has left unturned in the way it’s specified and built the M27 digital audio player, it’s invisible.

This is a portable(ish) music player for which the word ‘uncompromised’ is almost an understatement. Specification is thorough to the point of exhaustion. Twin ESS Sabre DACS with 32bit/768kHz and DSD512 compatibility, aptX Lossless and LDAC for Bluetooth, balanced and unbalanced analogue outputs, a super-slick Android 13 operating experience, a whole host of modes that allow the M27 to work as a USB DAC, a digital transport, a desktop system host and more besides… the list goes on.

So if you want a player (a big and heavy player, let’s be honest) with enough power to drive even the trickiest of headphones, with battery life that’s approaching ‘epic’, and that arrives with its own little desktop charging stand with integrated cooling fan, you’ve come to the right place.

All of this would count for very little, though, if the FiiO M27 didn’t have it where it really counts. Happily, this is a great-sounding machine – or, at least, it is if you treat it respectfully. Hi-res stuff enjoys amazing detail resolution, expansive soundstaging, sky-high dynamic response and the sort of singularity of presentation that makes every listen an event. Lower-resolution stuff, though, is basically exposed to ridicule. So don’t imagine the M27 is about to flatter your choices if your choices are incorrect…

Among the best MP3 players on the market then? Oh, without a doubt.

FiiO M27 review: Price and release date

• Released November 2025
• Priced $1,799 / £1,499 / AU$2,699

The FiiO M27 launched in the middle of November 2025, and in the United Kingdom it’s priced at £1,499. In the United States it sells for $1,799, while in Australia you’re looking at AU$2,699.

And just because it’s possible to pay plenty more than this for a premium digital audio player, that doesn’t mean the M27 hangs out anywhere near the ‘affordable’ category…

FiiO M27 review: Features

• Twin ESS Sabre ES9039S PRO DAC chipsets
• Bluetooth 5.4 with aptX Lossless, Bluetooth LE Audio and Auracast support
• 9200mAh battery

FiiO never knowingly underspecifies its products – so when it’s going all-out to create a class-leading, market-defining digital audio player, it follows that the feature-count here is significant.

For the M27, FiiO has leaned heavily on Qualcomm’s expertise. The machine features the company’s QCS6490 chipset with Snapdragon 770G architecture. Along with eight (count ‘em!) Kryo 670 cores and an Adrena 642L GPU, this arrangement promises lightning-fast response times, effortless multitasking and a solid foundation for streaming and playback no matter the size or type of the digital audio file the player is dealing with.

Qualcomm’s QCC5181 chipset makes an appearance too. It facilitates Bluetooth 5.4 wireless connectivity when the M27 is acting as a receiver, and allows for aptX Lossless and LDAC codec compatibility as well as Auracast and Bluetooth LE Audio. The FiiO will also function as a Bluetooth transmitter – in this direction it’s running Bluetooth 5.2 with support for aptX Adaptive and LDAC.

There’s more. Qualcomm’s Dragonwing AI platform, allows the M27 to offer a 31-band PEQ at resolutions up to 32bit/384kHz (among other things), global ‘All to DSD’ functionality for bitrates from DSD64 to DSD256, and fully controllable end-to-end audio processing.

The crucial business of digital-to-analogue conversion is taken care of by a couple of ESS Sabre ES9039 PRO chipsets that are good to go with resolutions of up to 32bit/768kHz PCM and DSD512. They’re supported by sixth (and latest) generation of FiiO’s ‘Digital Audio Purification System’, which deploys a new FPGA and dual RIVER femtosecond crystal oscillators in a drive for vanishingly low jitter and optimal timing accuracy.

The M27 features a replaceable 9200mAh battery, which is a) good news where product longevity is concerned, and b) a massive amount of power. It translates to eight hours of playback via a balanced output or a touch over nine from an unbalanced alternative – and it also allows for power outputs big enough to drive even the most truculent headphones. And on the subject of big power outputs, if you connect the M27 to mains power via a fast charger and select ‘Ultra High Gain’ mode, a giddy 10,000mW of power is available.

Naturally the list goes on (and on). The M27 features a six-stage fully differential audio circuit – it doubles up on the high-quality components like signal relays, volume control chips and TI op-amps in order to independently process each channel of audio information, and then drives them via discrete power supplies. It has a high-current, low-loss, MOSFET-managed power path with big energy storage capacitors; it has copper heatsinks; it has a graphite vapour chamber and graphene thermal conduction pads integrated into the chassis to enable effective cooling.

And it has more besides. But for the sake of brevity, it’s probably enough to know that FiiO has left nothing – by which I mean nothing – to chance where the specification of the M27 is concerned.

Features score: 5 / 5

FiiO M27 review: Sound quality

• Remarkably complete and articulate rendition of hi-res audio files
• Deeply impressive powers of resolution and organisation
• Almost comically intolerant of lower resolution stuff

I’m guessing that anyone who’s thinking of dropping this sort of money on a digital audio player is well served for properly high-resolution digital audio content. I certainly hope so – because while the way the M27 handles hi-res stuff is thoroughly enjoyable and deeply impressive, it’s got next-to-no time for stuff that dips below the magic 16bit/44.1kHz point.

So while a 24bit/192kHz file of David Bowie’s Low (which has somehow just had its 50th birthday) is delivered in the most eloquent, revealing and utterly engaging manner, the same content streamed as a 320kbps file via Spotify sounds almost as if the M27 is taking it personally.

Big files are lavishly detailed, arranged on a large and convincingly defined soundstage, and are laid out with considerable ‘left/right’ distance available and quite a lot of ‘front/back’ too. The spaces between elements of the recording are carefully observed, and even if the music involves few participants on this very big stage there’s a tangible sense of ‘togetherness’ about the way the FiiO presents it. The unity of its delivery makes for a confident and believable overall performance.

It’s possible to fiddle with the sonic characteristics of the M27 quite extensively, of course - but leave well enough alone and the player has a neutral, uncoloured tonality that makes for a naturalistic presentation. The attention to detail it exhibits means texture and timbre of instruments and of voices are made apparent, and the low-level dynamic variations or harmonic under- and overtones are made apparent every time.

Frequency response, too, is convincing – from the deep, hard-hitting and endless varied bottom end to the bright, attacking top, the FiiO gives every area fair weighting and representation. And in the midrange, it communicates in the most direct and unequivocal manner – if there’s even a transient, minor detail concerning tone, technique, attitude or character in a voice, you can be sure the M27 is handing it over.

Those low frequencies are beautifully shaped and their attack and decay is observed in the hawk-like manner. As a result, rhythmic expression is almost casually correct and momentum levels are always appropriate to the material. Add in apparently limitless dynamic headroom and the full account of big shifts in volume or intensity that results, and the M27 goes quite a distance towards the accolade of ‘best pound-for-pound digital audio player on the market’ it craves.

Lower the tone, though, and cue up some lower-resolution content and the FiiO can’t really disguise its disdain. It’s a bit like watching Lewis Hamilton drive a bog-standard hatchback around a racing track: he’ll wring the maximum out of it, but at the same time he’s got one hand on the wheel, he’s checking his look in the rear-view mirror… it’s too easy.

Give the M27 a stream from Spotify’s free tier and it quite ruthlessly exposes the compression and its knock-on effects where dynamics, detail levels, harmonic accuracy and all the rest of it are concerned. You might be thinking 'Well, it would, no?' but honestly some players try to make the best of this sort of content. The FiiO M27 is simply not one of those players.

Sound quality score: 4.5 / 5

FiiO M27 review: Design

• Titanium or aluminium alloy chassis
• 157 x 85 x 28mm (HxWxD)
• 6in 1080p touchscreen

Until you see and hold it, the fact the M27 measures 157 x 85 x 28mm (HxWxD) and weighs somewhere between 550g and 630g (depending on your choice of chassis material – aluminium alloy or titanium are available) might seem a little abstract.

And then you see it and hold it, and you realise the FiiO is not ‘portable’ in the way lots of less expensive digital audio players are ‘portable’. This is a hefty unit, and the shirt pocket that’s strong enough to accommodate it has yet to be invented. Think of it in terms of ‘small desktop device’ rather than ‘pocket-friendly go-anywhere player’ and you won’t be far wrong.

Mind you, FiiO has gone to considerable lengths to make sure the look and feel also says ‘premium’ as much as it says ‘chunky’. The industrial design is interesting – angular and pointy but not threateningly so – and the choice of metals for the chassis (titanium or aluminium alloy) is a nice touch too. The front of the M27 is basically all Gorilla Glass-covered 6in 1080p touchscreen display, and the rear panel is a marble-effect slice of glass fibre. FiiO supplies a snug-fitting real leather case to help keep your M27 in tip-top condition. No mention is made of a vegetarian option.

Build quality is unarguable – the FiiO feels solid and made to last. The asking price insists on a certain standard of finish, of course, and it’s a standard the M27 comfortably surpasses.

Design score: 5 / 5

FiiO M27 review: Usability and setup

• Android 13 OS
• Six functionality modes
• Fan-assisted charging stand

Accessing the full and exhaustive list of functions and options available to the M27 user can be done via the touchscreen. The FiiO is running an almost complete version of Android 13 as on operating system, and it’s just as swift and responsive to use as the prodigious processing power promises.

There are also a selection of physical controls, though, along with a comprehensive suite of inputs and outputs. On the upper edge of the chassis there’s a big turn/press dial dealing with power on/off and volume control. There are three analogue outputs/headphone sockets up here, too: 3.5mm and 6.3mm balanced connections with a 4.4mm balanced alternative inbetween. On the bottom there’s space for a full-size Toslink digital optical output, a coaxial on an RCA socket (it can function as either an in- or an output), two microSD card slots (each of which can accept cards of up to 2TB capacity), a ’hold’ switch to disable all physical and touch-controls, a switch to turn ‘desktop mode’ on or off, and three USB-C slots. One is for either charging the battery, or powering the M27 from the mains. One is for charging and also for data transfer. The third, which is designated ‘USB HOST’, allows connection to an external DAC if you wish to use your player as a digital transport.

‘Desktop mode’, by the way, bypasses the battery entirely when the M27 is connected to mains power, which obviously has benefits for the life of the battery. The other functionality modes are ‘Android’ (which allows access to third-party streaming apps), ‘Pure Music’ (only the FiiO Music app is available), ‘USB DAC’ (so the player can act as a soundcard for external devices), ‘AirPlay’ (no explanation necessary) ,‘Bluetooth Receiving’ (which turns the M27 into a Bluetooth amplifier), and ‘Coaxial Decoding’ (which allows digital information incoming via the coaxial socket to access the FiiO’s D-to-A circuitry). Something for everyone, I think we can agree.

On the left side of the player you’ll find a few physical control buttons: skip forwards, skip backwards, play/pause and a user-definable ‘multifunction’ control. On the right there’s a fairly large patch behind which the FiiO stores its wireless antennae. And on both sides there’s an area for some completely gratuitous lighting effects.

The M27 is supplied with a neat desktop charging stand with its own line-up of USB-C connections as well as an integrated fan to keep the M27 cool. The protective leather case features a stainless steel hollow-cut panel on its rear, backed by a gel pack, in a further effort to make sure the player runs cool.

Usability and setup score: 5 / 5

FiiO M27 review: Value

Fundamentally, the M27 doesn’t do anything that a less affordable digital audio player (not least from the FiiO catalogue) can’t do. But that’s slightly besides the point: the M27 is not only a fine-sounding player with a stack of wider functionality where desktop and full-system use are concerned, but it’s a quite luxurious accessory in the manner of some nice jewellery or a handmade pair of shoes.

If you’re a hard-nosed, clear-eyed consumer than you’ll struggle to make a case for the M27 – but if you value the intangibles as much as, well, the tangibles, there’s an awful lot to like (and to covet, quite frankly) about this FiiO machine.

Value score: 5 / 5

Should I buy the FiiO M27?

Buy it if... 

Don't buy it if... 

FiiO M27 review: Also consider

How I tested the FiiO M27

I downloaded Qobuz and Tidal streaming service apps from the Google Play store, and slotted a 512GB SanDisk microSD card (filled with hi-res audio content) into one of the two microSD card slots.

I connected the player to wired and wireless headphones of appropriate quality (the Sennheiser IE900 on a 4.4mm balanced connection proved particularly sympathetic), and I also used it as a desktop DAC. And then I listened to lots of different types of music, stored in many different formats and at a variety of resolutions.

• First reviewed in January 2026

• Read TechRadar's reviews guarantee

• The JM21 player gets a bigger battery and more memory
• Same processor and dual DACs as before
• Expect to pay around $250

The Fiio JM21 is one of the best portable music players you can buy, especially if you're on a budget. And now Fiio has updated it for 2026. The JM21 2026 will launch in late January 2026 with a predicted price tag of around $250.

As before, the JM21 2026 comes with dual Cirrus Logic SC43198 DACs. But this time there's a bigger battery and more storage.

FiiO JM21 2026: key features

The JM21 2026 is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 680, the same chip you'll often find in mid-range Android phones. As before, it's running Android 13 in a customized form. There's 4GB of RAM, 64GB of built-in storage – and, most importantly, support for microSD cards up to 2TB in size.

There's a good range of formats supported here including Hi-Res Audio at up to 32-bit/384kHz, DSD512, and then you've got LDAC, LDHC and aptX HD for high-quality wireless connections.

The battery in the 2026 model is 3,100mAh, up from the 2,400mAh of the previous version, and it delivers up to 700mW of output power for your headphones. There's a switchable three-way gain setting to cater for a wide variety of the best wired headphones and best wired earbuds.

Unless something's gone horribly wrong at the Fiio factory, you can expect a DAC/amp that punches way above its price tag: as we said in our JM21 review last year "it’s a composed, lively and admirably detailed listen... It hits hard at the bottom end, but with no lack of control: its straight-edged attack means rhythmic expression is confident and convincing."

Unless you turn it up to hearing-threatening volumes, it's a very impressive little device with an equally impressive little price tag.

The Fiio JM21 2026 will be available from 23 January 2026.

• Bluetooth and wired audio player with retro looks
• Unfortunately it's a concept, not a real product
• I'd buy one in a heartbeat

We don't often cover concepts on TechRadar, but I'm happy to make an exception for this brilliant little Bluetooth speaker design: Jinkyo Han has created something that mixes Teenage Engineering's design cues with a bit of Dictaphone and OG Sony Walkman to create something stunning. I absolutely love it, and this is my way of willing a company into making it real.

It may be retro on the outside but Han's design is perfectly modern on the inside, with both wired and wireless audio and a hi-res DAC. It looks like a great combination of old-school design and contemporary circuitry.

You spin me right round

As Han explains on Behance: "Reminiscent of a retro cassette tape, the design recreates the image of a tape spinning on a circular shelf as music plays, translating the materiality of the past into a contemporary object." The front of the device features a perforated speaker grille and a spinning circle that looks like an old reel-to-reel tape recorder.

I think it's strongly reminiscent of the FiiO KA15 portable DAC, which I happen to be testing at the moment. That pretends to be a cassette player – and it's part of a retro-modern trend that's also seen FiiO bring back the portable CD player and the portable cassette player in some style.

I think Han's design is even more fun, and while I very much doubt the moving parts would be duplicated in any production model because of the cost, the hit on battery life and the potential noise and pocket lint collection, I'd love to see more hardware with this same kind of design: it really reminds me of 1970s sci-fi movies such as Silent Running, and of shows such as Space: 1999.

This isn't the only fun audio design in Han's portfolio: there are also some cool-looking wall-mounted speakers that wouldn't look out of place in IKEA's recent speaker catalog and a more industrial-looking Bluetooth speaker based on the portable cassette recorders of the 1970s and 1980s – you might want to check out Han's portfolio.

• The AI-driven memory shortage doesn't just affect PCs
• More capacity is coming, but not before 2027
• Low-margin budget products are likely to be hit hardest

What do the best DACs, the best Hi-Res Audio players, the best TVs, and the best soundbars all have in common? They're all facing component shortages and price hikes – not because of tariffs, but because of the AI-driven shortage of memory and storage chips. And the pain's going to be particularly pronounced at the more affordable end of the market, where profit margins are already razor-thin.

As you're no doubt aware, the AI industry is buying a lot of memory for its data centers: as Reuters reported back in October, just one AI firm, OpenAI, intends to order 900,000 semiconductor wafers in 2029. That's around 40% of the world's entire production. And there's plenty more demand in the industry.

As The Wall Street Journal reported this week, "The rapid build-out of infrastructure for artificial intelligence is consuming a large portion of available supply of NAND flash memory, DRAM memory and hard drives. That has resulted in a shortage of memory for other markets such as PCs and smartphones."

Audiovisual devices aren't the same as PCs, and don't typically need as much memory as smartphones. But they still need some memory in order to do what they do. Everything from smart speakers to smart TVs to in-car entertainment systems use RAM alongside their processors, and some of them use NAND storage too, because they're all just small computers at heart; both of these components' prices are rocketing.

We've already seen Samsung warn that its TVs' prices may rise due to comopnents shortages, while there are warnings about smartphone makers scaling back their specs for this year's mobile phones, cutting their memory to cut the cost of manufacturing.

And according to NPR, memory prices are expected to rise even more this year. As Avril Wu of the consultancy Trendforce told NPR, "I keep telling everybody that if you want a device, you buy it now."

How AI could affect AV

AI data centers don't use the same memory chips as a DAC or a Hi-Res Audio player: they use High Bandwidth Memory (HBM), not the DDR RAM you'd find in a PC or PlayStation. But those differing chips are made from the same kind of semiconductor wafers, and those wafers are in ever-increasing demand because HBM uses roughly three times more of those wafers than DDR5 RAM does.

They're also much more profitable to sell, and as a result many firms are shifting focus from consumer memory chips to data center ones – so for example Micron, one of the big three memory makers alongside SK Hynix and Samsung Electronics, has shut down its long-standing consumer memory business, Crucial, "to improve supply and support for our larger, strategic customers in faster-growing segments". In other words, AI.

As some manufacturers shift focus, new capacity for other kinds of memory isn't coming on board fast enough to cover the demand. So for example in October SK Hynix announced that it "has already secured full customer demand for its entire DRAM and NAND production for next year", and that it'll need to expand its production to cope with the market demands – but even the equipment to make the chips are set to rise in price.

In the shorter term, that means higher memory prices. Much higher prices. CNBC reports that RAM prices are expected to rise "more than 50% this quarter compared to the last quarter of 2025." And the Bloomsbury Intelligence and Security Institute says that "DRAM prices have also surged 171% year-over-year, outpacing gold, while DDR5 spot prices have quadrupled since September 2025. DRAM and NAND prices doubled in a single month".

While capacity is being added to existing production plants and new plants are being built, that capacity isn't expected to come online until 2027.

That's likely to have two key impacts on the AV hardware market. The first is that we'll see price increases down the line, especially at the budget end of the market where manufacturers can't simply swallow the increased cost: there's a lot less margin on a $300 smart TV than a $3,000 one.

The second is that manufacturers may go back to the drawing board as some smartphone firms have done, limiting their next products' specifications to compensate for shortages and price hikes. It may also persuade some firms to postpone their product plans altogether until market conditions are more favorable.

We've been here before, of course: I remember the completely fruitless search for in-stock AV receivers after chip production had shut down during COVID lockdowns. At least this time we know the component crunch is coming, and can make purchasing plans accordingly.

Our picks of the best AV gear across different categories

• It's an iPod Classic, except it isn't
• USB-C, 3.5mm jack, Bluetooth, wide format support
• Under $60 / £50

What's got two thumbs and misses the days of iPods? The answer is me – so I'm delighted to see what some people might describe as an iPod Classic homage, and others as a lawsuit waiting to happen. The Innioasis Y1 is an MP3 player that doesn't so much take inspiration from the iPod Classic as copy it completely.

The Y1 is available in five colors: graphite grey, yellow, orange, silver and teal/turquoise, and as you can see it looks very like Apple's original. In the UK it's listed at Amazon for between £44.49 and £49.49 depending on the color you choose. In the US, it's $54.49 at Amazon for all five versions. In Australia, it's $109.48 at Amazon.

Innoasis Y1 mp3 player: key features

I'm not familiar with this particular brand, but looking at its other listings, the product line-up is a mix of digital audio devices and screen protectors.

The included battery delivers a promised 25-30 hours of playback with wired headphones at 50% volume, and there's an unspecified version of Bluetooth for the best wireless headphones or connective to the best Bluetooth speakers.

Audio support is good, with all the key formats and quite a few uncommon ones supported, and you can also play video in MP4, MKV, MOV and other formats including 3GP/3G2. Resolution is up to 720p and battery life is a reported four hours of video at 50% brightness.

One of the biggest things to note here is the promise that the wheel on front really does work like the iPod's clickwheel – click parts to choose options, and spin around to scroll.

The major downside seems to be that it has 128GB of storage and no option to expand, though maybe that won't be a problem for everyone. For this reason, and others, we're not expecting this to challenge the best hi-res music players.

Let's be frank: we're not expecting that you'll get an audiophile device for under £50/$60, and the reviews on Amazon suggest the build quality isn't exactly up to Apple standards either: multiple reviewers describe faults, software issues and difficulties connecting to Macs.

We also couldn't help but notice that the album art at the top is not the cover for any of Taylor Swift's album, and also that the song You Belong With Me is not from an album called 'Love Story'. So that raises some questions beyond why they chose a dog as the listening model.

But as a cheap music player, the Y1 has an undeniable charm. However, if you want a new iPod-reminiscent music player from a company with a good review history, take a look at Fiio's new iPod-nano-like budget music player.

Fiio has become our favorite budget audiophile brand, thanks to products like the Fiio FT13 headphones, the Fiio BTR17 DAC/amp, and the Fiio JM21 music player.

It's the last one that's most relevant here, because Fiio's sub-brand Snowsky has just unveiled a new super-cheap hi-res music player that looks like a cross between an iPod nano 6th gen and a MiniDisc player, and costs just $80 / £80.

It's called the Snowsky Disc, appropriately enough, and while Snowsky's info calls it a "CD inspired" design – and I can see it – it's the resemblance to other bygone music players that got TechRadar's audio team talking. My colleague Becky Scarrott immediately recalled her much-beloved Sony Network Walkman MP3 player, which came in almost the same shade of pink.

Despite its small size and price, there's great tech in here. It promises around 12 hours of battery life, and you control it using the touchscreen on the front.

There's a dual-DAC architecture (Fiio hasn't mentioned what the DAC is yet, but we've asked for more info), Wi-Fi including Apple AirPlay support, a 3.5mm port with SPDIF, a 4.4mm balanced output, USB-C audio output, LDAC higher-res Bluetooth, and – perhaps most importantly – a microSD card slot for storage enabling you to take up to 2TB of music files anywhere with you.

That'll be especially easy because it's so small – Fiio hasn't said exactly how small yet (again, I've chased for information). Still, I've done some very scientific comparisons of the USB-C port's size in the images, and the Snowsky Disc appears to be basically the same width as my iPhone 16 Pro, and a little thicker.

That will make it around 72mm or 2.8 inches wide and tall – between the iPod nano 6th gen I mentioned above and an iPod mini. In fact, that's basically the size of a MiniDisc.

I love the look of this, and if it sounds good, it could easily become the new budget pick in our guide to the best MP3 players.

Fiio has shown three colors so far – black, turquoise, and pink – and it goes on sale in January. That's a bit of a shame – it would have made the perfect last-minute Christmas gift if it were out now, though you could always look to Snowsky's cassette-inspired Echo Mini MP3 player instead if you want something like this.

• Leaked images show a super-compact Snowsky digital audio player
• Fiio says yes, it supports microSD storage
• Specs and pricing are still secret but expect it to be very affordable

Snowsky, which is the more casual sub-brand of budget audiophile break-out star Fiio, appears to be planning the launch of a new and extremely compact audio player that's closer to an iPod nano or even an iPod Shuffle than many of today's best Hi-Res Audio players.

A new leak on Weibo (via Notebookcheck.net) shows a device labelled with the Snowsky logo and the words Echo Nano, and it appears to be a smaller version of the current Echo Mini. That latter device is styled to look like an old-school audio cassette but the new Nano looks more like a vape.

The player shown in the leaked image is small and kind of cuboid, with what appears to be a monochrome display on the side and a 3.5mm headphone jack and control wheel on top. It looks very 2000s, in a great way. The physical does remind me more of the Fiio's stuff than Snowsky's such as the Fiio BTR17 DAC/amp, or the Fiio JM21 music player.

FiiO Snowsky Echo Nano: what we don't know

Another image (above) posted to Reddit gives a better if blurry idea of what the player looks like, but as yet we don't know what's inside that rather nice-looking case.

We don't know pricing or availability yet, but given that the Echo Mini retails for $49 in the US and £49 in the UK I'd expect this new model to be very low priced: it's a much simpler product.

Specs are still a secret, although a Fiio representative appears to have confirmed that the new device will support microSD cards.

I've got high hopes for this, because FiiO is very good at delivering high quality audio from very modestly priced hardware: recent product launches include the aptly named Snowsky Tiny, an extremely small hi-res DAC designed for smartphones.

And the aforementioned Echo Mini has been attracting very positive reviews for its warm and involving sound. If Snowsky can deliver decent battery life and hi-res audio for a low price, it could well have a hit on its hands.

We've found an excellent Black Friday deal on one of our favorite Hi-Res Audio players, the FiiO M23: right now, you can get the Fiio M23 for $649 at Amazon, down from the usual $699.

• Shop Amazon's full Black Friday sale

This isn't the most dramatic of the many Black Friday deals we've seen. But it's unusual, because this Fiio player was already such good value (by audiophile standards) that it wasn't being discounted very much or very often – so to get a solid fifty bucks off the usual selling price is very nice indeed. We like the M23 a lot, and at this price we like it even more.

(Not in the US? There's a UK alternative below too – and you can see today's best Fiio M23 prices in your region below)

Today's best FiiO M23 Black Friday deal in the US

Today's best UK Black Friday deal on a Hi-Res Audio player

We really like Fiio's devices: they deliver very high specifications and performance without also charging sky-high prices, and while $649 is still a lot of money it's considerably less than many similarly specced rivals.

In our FiiO M23 review we were almost moved to poetry: it's "delicate yet muscular, assertive yet subtle, lavishly detailed and vaultingly dynamic," we said. It's a large, lavishly specified and beautifully made digital audio player that can power wired headphones, stream to wireless ones, upgrade your computer's audio or be the DAC in a desktop audio system. It's a player of many talents.

In our review, we described its sound quality: "It can punch hard if your music demands it, but never in an uncontrolled manner, and it can give the emotion and attitude in an unaccompanied voice absolutely explicit expression.... it’s the real deal." The only real negative is the lack of on-board storage – at just 64GB that's pretty skimpy – but there's a microSD slot that'll take cards up to 2TB, which is much better.

Shop more of today's best Black Friday sales

• Amazon: 45% off TVs, AirPods, air fryers & vacuums
• Apple: iPads, AirPods & MacBooks from $119
• Best Buy: $1,000 off TVs, laptops & headphones
• Dell: laptop deals from $249.99
• Home Depot: 40% off appliances, furniture, grills & tools
• Lenovo: 45% off laptops & tablets
• Lowe's: up to 30% off appliances, holiday decor & tools
• Samsung: up to $2,000 off appliances, TVs & phones
• Target: 40% off Christmas decor, clothing & furniture
• T-Mobile: up to $1,100 off latest iPhone 17
• Walmart: furniture, cheap TVs & vacs from $69
• Wayfair: 54% off Christmas, furniture & decor

Want to get into hi-res audio this Black Friday? I'm so glad. That means you'll also be thinking about the triumphant return of local storage, rather than paying through the nose for cloud storage every month.

Why? Because the gloriously detailed FLAC and DSD audio files you're about to download as well as the tracks you'll be streaming (I'd always recommend a combination of both, budding audiophile!) do require a bit of room, and said storage space isn't that easy to come by on a device that's also housing your WhatsApp backups, photos, voice notes and Instagram videos (read: your phone).

The good news is that all of these issues can be solved with a great little hi-res audio player – and right now, my two absolute favourites are hugely discounted for Black Friday. If pushed, I'd nudge you towards the excellent Astell & Kern A&norma SR35, now just £599 (was £799) and with a free case at AV.com, or the superb Activo P1 player, which is now just £249 (was £399) at Amazon.

In the US, I've got fewer deals – but what I have got is excellent! The superb FiiO M23 is now only $649 (was $699) at Amazon.

• Shop Amazon's full Black Friday sale

Not after hi-res players? Our Black Friday deals hub can guide you towards whatever piece of tech your heart desires, or there's my roundup of the best Sennheiser headphones and earbuds deals, my collection of the best Bose Black Friday headphones deals, my guide to the only 5 Black Friday headphones and earbuds deals you need or our dedicated Black Friday headphones deals live blog, if that's what you're after.

Not in the US or UK? Scroll down for the best prices wherever you are

Amazon Black Friday audio deals – quick links

• Amazon Sony headphones deals
• Amazon Bose noise-cancelling headphones deals
• Amazon Black Friday Bose Bluetooth speaker deals
• Amazon Black Friday JBL Bluetooth speaker deals
• Amazon devices Black Friday deals

Today's best hi-res audio player Black Friday deals in the UK

Today's best FiiO M23 Black Friday deal, only in the US

My best MP3 players guide is the place to go for my other recommendations in the world of hi-res portable options (and my best DACs guide is the place for if you just want to level up the bit between your device and the best wired headphones or best wired earbuds), but again, these really are the best deals I've seen to date, if it's a player you seek.

Want to get into the nitty-gritty of wire-free higher-quality audio? Our aptX unpacked explainer is the place to click – or our more general guide to hi-res audio and how to get it.

So which should you buy? OK, I'll say it: there comes a crossroads in any audiophile's journey when the simple and reasonable question is posed: "Come on, which of these would you get if money were no object?" and my answer is "the most expensive of this roundup that you can afford".

I'm sorry, but there it is, in this instance. While my enduring love for my humble-res iPod Classic is strong, I'm afraid this isn't a win for the more frugally-minded – except of course that there are discounts live now, and this is Black Friday.

If, like me, you can't drop £999 on the heavily discounted Kann Ultra, I'd go for the A&norma SR35. And if a reduced fee of £599 is also unthinkable, the Activo options are there – and while they're not as good as the pricier options, they're still a huge step up on the audio quality you'll get from your phone on the commute. And that's worth a lot.

Happy shopping, and do always remember to enjoy the music!

More Black Friday deals in the US

• Amazon: 45% off TVs, AirPods, air fryers & vacuums
• Apple: iPads, AirPods & MacBooks from $119
• Best Buy: $1,000 off TVs, laptops & headphones
• Dell: laptop deals from $249.99
• Home Depot: 40% off appliances, furniture, grills & tools
• Lenovo: 45% off laptops & tablets
• Lowe's: up to 30% off appliances, holiday decor & tools
• Samsung: up to $2,000 off appliances, TVs & phones
• Target: 40% off Christmas decor, clothing & furniture
• T-Mobile: up to $1,100 off latest iPhone 17
• Walmart: furniture, cheap TVs & vacs from $69
• Wayfair: 54% off Christmas, furniture & decor

More Black Friday deals UK

• Amazon: up to 66% off tech & essentials
• AO: up to £500 off Dyson, Bosch & Hisense
• Argos: up to 50% off appliances, tech & toys
• Boots: save on 1,000s of beauty products
• Currys: deals on Ninja, Shark & Lenovo
• Dell: laptops from £279
• Dyson: up to £550 off vacuums
• EE: Switch 2 bundles from £20/month
• John Lewis: up to 50% off tech & fashion
• Lego: sets & accessories from £2.99
• Samsung: deals on appliances & phones
• Very: up to 40% off tech, toys & fashion

• A CD player with aptX Adaptive and a Hi-Res Audio DAC
• A cheaper version of one that had a tube amp(!) built in too
• $319 (about £244 / AU$490)

We've been impressed by Shanling's portable CD players – the Shanling EC Zero T was one of our favorite products at the High End Munich 2025 audio show – so we're very interested in the firm's new ECZero AKM, which does much more than just play CDs.

The ECZero AKM is a very talented little device. As Darko Audio reports, what Shanling has basically done here is taken the tube amplification out of the T model that we liked, and has gone for an all-digital design instead, with an AKM AK4493S DAC and SGM 8262 op-amps.

That's cut the cost dramatically, although it does mean losing the "meaty" sound of the tube-based model that we liked so much – but tube amps are always a bit of a risk on a portable device anyway, so maybe this is the smart move ultimately.

With multiple outputs and USB-C input, the ECZero AKM can rip your CDs in real time to USB storage, transmit music to your wireless speakers and headphones over Bluetooth, deliver balanced and unbalanced outputs for your wired headphones, act as a CD transport for your hi-fi, and double as a DAC for other digital devices.

Shanling EXZero AKM: key details and pricing

The headphone jack outputs 525mW into 32 ohms and the balanced output can go up to 836mW per channel if the Shanling is connected to wired power – more than enough to drive even fairly demanding headphones. On battery mode, you can expect about 10 hours of playback depending on how hard you drive your headphones.

There's a 3.5mm line out, a 4.4mm balanced line out, a combined coaxial/optical SP/DIF and twin USB-C, and there's Bluetooth 5.3 with aptX and aptX Adaptive. These don't quite provide totally lossless CD-quality sound wirelessly (you'd need aptX Lossless for that), but they're close enough that you'll feel like you're making the most of your discs if you have a pair of the best wireless headphones that support them.

There's no LDAC, however – it's aptX only here. And it's notable that the Bluetooth only transmits: you can't use it to receive audio from your phone to listen on the best wired headphones connected to the Shanling.

However, if you connect the USB-C input to your computer or other devices, it can support Hi-Res Audio at up to 32-bit/768kHz PCM and DSD256, so that's a lovely bonus to have.

Controls are minimal and there's a small 1.68-inch color LCD to let you know basic details such as track information, volume and where you are in the track. There are three selectable gain levels and a 100-step digital volume slider.

The ECZero AKM is much cheaper than the EC Zero T, which had a launch price of $589; this new model is a much more affordable $319 (about £244 / AU$490). You can find out more on the Shanling website here.

This year is the 20th anniversary of the iPod Shuffle's launch, and the eighth anniversary of its discontinuation. The iPhone especially made it seem pretty redundant, and I hadn't really thought about it in years – but talking to people in the tech world recently about a few trends not only put it back in my mind, it actually got me excited for what a new version of it could be.

First up: dedicated music players are having a real moment. The stalwarts of Sony and Astell & Kern, among the best MP3 players, have been joined by Chinese brands such as Fiio, HiBy, and Shanling to shake things up, bringing audiophile specs for affordable prices.

Second, and somewhat related: a lot of people are looking to disconnect from their phones. Phone addiction is very real, especially when people are desperate for social media to feed them positive news that never seems to be forthcoming – the best way to avoid doomscrolling is to have nothing to scroll. But that doesn't mean you want to give up your music – indeed, some dedicated listening might be exactly the mental health aid you're looking for.

Earlier this year, I went on holiday and locked my phone in the hotel safe all day, every day, and it was bliss. I checked it a few times per day for important messages and locked it back up.

I still listened to music while chilling out, but I'd synced some playlists to my Apple Watch, and I just listened on my AirPods playing from the watch.

I also leave my phone in my locker at the gym, and I very much seem to be in the minority on that, but I think it does wonders for both my mental state there and the intensity of my workout. There are people who love to leave the phone at home when they go out on a run, of course.

And that system is basically my concept for a new iPhone Shuffle. It could be a little screenless device with similar connectivity to the Apple Watch, and just like the watch, it could sync certain playlists to its internal storage automatically, or you could hop into a menu that enables you to choose music to sync to it.

AirPods will connect to it automatically when you start playing music, using the same Apple ID auto-switch system they already have for seamlessly moving between your phone and watch.

In particular, the heart-rate and exercise tracking features of AirPods Pro 3 would be a great pairing with it – have your little iPod Shuffle in your pocket or clipped on, with your AirPods feeding it exercise data, and you've got good beginner fitness tracking without the need for a phone or smartwatch.

I think this device should have a wired headphones connection too, naturally. 3.5mm would be best, of course, but I could maybe compromise with Apple on a USB-C port. Physical controls are a must if it has a wired connection too.

It would also be a fun design exercise to see today's Apple take on a modern mobile music player. The iPod used to be a real playground for different shapes, finishes, and colors, and this could be too.

As much as anything, I think it'd be a success because people would love to see the iPod name come back – we're in the world of sequels and revivals from that era taking over popular culture, so why not one more?

People want music to be exciting again

The world of portable music enthusiasts has been given a real jolt of energy by the introduction of new device options, and broad availability of Hi-Res Audio streaming (now including Spotify Lossless at long last!).

A growing number of people are swapping listening on their phone to listening on a dedicated player with the best wired earbuds or headphones because this gives music a boost over listening on their phone with budget Bluetooth earbuds.

My thesis as to why the vinyl revival has lasted so long, and a big part of why dedicated music players are seeing such interest, is that streaming services made music somehow boring. Or, at least, they made it not as exciting anymore. After all, when you have everything on tap at all times, that's naturally going to make any individual part of it feel less special, won't it?

People want music to be special, though. And they're looking for ways to make it exciting again, whether that's hunting in record stores for rare vinyl, or listening to albums in audiophile quality for the first time using a dedicated player built for that purpose.

The new iPod Shuffle is unlikely to fulfil the audiophile side of this (the transfer and storage of lossless files is probably more trouble than it's worth for a device like this, though I'd love to see it), but Apple could have all kinds of fun with music discovery and syncing on it.

Yes, you should be able to sync over whatever playlists you like manually, but maybe it could also offer you 'surprise' playlists, like letting it effectively sync your Apple Music Discover station offline so you can listen to a load of new music with no distractions – but you won't know exactly what it's syncing. You'll have to listen and find out. I'd even love a feature that deactivates the ability to skip tracks, just to really force you to listen in the moment.

And I think I'd enjoy a feature like having playlists for different exercises curated by the Apple Fitness+ trainers – again, with the actual tracklist kept hidden, so you just start working out and see what you get, like an actual class.

This could even be a great use for Apple Intelligence, if you could ask it to make a playlist based on certain moods or characteristics, synced straight to the Shuffle – and again, the fun would be not knowing what you're going to get.

I doubt the return of the iPhone Shuffle is actually in the cards, but it just struck me that Apple already has all the key tech in place for a modern version of it, and I happened to speak to a few people in quick succession, talking about how fondly they remember using both the iPod Shuffle and Nano.

Now I can't get the idea out of my head, especially with this idea of it actually removing some of the control from you – I'm terrible for skipping through tracks on my playlists and stations. Maybe I could do with something to slow me down and leave me untethered from my phone even more often.

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Astell & Kern A&ultima SP4000: Two-minute review

The Astell & Kern A&ultima SP4000 is the brand’s newest flagship digital audio player, and it is priced accordingly. If you measure the worth of a product by how relatively heavy and remarkably shiny it is, though, you won’t be able to argue with the $3,999 asking price.

The SP4000 goes a distance towards justifying its cost in the way it’s specified to perform, too. Numerous technological highlights abound, none of them in any way ‘affordable’, and between the sheer heft of the physical item and the lengthy list of technologies Astell & Kern has brought to bear, the SP4000 seems about as purposeful as these things ever get.

And in action, it is an uncomplicated pleasure to listen to, fully befitting a place in the best MP3 players around. In every meaningful way, the SP4000 is an extremely accomplished device, able to combine brute muscularity with deft insight, rhythmic positivity with outright scale. No matter what you choose to listen to, the Astell & Kern seems to enjoy it just as much as you do – and it’s not about to sit in judgement on your choice of headphones either.

Astell & Kern A&ultima SP4000 review: Price and release date

• Priced at $3,999 / £3,799 / AU$6,599

The Astell & Kern A&ultima SP4000 is on sale now, and in the United States it sells for $3,999. In the United Kingdom the asking price is £3,799, and in Australia you’ll have to part with AU$6,599.

Not cheap, is it? Anyone who takes an interest in this sort of thing will know Astell & Kern has no problem in pitching its products as uber-high-end propositions, but no matter how many times I see one of its products priced this way, it remains difficult not to do a double-take…

Astell & Kern A&ultima SP4000 review: Features

• 4 x AKM4191 and 4 x AKM4499EX DACs in 1:1 architecture
• 4 x opamps per analogue output
• Snapdragon 6125 octa-core processor

Something would seem amiss, wouldn’t it, if a digital audio player costing very nearly four thousand of your US dollars wasn’t groaning under the weight of its specification? Well, when you consider the extensive nature of the SP4000, it’s a wonder it’s not even bigger and even heavier than it actually is.

It follows that I should try to be reasonably brief, otherwise we’ll be here all day.

At its most fundamental, the SP4000 is built around ‘octa’ audio architecture. The digital-to-analogue signal processing is in a 1:1 structure, with one AKM4191 digital processor paired with one AKM4499EX DAC. This allows digital signals to be delivered to a single DAC, four times over – this is a true quad-DAC design, with the aim of allowing precise signal transfer with a vanishingly low signal-to-noise ratio. The ability to deal with PCM resolutions of up to 32bit/768kHz and DSD512 means any realistic digital audio file is catered for.

There are eight opamps deployed, four attending to the unbalanced 3.5mm analogue output and four dealing with the 4.4mm balanced equivalent. The intention is to increase dynamic range and enhance detail retrieval – Astell & Kern calls this arrangement ‘high driving mode’ and suggests it provides powerful and stable signal output.

A newly developed LDO (‘low drop-out’) regulator in the power supply stabilizes battery voltage in an effort to suppress noise. Proprietary ESA (‘enhanced signal alignment’) technology is designed to improve the alignment of frequency signals (sometimes opaquely referred to as ‘timing’) to minimize distortion and enhance clarity. The PCB is a high-end ‘Any Layer HDI’ design that allows for extremely complex circuitry to be laid out in a very small space, minimizing signal loss.

What else? The audio block sits behind a 99.9% pure copper shielding can, offering significant shielding from electromagnetic interference. The audio block itself is Astell & Kern’s ‘Teraton X’ design, which incorporates HEXA-Audio circuitry along with power-efficient amplification and considerable power noise cancellation, to deliver what the company suggests is the ‘ultimate sound solution’.

The entire show is run by a Snapdragon 6125 Octa-core processor that features a high-performance CPU and 8GB of DDR4. CPU, memory and wireless comms circuitry are configured as a single module, and with the digital circuit components arranged in the same area it’s effectively a system on a chip.

I could go on. There are six digital filters available to allow the user to, in a small way, design their own sound. The ‘crossfeed’ feature allows a little of the left-channel mix into the right channel (and vice versa) and, in conjunction with some adjustment options, tries to replicate the effect of listening to speakers when listening to headphones. The second generation of Astell & Kern’s DAR (‘digital audio remaster’) technology, dubbed ‘Advanced DAR’, uses a ‘virtual sound extender’ as part of a two-stage upsampling process that can convert PCM signals of up to 48kHz to 385kHz or to DSD128, and signals of greater than 96kHz to DSD256, for playback.

Surely, though, the broad point is made by now. Astell & Kern didn’t leave space for the kitchen sink, but it has thrown pretty much everything else at the A&ultima SP4000.

Features score: 5 / 5

Astell & Kern A&ultima SP4000 review: Sound quality

• Epic levels of insight and detail
• Rhythmic and dynamic positivity
• Sounds simultaneously open and unified

Yes, you can fiddle around the edges of the way the A&ultima SP4000 sounds – investigate filters, fool around with EQs, you name it – but what you can’t do is alter its overarching sonic character. Which is just as well, because this Astell & Kern digital audio player is a staggeringly direct, informative and, ultimately, complete listen. Few are the sources of audio information, of any type and at any price, that can match its powers of communication – and I have heard plenty.

No matter if you’re listening to a 16bit/44.1kHz FLAC file of Ride’s Leave Them All Behind, a 24bit/48kHz FLAC file of James Holden’s Common Land or a DSD64 file of The Band’s I Shall Be Released: it’s all the same to the SP4000. In every circumstance it’s a profoundly detailed, rhythmically positive, articulate and energetic listen. There really isn’t an aspect of music-making at which it doesn’t prove itself masterful.

And it’s not as if I can offer a “yes, but…” or two in the name of balance. The longer I listen to the SP4000, the more beguiled I become.

Tonal balance? It’s basically impeccable. Frequency response? Smooth and even from way down at the low frequencies to the vertiginous top end. The Astell & Kern sounds naturalistic and unforced, and it’s completely even-handed in the way it presents the frequency range. And at every point, it’s absolutely alive with detail both broad and fine. The minutiae of tone, timbre and texture are made absolutely apparent, and the player loads all of this information onto the listener without being in any way showy or uptight about it. This fanatical attention to detail is simply a way of ensuring you get as complete a rendition of your digital audio files as possible.

The presentation is spacious and well-defined at the same time, and no matter if it’s a large ensemble all packing the stage or just one voice with a single guitar as accompaniment, the SP4000 lays it all out in confident and coherent fashion.

It deals with rhythm and tempo with similar authority, keeping momentum levels high and observing the attack and decay of bass sounds (in particular) with obvious care. It can ease back if necessary, though - nothing gets hurried along, but rather is allowed to proceed at its own chosen speed. Dynamic headroom is, to all intents and purposes, limitless. From the smallest, quietest event in a recording to the last almighty crescendo, the SP4000 is on top of things - the distance between these two states is prodigious. And the smaller, but no less crucial, dynamics of harmonic variation, the attention to the over- and undertones that surround the fundamental when listening to a solo instrument, are given very judicious weighting. Context is everything, and the SP4000 seems to almost instinctively understand it.

And the Astell & Kern even has the decency not to be sniffy either about the music you listen to or the headphones via which you access it. Obviously it does better work (or, rather, its potential is best exploited) by hi-res files and high-end headphones - but if you want to connect your bog-standard true wireless in-ear via Bluetooth and listen to Spotify’s free tier the SP4000 won’t judge you. Not too badly, anyway.

Sound quality score: 5 / 5

Astell & Kern A&ultima SP4000 review: Design

• Polished 904L stainless steel and PVD-coated ceramic
• 150 x 85 x 20mm
• 615g

Ordinarily, a digital audio player is designed to be reasonably compact, and light enough to be slipped into a pocket. Of course, Astell & Kern sets out for its digital audio players to be anything but ordinary.

So the SP4000 is a fairly large (150 x 85 x 20mm) device that weighs a considerable 615g. Too big and heavy, in other words, to be comfortably carried in any pocket smaller and less robust than that of a military greatcoat. This is its naked weight, too. If you add one of the included screen protectors (which is, admittedly, going to make negligible difference to the weight) and slip the player into its supplied Perlinger leather* protective case, it becomes heavier still. At least that case prevents the player’s sharp, pointy corners from digging into hands or pocket linings, mind you.

(*I’m not a vegetarian. I know people who are, though, and some of them are just as interested in high-quality audio as I am. So once again I find myself wondering why companies like Astell & Kern imagine real leather – in this instance, leather made from "the soft, delicate hide of calves under one year old" – to be the untouchable height of luxury. Surely it’s possible to offer a protective case for the SP4000 that looks and feels upmarket but that isn’t going to alienate who knows how many prospective customers? Or is that just me?)

The four sides of the SP4000 are built of 904L stainless steel (the same stuff the likes of Rolex uses, on the basis that it will accept an extremely high polish), and feature some of the angularity and asymmetry that Astell & Kern established as part of its design vocabulary a good while ago. The front is of toughened glass, 152mm on the diagonal, and is almost entirely touchscreen. The rear panel, meanwhile, is finished in PVD-coated ceramic.

It really goes without saying that the standard of build and finish on display here is flawless. With the design of the SP4000, Astell & Kern has set out to deliver a product that blurs the line between ‘electrical hardware’ and ‘luxury accessory’. Or, as the company’s website rather feverishly has it, "a work of art where technology, design, intuition and performance converge". You may feel that Astell & Kern has done exactly what it set out to do, you may find the design rather self-consciously opulent. Taste is a very personal thing, after all.

It’s worth noting the grandeur of SP4000 ownership starts well before you peel the protective covering off the player itself. It arrives in a branded box that’s a similar size to that which contained a pair of size 10 Tricker’s boots I bought the other day. Inside there is another, branded, clasp-fastening box covered in what I strongly suspect is a further quantity of leather.

Inside that you’ll find the SP4000, along with compartments that contain that Perlinger leather cover, a case with a flap covering into which the player (in its cover) can be slipped (more leather, I presume), various guides and warranty documents, a congratulatory note from the company, and a reasonably heavyweight, branded USB-C to USB-C cable. I am pretty sure this all comes under the heading of ‘the experience’.

Design score: 4 / 5

Astell & Kern A&ultima SP4000 review: Usability and setup

• 2160 x 1080 touchscreen
• Supports Full Android OS
• Qualcomm QC3.0 fast charging

The SP4000 represents the first time an Astell & Kern product has supported full Android OS. The convenience and all-around common sense of the operating system is intended to help the SP4000 be as flexible and convenient as possible, while some of the Snapdragon 6125 octa-core processor’s responsibilities center around rapidity of the OS response and the smooth, comfortable user interface motion.

Happily, it all works very well. The big 2K (2160 x 1080) touchscreen is responsive and swift, smooth-scrolling and consistent. The operating system will be mercifully familiar to anyone whose smartphone isn’t an iOS device, and it’s just as wide-ranging and usable here as it is in its most successful smartphone applications.

Setting up the SP4000 is no kind of hardship. It’s simply a question of connecting it to your local network (its dual-band Wi-Fi is tenacious when it comes to making and maintaining a connection to your router or tethering to your smartphone if you’re out and about), and from there it’s simple to load the apps you require. The ‘AK File Drop’ function makes transferring files from a PC, smartphone or FTP program on a common network faster and easier than before, too.

The Astell & Kern also supports Qualcomm QC 3.0 fast charging, which means it can be charged more rapidly (and more efficiently) than previous flagship A&ultima models. Mind you, ‘fast’ and ‘rapid’ are definitely relative terms in this instance. From ‘flat’ to ‘full’ takes around five hours, which is about half the time it takes for the SP4000 to flatten its battery if you’re listening to ordinary files at ordinary volume levels.

There are a few physical controls arranged around the edges of the SP4000. As you look at its touchscreen, there’s an elaborate volume control/power on/off on the top-right edge – it’s pleasantly shaped and knurled, and a light behind it glows in one of a variety of different colors to indicate the resolution of the audio file it’s currently playing.

On the opposite side there are three buttons that deal with skip backwards/rewind (accessible via ‘press’ or ‘press and hold’ respectively), skip forwards/fast-forward (same) and play/pause. There’s a ‘button lock’ switch on the top edge, to the right of the 3.5mm hybrid optical/unbalanced analogue and 4.4mm balanced analogue outputs, and on the bottom edge you’ll find a USB-C socket and a microSD card slot, which will accept cards of up to 1.5TB.

Usability and setup score: 4.5 / 5

Astell & Kern A&ultima SP4000 review: Value

First things first: you don’t contemplate ownership of the Astell & Kern A&ultima SP4000 because you’re in any way concerned about value for money. Is it the best-sounding DAP out there? Sure. Is it twice as good as alternatives from the likes of FiiO or Astell & Kern itself that cost comfortably less than $2k? Not a chance.

No, the value in the SP4000 comes from its status as the shiny flagship of the Astell & Kern range. It comes from the knowledge that no one you bump into when in the First Class Lounge has a more expensive DAP than you. It comes from the ability to add ‘DAP’ to the list of ‘madly luxurious accessories I own’.

Should I buy the Astell & Kern A&ultima SP4000?

Buy it if... 

Don't buy it if... 

Astell & Kern A&ultima SP4000 review: Also consider

How I tested the Astell & Kern A&ultima SP4000

• Tested for over a week
• Tested with streamed and downloaded content
• Tested with wired and wireless headphones

I slotted a microSD card filled with hi-res content (up to 24bit/192kHz and DSD64, anyway) into the SP4000, and I downloaded the Tidal and Presto music streaming apps while I was at it.

I used Sennheiser IE900 IEMs connected via the 4.4mm balanced output, Austrian Audio The Composer over-ears via the 3.5mm unbalanced alternative, and tried out the Technics EAH-AZ100 true wireless in-ears and Bowers & Wilkins Px8 wireless over-ears too.

I listened to lots of different types of music, via lots of different file types and sizes – and I did so indoors and (with some trepidation, I don’t mind telling you) outdoors too.

• First reviewed in September 2025

• Read TechRadar's reviews guarantee

• The FiiO M27 launches worldwide in Fall 2025, with pricing TBC
• Huge battery for portable playback and high power output at home
• aptX Lossless, Auracast and Bluetooth LE Audio

FiiO has announced a new flagship portable player, the FiiO M27. It's a high-powered, high-performance hi-res audio player with a very impressive specification.

The M27 is powered by a Qualcomm QCS6490 chipset, which uses the Snapdragon 770G architecture and features eight Kryo 670 cores, an Adreno 642L GPU and supports both LPDDR5 RAM and UFS 3.1 storage.

It has 8GB of RAM and twin microSD slots, each of which supports up to 2TB of storage. On-board storage is 256GB, and the OS is Android 13.

The player is one of the first portables to use the Qualcomm QCC5181 chipset, which enables it to support aptX Lossless as well as Bluetooth LE Audio and Auracast. FiiO says that "Audiophiles can now enjoy reference-grade sound quality not only through wired connections but also wirelessly with a fidelity previously unimaginable in Bluetooth playback."

Update: FiiO has also clarified to TechRadar that device also makes use of Qualcomm's Dragonwing AI chip platform, which enables the following features:

• Global PEQ 24-band 384kHz 32-bit  
• Global 'All to DSD' function for different bit rates: DSD64, DSD128, DSD256  
• Global upsampling processing
• Global MQA 16x full decoding
• Global end-to-end controllable audio processing
• Auto EQ

FiiO M27: key features and specifications

Design-wise, the M27 looks similar to previous flagships such as the FiiO M23, but it's the first FiiO portable to use a titanium alloy chassis. The rear is made from "glass fiber".

The M27 is a dual-DAC design with twin ESS ES9039SPRO DACs and up to 5,000mW + 5,000mW of output power in Ultra Gain mode. There are 6.35mm, 4.4mm and 3.5mm headphone outputs, along with line-level and digital connections. And for going out and about, the M27 has a huge 9,200mAh battery.

The M27 also has FiiO's DAPS, which is short for Digital Audio Purification System and which integrates a high-capacity FPGA and dual RIVER femtosecond crystal oscillators that are claimed to reduce jitter and ensure timing accuracy.

Pricing hasn't been announced yet but the FiiO M27 will launch globally within the next few months, to challenge high-end players from the likes of Astell & Kern in our list of the best hi-res music players. We'll find out if the performance matches the elaborate spec list soon in our full review, as soon as we can get our hands on one.

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• Maxell is launching a Walkman-style cassette player with a built-in speaker
• The speaker is mono and 500mW
• Not everything from the 80s should come back

In Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus Mary Shelley wrote a cautionary tale about science: just because a scientist can make something doesn't mean they should. I'm pretty sure she was thinking about the Maxell MXCP-P100S, which is frankly more terrifying than anything Dr Frankenstein ever darned.

The MXCP-P100S is a new version of the cute, Walkman-esque MXCP-P100 that we told you about last month, but it's got a terrifying addition.

A speaker.

This portable player is just asking for trouble

The player itself is perfectly fine: it has Bluetooth 5.4 and a long-lasting battery delivering up to nine hours of playback, it works with Type-1 Normal tapes of up to 90 minutes, and it's got a brass flywheel that Maxell says stablizes the sound. You can use it with wired or wireless headphones, and you should, because a tape player with a speaker like this one is an abomination.

The only good thing I can say about the speaker is that it's just 500mW and unlikely to be hugely efficient, so it can't go too loud when some clown decides to treat you to their cassette collection on the subway or on the bus.

But that's also one of the worst things about it.

I don't want to get too technical here, but when you push a 500mW mono speaker to its limits – which said clown will absolutely do when they're in the seat behind you – it sounds freaking awful.

I know this because that's the size of the speaker that was in the mono cassette recorder/players that I used to record songs from the radio back in the 1980s. And while I've got plenty of nostalgia for that decade there are some things – such as leg warmers, the Satanic Panic and the ever-present threat of global thermonuclear war – that we don't need back.

And tinny little speakers in tape decks are one of those things. Trust me, you don't want one of those anywhere near you when you're stuck on public transport.

The MXCP-P100S will launch in Japan in August, and is expected to cost around $100. I'd be fine if it stayed it Japan, personally – though its non-speaker sibling, the MXCP-P100, looks more my speed.

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• Maxell MXCP-P100 is a portable Bluetooth cassette player with up to 9 hours battery life
• No recording or noise reduction circuitry
• Not currently (officially) available outside Japan

Maxell's new cassette player has given me a massive nostalgia rush – and if you were around in the '80s you'll know exactly why. Maxell created one of the most iconic TV ads of all time – embedded below – in which the sound from its tapes was so powerful it was like sitting in a wind tunnel.

This Bluetooth player doesn't go quite so loud, but every inch of the outside screams "eighties!" - and of course, the inside is considerably more modern.

Maxell MXCP-P100 tape player: specs, price and availability

As you can see from the images, it's a compact cassette player with the usual control buttons on top and a headphone out and volume on the side.

There are two additional bits you won't find on an '80s tape player, though: a Bluetooth button and a USB-C charging port. This player uses a rechargeable battery rather than old-school AAs, and it can stream wirelessly to your Bluetooth headphones. The Bluetooth version is 5.4.

Battery life is a claimed nine hours with wired headphones and seven without.

There's no recording here, and no Dolby noise reduction either; the battery is built-in so you'll need to take a cable if you're taking the player travelling. And sadly there's one more caveat: it's not available officially outside of Japan, although there are tons on eBay.

The prices are variable, to say the least: I'm looking at listings ranging from $202 / £147 to $398 / £300.

That makes it quite a bit more expensive than the We Are Rewind equivalent player that also has Bluetooth, but you might be more like to want to buy the Maxell because it's so much smaller – the We Are Rewind player is a chunky, heavy beast.

And the Fiio CP13 is also way cheaper and closer to being the right size, but that doesn't have Bluetooth, so again the Maxell might be the better option if you want to actually use it out and about.

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• Quad-DAC configuration and two-stage amplification
• Desktop mode for optimized output for hi-fi systems

The arrival of a new affordable audio player from FiiO is guaranteed to get our attention: when we reviewed the JM21 portable music player we were blown away by its sound and its value for money. And now there's a new player that's more powerful without being much more expensive.

Where the JM21 is a dual-DAC device, the new FiiO M21 is a quad-DAC player. And double the DACs doesn't mean double the price: where the JM21 launched at $199 / £179, the M21 is $329 / £279.

FiiO M21 portable audio player: key specifications and features

The M21 is a sleek-looking thing with a big 4.7-inch IPS touchscreen on the front, a glass back, and an octa-core Snapdragon 680 inside it. The device runs Android 13 and comes with 4GB of RAM, 64GB of internal storage with 52GB of that available for use, and you can add up to 2TB via microSD. Bluetooth is 5.0 (SBC, AAC, aptX, aptX HD, LDAC and LHDC).

The DACs are four Cirrus Logic CS4319s arranged to minimize crosstalk and noise. The two-stage amplification provides voltage first and current second, which Fiio says creates a clean and dynamic sonic profile.

A key new feature is M21, a first for Fiio's entry-level Androids. It enables you to connect to a USB-C supply and bypass the battery, delivering up to 21Vpp peak voltage and 950mW per channel into 32 ohms. Desktop mode also enables you to use the M21 as a hi-res streamer for a wider hi-fi system.

Battery life in portable mode is 15 hours over the 3.5mm output and 11.5 hours with the balanced 4.4mm output. And there's an optional retro case that looks like a cassette tape – it's the larger metal-colored box the M21 is sitting on in the main photo at the top.

There's no doubt that this is going to sound fantastic – and I suspect it'll probably cope better with higher volumes than the JM21, which gets a bit shouty when you crank things up too high. And at £279 / $329 the M21 still undercuts many rival hi-res audio devices – not least Fiio's own M23, another player we love.

Between that and the fake-cassette cas,e I think FiiO's come up with a winning formula here. The player is available now.

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• The HiBy R3Pro II is certified for wired and wireless Hi-Res Audio
• The music player has double DACs and quad amplification
• Amazingly affordable at just $199

If like me you miss the days of cute portable music players like the iPod mini, HiBy has just the thing: a super-cute and very small double-DAC audio player called the R3Pro II.

The R3Pro II comes in a choice of orange, silver, black or green; the orange one really reminds me of my much-missed Sony Ericsson Walkman phone with its orange highlights, while the others conjure up memories of multiple iPods.

Don't let the cute design fool you, though: the specs here are serious. According to HiBy you're looking at a "quality pocket cannon, performance monster". And the specs back that up.

Inside there are dual Cirrus Logic CS43198 DACs and quad OPA1622 headphone amps capable of driving high-impedance headphones through either the 4.4mm balanced or 3.5mm stereo jacks.

HiBy R3ProII: key features and pricing

Those amps and DACs are powered by a 4,000mAh battery with PD2.0 fast charging, and put out up to 480mW of power.

You're not limited to listening on the best wired headphones, though. The player is certified for both wired and wireless Hi-Res Audio and supports DSD256, PCM at up to 32-bit/384kHz and MQA 8X. Bluetooth is 5.1 and there's Wi-Fi too; you can have up to 2TB of storage via microSD.

You've got aptX and LDAC to beam high-quality sound to the best wireless headphones, and the R3Pro II also works with AirPlay and DLNA for Wi-Fi streaming. It has USB-C audio, USB to S/PDIF, and line outputs for connections to other audio equipment.

There are slightly different materials depending on your color choice: the green and orange ones have an Ultrasuede back, while silver and black are matte.

The specs suggest a fairly expensive device, but no: the R3Pro II is just $199. I'd expect it to cost around £199 or just under if it comes to the UK, and the US price converts to around AU$300 in Australia – though we don't have confirmation of an international release yet. Hopefully it'll come, because we could be looking at a new budget winner for our list of the best hi-res audio players.

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• Cassette player with Bluetooth and built-in battery
• 3.5mm input for recording onto tape
• £129 / $159 / €149 (about AU$269)

We Are Rewind delighted us at CES 2025 with its rechargeable cassette player and recorder, and now you can get your hands on one. The EDITH WE-001 cassette player is available now for £129 / $159 / €149 (about AU$269).

In addition to the player itself, the package also includes a pencil for those inevitable moments when you need to re-spool the tape. It's a nice touch and highlights the knowing humor here: We Are Rewind is clearly having lots of fun with this device, its design and its packaging.

EDITH WE-001 cassette player: key features

The WE-001 may look like a 1980s tape player (and indeed Fiio's gorgeous 2024 option – built to honor the original 1979 TPS-L2 Sony Walkman), but it takes advantage of some of the technologies that have become commonplace since, you know, the time when Walkmen walked the Earth.

The most important of those technologies is Bluetooth. You can still use wired headphones if you want to look like a Cliff Richard music video (ask your grandparents), but wireless is of course much more convenient.

The other key technology is that instead of AA batteries, this player is powered by an internal rechargeable battery that's good for a promised 12 hours of playback.

In addition to playing tapes, the WE-001 can also record onto them, via its 3.5mm line-in jack. There's no internal microphone, however, and you can only record onto type I cassettes. For playback you can use types I to IV.

The EDITH WE-001 is available now from select retailers including independent record shops, and honestly, if it doesn't make you want to grab your neon sweatbands and head to a roller disco with Cyndi Lauper in your ears, I don't know what will.

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• Cassettes are back in a big way – and not just because FiiO's ode to the Sony Walkman is aces
• This retro music streamer and speakers combo is a stylish modern version of a classic hi-fi look

• The Astell & Kern PS10 is coming in May 2025 for $2,500
• 32-bit PCM, DSD, Roon, aptX HD and LDAC
• Comes with desktop dock with XLR balanced and USB outputs

Astell & Kern has unveiled a brand new design direction for its music players, which always rank among the best Hi-Res Audio players. The new PS10 digital audio player, which will officially be unveiled at CanJam Singapore on 5/6 April, comes with a brand new look and a new desktop dock to give your home hi-fi an easy streaming upgrade at the same time as your your mobile music.

The Astell & Kern PS10 brings the new AKM AK4498EX chips to the player in what A&K says is a world first, and the docking cradle has XLR balanced outputs plus USB and USB-DAC digital output. It supports native playback of high-res PCM audio up to 32-bit, 768kHz and DSD512.

It's also notable that it drops A&K's iconic volume wheel, found on all of its current players. There's an all-button approach here, that's the end of an era. Or, at least, the start of a new era where some players don't get the dial.

Astell & Kern PS10: key features and pricing

The PS10 has four AKM AK4498EX DACs and two separate AK4191EQ chips that handle digital signals. It takes the same HEXA audio circuitry developed for the A&K SP3000, which separates analogue and digital signals for what A&K promises is "astonishing" sound.

The PS10 also uses separate audio circuits for its balanced and unbalanced outputs, and it has two amplifiers with different tunings. The Normal Gain AMP "reproduces delicate details and delivers high-purity sound" while the High Gain AMP "excels in handling complex and dynamic sounds, rendering audio signals more vividly and with greater clarity for a more immersive listening experience."

The PS10's Smart Gain feature is a clever touch. It instantly detects the impedance of the connected headphones and sets the appropriate AMP – so headphones or earbuds with an impedance of 32 ohms or lower are set to Normal Gain and a maximum output of 5.5Vrms on the balanced output, while headphones with more than 32 ohms get High Gain of up to 8.3Vrms for balanced output.

That sound make it a little easier for beginners to the audiophile world to be able to pair some of the best wired headphones or best wired earbuds with the device without discovering they've made a frustrating mistake.

The PS10 has 256GB of internal storage and supports microSD cards of up to 2TB. There's dual-band 2.4/5GHz a/b/g/n/ac Wi-Fi, DLNA networking, USB digital audio output, USB-C for data transfer and charging, and the ability to use the PS10 as an external DAC via Bluetooth or a direct USB connection.

The Astell & Kern PS10 will be available in May 2025 for $2,500. We'd expect the UK price to be around £2,500 (about AU$5,100) but international pricing hasn't been announced just yet. Hopefully we'll hear more this weeken

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FiiO JM21: One-minute review

If we’ve all come to rely on FiiO for anything, it’s for specification and performance that’s out of proportion with the amount of money it’s asking for a given device. The latest product to demonstrate this happy knack in action is the FiiO JM21 digital audio player.

It’s compact, it’s more than adequately built and finished, it’s specified like a much more expensive device, and it’s simple to set up and use. Battery life is well above average for a product of this type, in much the same way that the price is well below. You can spend getting on for twice as much money on a Sony equivalent and it won’t buy you anything more where the quality of construction or the standard of specification is concerned.

So, does it sit among the best MP3 players on the market? It's an unequivocal yes from us.

FiiO JM21 review: Price and release date

• Released January 2025
• Priced at $199 / £179 / AU$369 (approx.)

The FiiO JM21 digital audio player was announced at CES 2025 and launched towards the end of January 2025. In the United Kingdom it currently sells for around £179, while in the United States it goes for $199. Customers in Australia are likely to have to part with AU$369 or thereabouts.

FiiO JM21 review: Features

• 2 x Cirrus Logic CS43198 DACs
• Balanced and unbalanced headphone sockets
• Bluetooth 5.0 with SBC, AAC, aptX HD, LDAC and LHDC codec support

You have to hand it to FiiO – it may have set out to produce the most affordable digital audio player it could realistically manage, but that doesn’t mean it’s felt the need to scrimp on the features.

Which means the FiiO JM21 is ready for any eventuality. It’s fitted with twin Cirrus Logic CS43198 DAC chipsets for compatibility with resolutions up to 32bit/384kHz and DSD256, and these are paired with high-performance op-amps in a fully balanced layout. Its main control, DAC and headphone amp sections are shielded and isolated in their own zones in an effort to reduce signal interference and cross-talk.

Wired outputs consist of 3.5mm and balanced 4.4mm headphone sockets – the 3.5mm socket is a hybrid number that can be used as an SPDIF output for use with an external DAC. The USB-C slot that sits between them can be used for data transfer as well as battery-charging and the 2400mAh battery is good for more than 12 hours of playback between charges. That's as long as you’re using the unbalanced output and not going to town with volume levels, of course.

The JM21 has three ‘gain’ settings, each with a different volume curve. This is especially useful if you intend to use the FiiO as a source hard-wired to an amplifier or a powered speaker – set the output to ‘LO’ and no harm will come to your equipment – and it also means the JM21 should have no problem driving even quite demanding headphones. And if you connect the FiiO to a laptop (for instance) via its USB-C socket, it can function as a USB DAC and enhance your listening pleasure more than somewhat. Used this way, it’s able to deal with 32bit/768kHz and DSD512.

Where wireless connectivity is concerned, the JM21 is both a Bluetooth transmitter and receiver. When it’s sending to headphones, wireless speakers or what-have-you, its Bluetooth 5.0 is compatible with SBC, AAC, aptX HD, LDAC and LHDC codecs. Use it as a receiver and it can deal with SBC, AAC and LDAC. Dual-band Wi-Fi is on board, of course, and the JM21 is DLNA compatible and supports Apple AirPlay, too.

There’s plenty more, from the custom crystal oscillators (with ceramic gold-plated bases) that are screened at the femtosecond level to ensure consistent, stable output to the proprietary ‘digital audio purification’ system that separates the main processing module to the co-processing equivalent. But by now I think the broad point is made: the compact form-factor and relatively low price of the JM21 is not reflected in its specification.

Features score: 5 / 5

FiiO JM21 review: Sound quality

• Open, detailed and composed presentation
• Good tonal balance and a fair amount of dynamism, too
• Not absolutely comfortable at highest volumes

Everything is relative, of course, and everything needs to be put into context, but when you keep the price of the FiiO JM21 uppermost in your mind, it’s hard to find meaningful fault. That doesn’t mean I’m not going to give it a good go, you understand, but between you and me I’m struggling…

No matter if you listen wirelessly via the aptX codec to something like the Bowers & Wilkins Pi6 true wireless in-ears or the Dali IO-8 using aptX HD, using a pair of Sennheiser IE900 connected to the player’s 4.4mm balanced output, or make the FiiO part of a full-size system by connecting it to a Naim Uniti Star using the unbalanced 3.5mm output, it’s a composed, lively and admirably detailed listen. No matter if you listen to a DSD256 file of Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells, a 24/96kHz FLAC of When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? by Billie Eilish or a 16bit/44.1kHz file of De La Soul’s 3 Feet High and Rising, the JM21 doesn’t put a foot wrong. It’s a remarkable little device.

It balances the frequency range really nicely – from the deep and textured low frequencies to the politely shining top end and all points in between, there’s an evenness of emphasis and a lack of choppiness that speaks of a properly sorted player. It hits hard at the bottom end, but with no lack of control: its straight-edged attack means rhythmic expression is confident and convincing. There’s bite and drive at the top end, but it’s composed and never even hints at becoming hard or edgy. And in between, the mid-range is open and revealing, so a vocalist is allowed complete expression of the character and motivations.

The tonal balance is equally well-judged. It’s on the cool side of neutral, but not by very much and not to the detriment of the music it’s playing. Meanwhile, the attention to detail the JM21 demonstrates is really admirable – even those transient details in a recording that are gone almost as soon as they arrive are picked up on and put into appropriate context.

The fact that the FiiO establishes a quite large and easily understood soundstage doesn’t do any harm, either. Even a borderline-chaotic stage like that which Mike Oldfield creates is opened up by the JM21, and the amount of properly defined space it can put between each element of a recording is quite something. There’s plenty of space on the ‘left/right’ axis and even a stab at creating a proper sensation of ‘front/back’, too. Dynamic headroom is considerable, so when a recording indulges in big shifts in intensity or volume, the player has no difficulty in keeping up and making them absolutely apparent.

In fact, as far as I can tell the only way to make the FiiO JM21 sound anything other than entirely comfortable and confident is to wind the volume up towards ‘ill-advised’ levels. When it’s playing at its upper limits, some of the three-dimensionality of its presentation goes astray, dynamic variations become flattened, and the overall sound gets rather shouty. But you should pay attention to your parents/doctor/own common sense – you really shouldn’t be listening at this sort of volume anyway.

Sound quality score: 5 / 5

FiiO JM21 review: Design

• 121 x 68 x 13mm (HxWxD)
• Aluminium and plastic construction
• 156g

You don’t see many ‘two-tone’ digital audio players, do you? The FiiO JM21 is one, though. It's impeccably built and finished from a combination of high-quality plastic and aluminium, is sky blue on its top half and silver on the bottom. The bottom is quite interestingly textured, too – although you may not get to experience this, as FiiO supplies the player pre-fitted with a protective transparent plastic case.

The top of the machine is basically all touch-screen - it’s a 4.7-inch, 750 x 1334 affair, and it’s big enough and bright enough to display a lot of information without becoming illegible. Despite the relatively large screen, though, at 121 x 68 x 13mm (HxWxD) the JM21 is smaller than even the most compact smartphone, and at 156g it’s no kind of burden to a pocket.

Design score: 5 / 5

FiiO JM21 review: Usability and setup

• Android 13
• 3GB RAM, 32GB ROM (of which 22GB is usable)
• 8-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 680 processor

The FiiO JM21 uses an extensively adapted version of Android 13 as an operating system, and thanks to an 8-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 680 processor it’s fast and stable in operation. FiiO is open enough to acknowledge that Android 13 is fairly memory-hungry, though, and given the JM21 has just 3GB of RAM available (in order to keep both costs down) it suggests only loading those essential music-streaming apps and avoiding peripheral stuff. It also suggests avoiding running multiple apps simultaneously if at all possible.

The 22GB of usable ROM isn’t going to last long, but there’s a microSD card slot on one side of the player - and it can handle memory cards of up to 2TB, which is enough to store all the hi-res stuff you could possibly want to listen to.

Physical controls are arranged on the edge of the player, too. On the left side (as you look at it) there’s a power on/off button with an LED tell-tale just below it. Beneath there is a volume up/down rocker. On the right, meanwhile, there’s play/pause, skip forwards and skip backwards. Everything you need, in other words, and just as reliable and positive in their action as the touchscreen controls are.

Setting up the JM21 is simplicity itself for anyone who’s ever owned a smartphone. Charge the battery (from ‘flat’ to ‘full’ takes around two hours), put the player on your local network, install the apps you need to install (only the essentials, remember), and away you go. I’m struggling to think of how it could be any more straightforward.

Usability and setup score: 5 / 5

FiiO JM21 review: Value

I’ll say it as directly as I can, for the avoidance of doubt: the FiiO JM21 is tremendous value for money, at $199 / £179 / AU$369 (approx.). It’s as well-made and -finished as any sub-£500 digital audio player you care to mention, it’s specified beyond its asking price, and it sounds great when playing at real-world volumes.

Yes, it could do with more internal memory - but then the physical size, as well as the price, would very probably increase. SO make sure to budget for a microSD card of worthwhile capacity - you’ll still be in possession of a great-value portable music player.

Value score: 5 / 5

Should I buy the FiiO JM21?

Buy it if... 

Don't buy it if... 

FiiO JM21 review: Also consider

How I tested the FiiO JM21

• Tested for two weeks
• Listened to both streamed and downloaded content
• Tested with both wired and wireless headphones, Bluetooth speaker and amplifier

First things first: I installed the Presto Music and Tidal music streaming service apps via the Google Play store, and I also inserted a 512GB SanDisk microSD card loaded with lots of high-resolution content into the player’s slot.

Then I used a variety of wired and wireless headphones (including, but not limited to, some Sennheiser IE900 in-ear monitors via their 4.4mm socket and a pair of Bowers & Wilkins Px8 connected via Bluetooth), as well as connecting the player to a Bose SoundLink Max Bluetooth speaker and to a full-size stereo system by connecting its 3.5mm output to a line-level input on a Naim Uniti Star amplifier/network streamer.

And at every stage, I listened to lots of different types of music, stored in a number of different file types, and used a variety of Bluetooth codecs when the FiiO was connected wirelessly.

• First reviewed in February 2025

• Read TechRadar's reviews guarantee

• Shanling has announced a new portable Hi-Res music player
• It runs on Android 13 with support for major music streaming services
• It has vacuum tube amplification, if you like that sort of thing

If you want to enjoy Hi-Res Audio on the go, but would love to mix up the all-digital music world, then this new music player from Shanling may be one to check out, thanks to its inclusion of vacuum tubes.

The M8T is the new flagship of Shanling’s portable Hi-Res music player product line, featuring two AKM DACs (digital-to-analogue converters) and multiple amplification methods for varied, high-quality listening up to 32bit/768kHz. It retails for a notable $1,499 (around £1,190 / AU$2,360).

It’s technically an update to 2020’s M8 model, designed to play nicely with the latest headphone DACs from AKM, and make the most of Shanling’s technological improvements over the past few years.

It’s slightly larger, and heavier than the M8, measuring 147 x 82 x 22 mm with a 6-inch HD (1080 x 2160) touchscreen, and weighing 383g, with rounded edges and a sleek design available in either black or red.

One big change is the addition of two JAN6418 vacuum tubes, with the M8T featuring both a tube amp and a transistor-based headphone amplifier.

Tube amps are often sought-after for their ‘natural’ sound recreation, louder output per watt, and limited distortion compared to transistor amps – though listeners will be able to opt in or out on the fly, depending on their preferences and what they’re currently playing. It definitely makes the Shanling stand out compared to the wider competition among the best Hi-Res Audio players.

A word of warning – taking tube amps mobile can introduce interference into the sound through a microphonic effect, but if they're well-isolated from the outside world touching them, this can be avoided. It looks like the Shanling has them well-secured, but we'd have to test to be sure.

In a blog post announcing the launch of the M8T, Shanling adds that “And because we understand that tubes might not be ideal for all types of headphones or music, we made sure that the M8T can switch quickly between its tube-enhanced output and the pure transistor mode.”

On-board storage has also been upgraded, doubling to 128GB with a MicroSD card slot that can accommodate a maximum of 2TB, meaning there’s plenty of room for all those massive Hi-Res Audio files.

And an improved 8,350mAh battery allows for 13-15.5 hours of Hi-Res audio output, and up to 96 hours over Bluetooth 5.0.

Tidal, Qobuz, and more

Whereas some Shanling products use its own in-house operating system, MTouch, the M8T runs on Android 13 in order to provide “many years of software updates and problem-free app compatibility” – meaning you can access any of the major music streaming services that support Hi-Res Audio, such as Apple Music, Qobuz, and Tidal.

With Hi-Res Audio expected to come to Spotify this year too, it’s a great time to start investing in Hi-Res audio hardware that really lets you benefit from the increased quality, detail, warmth and chutzpah available for audiophiles today.

If you like the look or the M8T, consider the excellent Shanling HW600, which made our list of the best over-ear headphones as an upmarket pair of wired, open-backed over-ear headphones with some genuine areas of sonic expertise”. Or you can check out this personally tested pairing of a Hi-Res player and headphones, recommended by TechRadar’s Audio Editor Becky Scarrott.

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In an age where even casual music fans know how measly streaming services can be regarding artist pay, the return of physical media was perhaps inevitable. Just last year, vinyl record sales grew by 10.5% with 6.7 million discs sold thanks to artists including Taylor Swift and Fleetwood Mac. Though CD sales remained constant, cassette tape sales have also been making a strong comeback as well.

From 81,000 units in 2015 to 436,400 in 2022, the resurgence has been driven by Gen Z’s embrace of nostalgic formats and affordability. Artists are releasing albums on tape for as little as $10, which is a fraction of newly released vinyls, which are significantly more expensive. So it makes sense for French brand We Are Rewind to have a goal of delivering a sleek yet incredibly functional cassette tape player, inspired by the original Sony Walkman. During my time with the device at CES 2025, it delivered on its promise.

Available in four colorways for around $160, there’s so much to appreciate about this audio device. We Are Rewind’s cassette tape player works with all versions of tapes, from I (which have only write-protect notches) to IV (which has a third notch set near the middle of the top of the cassette shell). When it comes to playback, the device supports two-track stereo with a quoted frequency response of 30Hz to 12,500Hz, signal-to-noise ratio of 50dB, and minimal distortion.

The player uses Bluetooth 5.1 connectivity to connect to the best wireless headphones and best Bluetooth speakers. We Are Rewind also has $52 retro-styled EQ-001 over-the-ear headphones that come with three interchangeable ear cushions. Those feature a 12-hour battery life and three equalizer modes for tailored audio experiences. The headphones also work on smartphones, alongside offering voice assistant support.

If you want to keep it old school, there’s a 3.5mm headphone jack for the best wired headphones, and an additional 3.5mm jack for recording onto Type I tapes, which I absolutely love. Recording quality is fairly high, featuring a frequency response of 30Hz to 10,000Hz, a signal-to-noise ratio of 45dB, and 1% typical distortion. The We Are Rewind cassette player is powered by a built-in rechargeable lithium-ion battery that provides an estimated 10 to 12 hours of extended use.

During my time with the device, there were a handful of cassette tapes to use including The Weeknd, Linkin Park and The Saints among others. Thanks to the tech inside of the cassette player, I enjoyed the warm and soft audio quality, but it skips the fuzzy hiss sound. I think the best way to explain it is a cross of the gutsy sonics of vinyl with the clarity of a compact disc.

Add the headphones into the situation and it does become a uniquely retro listening experience and combo, and had a great time. Users are going to have to be intentional with what tapes they have with them, whether it be an album or a mixtape of their own, but that's all part of the fun.

Avalible now, We Are Rewind has purposefully embraced the past while keeping up with modern audio player trends. A blend of slick style with enough technical sophistication makes this more than a novelty but a different way of consuming music in an instant accessibility age for better or worse. Now I can't wait for when We Are Rewind eventually releases its big $429 portable boombox Blaster player…

You might also like…

• Cassettes are back in a big way – and not just because FiiO's ode to the Sony Walkman is aces
• I’m swapping Spotify for CDs with the affordable Fiio DM13 in 2025 – here's why
• This retro music streamer and speakers combo is a stylish modern version of a classic hi-fi look

TechRadar will be extensively covering this year's CES, and will bring you all of the big announcements as they happen. Head over to our CES 2025 news page for the latest stories and our hands-on verdicts on everything from 8K TVs and foldable displays to new phones, laptops, smart home gadgets, and the latest in AI.

And don’t forget to follow us on TikTok and WhatsApp for the latest from the CES show floor!

Activo P1: One-minute review

The outside says Activo but at heart this is an Astell & Kern hi-res audio player with all that implies: superb sound, impressive specifications and excellent performance. It doesn't look quite as expensive or as eye-catching as its parent brand's players but it's what's inside that counts, and what's inside here is very good: the same amplification as more expensive players and an ESS ES9219Q SABRE Dual-DAC. There are multiple connections including aptX HD and LDAC on supported hardware, and while the built-in storage isn't enough for much hi-res audio you can add SD cards with capacities up to 1.5TB. 

The most important thing is how this player sounds, and in that department it deserves the full five stars: as a music player it sounds superb, and in DAC mode it's a useful audio upgrade for your computer – so yes, it'll easily advance to our roundup of the best MP3 players in the entry-level space. There's a built-in equalizer that you can use to craft complex EQ curves but during our testing we tended to leave that feature off because the P1 sounded so good across multiple genres. In addition to its local playback, the P1 also works with all the key streaming services and includes full Play Store support.

If you're looking for a player to drive Apple headphones, this isn't the device for you: its high quality wireless streaming is in formats that Apple doesn't support and as a result you're missing out on some of the fun, even with AirPods Max. But with compatible headphones or a wired connection to your headphones or hi-fi this is a wonderful audio player and music streamer that delivers a performance you'd normally expect to pay a lot more to experience.

Activo P1 review: Price and release date

• Priced at $430 / £399 / AU$ tbc

The Activo P1 launched on 22 July 2024. It is much cheaper than its parent brand's siblings. In the UK, for example, Astell & Kern's entry level digital audio player, the SR35, currently retails for £599 (or $649) owing to its 2023 release date, but has a recommended retail price of £799 (or $799). The Activo P1 has a similar specification for $440 / £399. It's not a budget player by any means, because of course that figure is still a lot of money to most of us. But it's a lot less than you'd typically pay for this specification.

Activo P1 review: Features

• Bluetooth 5.3; SBC, AAC, aptX HD and LDAC codec compatibility
• 32bit/384kHz and DSD256
• Wired and wireless DAC

The P1 has an ES9219Q SABRE Dual-DAC. Its built-in amplifier is based on the Astell & Kern Teraton Alpha system, which promises exceptional clarity and detail and which you'll also find in the Astell & Kern SR35. It's powered by an octa-core processor and delivers up to 20 hours of battery life; there's dual-band Wi-Fi, 64GB of internal memory and an SD card slot supporting capacities up to 1.5TB. You'll fill the internal storage in no time if you're listening to hi-res audio files but it's fine for more compressed formats and SD cards are cheap to add.

The USB-C connection isn't just for fast charging; this device can also be connected to a Mac or a Windows PC and used as a wired DAC. There's also a Bluetooth DAC option.

The P1 has native DSD256, 32bit/384kHz support and plays almost every audio file format going, including WAV, FLAC, WMA, MP3, OGG, APE, AAC, ALAC, AIFF, DFF, DSF and MQA.

You can listen to music in several ways. In addition to its own music playing app, the Activo also comes with a collection of third party options including Spotify, Tidal, Qobuz and Apple Music. It also has the Play Store so you can add additional apps.

You can listen to your own tracks via the internal or SD card storage; you can stream from third party apps on the device; or you can use the device as a DAC for your computer with built-in upsampling. That latter option is likely to be a big improvement over many computers' built-in audio, and listening to tracks we know particularly well – such as tracks I'd recorded myself and played directly from Logic Pro X – there was a noticeable expansion of the sound stage, more air in the top end and a tightening of the lower frequencies. The detail was impressive: I could hear my own plectrum on the bass guitar in tracks normally too busy for such details to stand out. If you're a musician, the P1 in its wired DAC mode would be a worthwhile addition to your mixing toolkit.

Features score: 5 / 5

Activo P1 review: Sound quality

•  Engaging and spacious sound
•  Extensive EQ options
•  Audio upsampling with multiple modes

Listening in lossless CD quality over wired headphones Charli XCX's close-miked vocal in 360 feels so close it's almost indecent, while Simple Minds' anthemic New Gold Dream is wonderful. It's so clear that you can easily hear details such as the slightly discordant note sliding in at the beginning of each synth loop before the drums come clattering in and the bass begins its glorious grind. Taylor Swift's Willow is bright, lively and feels like it's happening in the room around you, as does Talk Talk's gossamer Desire, its spaciousness and minimalism feeling incredibly compelling. 

The P1 really sings with well separated recordings, whether that's the rainy songs of The Blue Nile, Pet Shop Boys' sad bangers, The Cult's knowing AC/DC homage or Peter Gabriel's live work. Classic remasters such as The Rolling Stones' You Can't Always Get What You Want are grin-inducingly good, and Peter Buck's Rickenbacker really chimes on early REM tracks.

There are lots of options here for controlling the Digital Audio Remaster (DAR) upsampling and shaping 20-band EQs, but with very few exceptions – older, less well recorded tracks mostly – we didn't feel that the standard sound needed tweaking.

The presence of third-party apps means it's easy to do an A/B comparison between streaming and local hi-res music, so for example Broken Chanter's chiming telecaster guitar, Luminous's kitchen-sink production and HiFi Sean's euphoric house are noticeably more detailed and more vivid in high quality FLAC than from streaming services when listening on wired headphones.

The sound quality you get will depend on what you're listening with, so for example if you connect a set of Apple AirPods Max via Bluetooth rather than with a cable a message will pop up to let you know you're listening in AAC: the sound is still very good but that protocol isn't the best quality the P1 can deliver. For non-Apple headphones the P1 supports aptX HD and LDAC for high quality streaming. When we listened to identical songs with wired rather than AAC wireless the difference was evident, with songs feeling less boxy and more spacious. 

Sound quality score: 5 / 5

Activo P1 review: Design

• A little 'beige' by A&K standards 
• Straightforward button controls
• Mostly operated by touchscreen

Astell & Kern players are typically made with a brutalist eye – all angles, rotary dials and shiny surfaces. This player is slightly less attention-grabbing. Its casing is a mix of aluminium and white plastic, it's a little smaller than its siblings and its interface is light grey rather than the darker tones of the Astell & Kern software.

On top you'll find two connectors, one 3.5mm output and one 4.4mm balanced, and the microSD card slot and USB-C connector are on the bottom edge. Holding the device with its 4.1-inch touchscreen facing you its volume controls are on the top left and the power/wake and menu buttons are on the right. 

Third party apps don't integrate with the device's interface, so for example the songs you play through those apps won't be added to the recently played carousel and the apps' interfaces vary from service to service – but they work well and deliver the same features as their smartphone counterparts. Apple Music, for instance, looks like, works like and delivers the same lossless audio as its iPhone version.

The interface is snappy enough in everyday operation but it's a little slow to boot up, taking between 30 and 51 seconds to launch from a cold start. And the P1 gets warm during sustained use; not frighteningly so, but it heats up enough that you could use it as a hand-warmer in winter.

Design score: 4 / 5 

Activo P1 review: Value

When you consider the pedigree here, $440 / £399 is good value for money: the Astell & Kern A&norma SR35 has an RRP of $799 / £799 and a street price of $649 / £599 for the same battery life and Bluetooth codec support. The A&K player is more advanced and customizable, but unless you're listening on truly exceptional headphones, I'm not sure paying nearly double the price (at full RRP) would give you nearly double the delight. If you want to upgrade your computer's audio or get a good quality hi-res audio experience, the P1 is very good value.

Value score: 5 / 5 

Should I buy the Activo P1?

Buy it if... 

Don't buy it if... 

Activo P1 review: Also consider

How I tested the Activo P1

• Tested for over a week
• Tested with streamed and hi-res downloaded content
• Tested with wired and wireless headphones

I tested the Activo P1 over a period of several weeks in multiple modes: as a DAC and headphone amp for my M2 Mac, which I use for music production; and for listening to music with a mix of wired and wireless headphones including Philips Fidelio X2HR, Apple AirPods Max and Bose QuietComfort earbuds. I listened to a mix of compressed and lossless streaming audio and a selection of FLAC, WAV and AIFF files across multiple genres. 

• First reviewed in July 2024

• Read TechRadar's reviews guarantee

FiiO M23: One-minute review

Yes, your smartphone is a very convenient way of enjoying music while on the go – but anyone who takes sound quality seriously knows that ultimate portable performance doesn’t come from a device that’s more about its camera than its audio quality. That comes from a dedicated digital audio player. And as luck would have it, we have tested some of the best MP3 players currently on the market. 

The FiiO M23 arrives as a fairly large, lavishly specified and beautifully constructed digital audio player with a number of technological highlights. It’s ready to power wired or wireless headphones, or to act as a USB DAC in a desktop audio system. And it’s ready to handle anything you care to throw at it – any file type, any file size, any genre of music – with confidence, poise and positivity.

So it’s capable of extracting a huge amount of detail from a digital audio file, and contextualising it on a large, well-defined soundstage. It can punch hard if your music demands it, but never in an uncontrolled manner, and it can give the emotion and attitude in an unaccompanied voice absolutely explicit expression. Aside from some extremely rare operation glitches, it’s hard to lay a glove on the FiiO M23. Know this: it’s the real deal. 

FiiO M23 review: Price and release date

• Released March 2024
• Priced at $699 / £649 / AU$1,249

The FiiO M23 digital audio player is on sale now, and in the United Kingdom it goes for £649. American customers will have to hand over $699, while in Australia you’re looking at something like AU$1,249 if my understanding of exchanges rates is correct.

The M23 has some competition at this price, of course – not least from FiiO itself. But it’s Astell & Kern that is its most obvious rival: the May 2023-release A&K A&norma SR35 goes for $799 / £799 / AU$1,299 while the company's June 2022-issue A&K A&norma SR25 MKII still sells for $749 / £699 / AU$1,099. And frankly, either option has plenty to recommend it. So it’s game on…

FiiO M23 review: Features

• Twin AKM DACs
• THX AAA 78+ amplification architecture
• 5500mAh battery

Space on the internet is, to all intents and purposes, limitless. But I reckon I could make quite a big dent in its capacity if I discussed every one of the FiiO M23’s many, many features at length. So it’s probably best to just get an overview – I promise it will let you know just how serious FiiO in general, and the M23 in particular, is…

The M23 is powered by a big 5500mAh battery that’s good for over 10 hours of playback from a single charge. A dual-mode fast-charging system means extreme fast-charging speeds (up to 30W) are available if the battery level is very low – and once the battery approaches its fully charged state, the M23 switches to a more sedate fast-charging state. The result of this arrangement, says FiiO, is much-improved charging times with no impact on the long-term health of the battery.

Internal memory is a just-about-adequate 64GB, and a microSD slot on the bottom of the player will accept cards of up to 2TB – which means you should be able to load a lot of big hi-res files as long as you invest in a microSD card. Obviously, the M23 will support your favourite music streaming service(s) as well as storing content on its local memory. Like all FiiO digital audio players, the M23 uses an amended version of Android as an operating system; Android 12 in this instance. A Qualcomm Snapdragon 660 processor makes the FiiO is fast and responsive in its operations, and some careful reskinning means the OS doesn’t eat into that internal memory too much.

Digital-to-analogue conversion is handled by a pair of AKM DAC chipsets – the AK4191EQ and AK4499EX operate in tandem, keeping the digital and analogue stages entirely separate and utilising ‘DWA routing’ technology to keep the signal-to-noise ratio to a bare minimum. And they allow the M23 to deal with digital audio files of almost every type (including MQA) up to a resolution of 24bit/384kHz and DSD256. 

Amplification comes courtesy of FiiO’s latest refinement of the popular THX amplification design. Taking the THX AAA 78 (which it uses in its very competitive M11 Plus and M11 Pro models) as a starting point, FiiO has finessed the architecture to the point that it’s now called THX AAA 78+ – and can, in theory, offer more power with minimal distortion and even greater precision.  

These are the headlines and hi-res music chops where the M23’s features are concerned. FiiO is understandably pleased with and proud of its unified hi-fi audio architecture, its bespoke Digital Audio Purification System, its four-stage 20-rail power supply, its 28 high-capacity polymer tantalum capacitors, and lots more… but surely you get the point by now: FiiO has never been anything other than painstaking and extraordinarily thorough where its digital audio players are concerned, and the M23 has enjoyed the same sort of engineering effort.

Features score: 5 / 5

FiiO M23 review: Sound quality

• Direct, deft and engaging sound
• Dynamism and insight to burn
• Mildly and very occasionally glitchy

There’s an awful lot of positives associated with the way the FiiO M23 goes about resolving and delivering digital audio files. So for no other reason than contrariness, I’ll start with its very occasional operational foibles.

The M23 will sometimes pause, at random and without any user input. It happens very, very rarely, but not so rarely that you wouldn’t notice. And even less often it feels the need to chop into the first half-a-second of a digital audio file, starting playback just fractionally further forward than 0:00 – this seems to happen, on the odd occasions that it happens, when listening to some newly cued-up content, never when a playlist or an album is in progress. It’s hardly a dealbreaker, but equally it’s unlikely to be what you’re expecting from your shiny new digital audio player. 

And with that out of the way, I can talk about all the many, many ways the M23 is an impressive-sounding machine.

In every circumstance, and with every type and size of digital audio file, the M23 sounds delicate yet muscular, assertive yet subtle, lavishly detailed and vaultingly dynamic. It seems perfectly willing to engage with any type of music you care to listen to, and is even prepared to tolerate downmarket sub-16bit/44.1kHz content if you absolutely must. It seems basically impossible to throw it out of its positive, confident stride.

A 24bit/96kHz FLAC file of Big Swimmer by King Hannah makes the point in fairly unequivocal style. The M23 sound is open and organised, with a carefully neutral tonal balance and a deft way where integration of the frequency range is concerned. There’s tremendous dynamic and harmonic variation to the strum of the unaccompanied guitar during the intro, an absolute stack of detail both broad and fine to the idiosyncratic, close-mic’d vocal, and appropriate crunch and bite to the second guitar when it joins in with the deep, textured bass. The recording sounds absolutely unified, the obvious result of performers responding and reacting to each other, rather than of individuals doing their own thing. It sounds like a performance, a demonstration of sonic togetherness.

Switching to a DSD64 file of Les McCann’s profoundly swinging I Can Dig It allows the M23 to show what it’s got where rhythmic expression, low-end fidelity and midrange expression are concerned. And it’s safe to say the FiiO has got more than enough – it communicates in the most articulate way, punching through the low-frequency information while keeping momentum high and keeps a close eye on the brilliance of the percussion that can easily get out of control in less capable hands. And again, the sense of engagement, of performance and of unity, is absolutely tangible.

And it’s worth noting that while FiiO offers a good amount of end-user adjustment – using the touch-screen you’re able to adjust the EQ frequency point, gain and bandwidth, and fine-tune the response curve to suit your preferences – the changes to the overall sound it’s possible to make are modest. At its heart, the M23 knows what it wants to sound like – which is, it turns out, not a bad thing at all.   

Sound quality score: 4.5 / 5

FiiO M23 review: Design

• Stainless steel or blue titanium finishes
• 137 x 76 x 18mm (HxWxD); 299g
• 5.5in 720 x 1440 display

At 137 x 76 x 18mm (HxWxD) and 299g the FiiO M23 cannot be described as ‘portable’ in the same way your smartphone is ‘portable’. It’s properly well made, of course, from tactile and overtly upmarket materials, and is finished to an extremely high standard - and those pointed edges that might otherwise damage your pocket-linings or the inside of your bag are smoothed off by a protective silicone case that comes with the ‘blue titanium’ finish. If you prefer the ‘stainless steel’ finish that’s available as an alternative, it’s supplied with a leather case that does a very similar job. But either way, there’s plenty of the M23.

The front of the player is taken up almost entirely by a 5.5in display. It’s bright and crisp, as its 720 x 1440 (18:9) resolution suggests it should be, and there are plenty of options regarding font size, brightness and so on to be investigated in the player’s ‘settings’ menu.  

Design score: 5 / 5 

FiiO M23 review: Usability and setup

• 3.5mm and 4.4mm analogue outputs; 3.5mm digital coaxial output
• Bluetooth 5.0 with aptX HD and LDAC codec compatibility
• ‘D-Mode’ battery bypass

Every side of the M23 features a control, an input or an output that contributes to its overall usability. But just because it has a lot of facilities in this respect, it’s never less than logical and quite friendly – and consequently very easy to operate.

On one edge of the chassis there’s a strip of three buttons taking care of ‘play/pause’, ‘skip forwards’ and ‘skip backwards’ On the other there’s a power button - it’s edge-lit to indicate the size of digital audio file the player is dealing with. There’s also a ‘multifunction’ button, the specific function of which is straightforward to define. And in between there’s that volume control arrangement FiiO has become so fond of lately: it’s a carbon-fibre strip/rocker, and you can either slide a finger up or down, or press on either end to make your adjustments. 

There’s also a ‘hold’ switch to prevent any unwanted actions being carried out, and a switch to put the M23 into ‘D-mode’. ‘D-mode’ means desktop mode – when it’s switched on, the player is completely powered by an external power source plugged into one of the two USB-C sockets on the bottom, and the battery is bypassed altogether. Which means you can use your M23 as desktop equipment without worrying about the effect you’re having on the battery. The other USB-C socket is for data transfer, and allows the FiiO to act as a USB DAC.

On the top edge of the M23 there are 3.5mm unbalanced or 4.4mm balanced outputs - these sockets can also be used to hard-wire the M23 to an amplifier or what-have-you, of course. The 3.5mm socket is hybrid, in fact, and can also act as a digital coaxial output in case you want to bypass the M23’s DAC circuitry altogether. And there are wireless possibilities too: dual-band wi-fi is on board, and the FiiO can both transmit and receive using Bluetooth 5.0 that’s compatible with SBC, AAC, aptX HD and LDAC codecs in both directions. 

As well as the physical controls, of course, there’s that big touch-screen. The Qualcomm Snapdragon 660 processor ensures it’s quick and responsive, and the FiiO-ised version of Android 12 allows easy access to as many streaming services or what-have-you as you may require.

Usability and setup score: 5 / 5 

FiiO M23 review: Value

Always a tricksy question, isn't it? On the one hand, you can grab an inexpensive MP3-specific portable audio player for a fraction of the price of this hi-res model, if you just want something not your phone. On the other, Astell & Kern's top-tier Ultima models sell for somewhere in the region of $2,399 / £1,999 / AU$3,599. 

If you've read (particularly the Features section of) this review, you will have deduced that the sound-per-pound value of FiiO's proposition is high. It isn't the most pocket-friendly player around in terms of its dimensions, but where your wallet's concerned, it's a talented thing for this money. 

Value score: 4.5 / 5 

Should I buy the FiiO M23?

Buy it if... 

Don't buy it if... 

FiiO M23 review: Also consider

How I tested the FiiO M23

• Tested for two weeks
• Listened to both streamed and downloaded content
• Tested with both wired and wireless headphones

I loaded up my Tidal and Qobuz accounts and I filled the player with plenty of high-res content, from 24bit/96kHz files and up to DSD128. I used elite over-ear and in-ear headphones (see also IEMs) via the 4.4mm and 3.5mm outputs, as well as considerably less expensive true wireless earbuds connected via Bluetooth. 

I used it, reader. However serious a product's spec sheet is, if the player is too fiddly to use on my commute it won't be getting good scores for 'usability' now, will it? I investigated its myriad features and listened to a variety of music, for several hours every day for a fortnight. And then, as tends to happen with these things, I had to return the FiiO M23 to its rightful owners and move on… 

• First reviewed in July 2024

• Read TechRadar's reviews guarantee

Astell & Kern A&ultima SP3000T: One-minute review

The Astell & Kern A&ultima SP3000T is just the latest demonstration of the South Korean manufacturer's best-in-class philosophy in action. Astell & Kern makes no apologies where the pricing of its digital audio players is concerned and, more often than not, its products turn out to be well worth their considerable asking price. 

Fortunately, the Astell & Kern A&ultima SP3000T looks and feels like a premium product should and it’s specified to do the audio business in style, too. There are numerous technical highlights to its extremely thorough specification, but the real stand-out is Astell & Kern’s use of your actual, genuine vacuum tubes in the amplification stage. Thought valve amplification was just for massive, and massively expensive, old-school hi-fi separates? Think again.

On top of its technical credentials, the Astell & Kern A&ultima SP3000T is a lovely item in a fairly substantial way. It’s made from silver-plated stainless steel, for instance. Its controls are beautifully implemented. And its operating system is as stable and logical as they come. 

But the best thing about the Astell & Kern A&ultima SP3000T is the sound it makes. Truly, it is one of the best MP3 players around and then some. Listening to hi-res audio through decent headphones and it just sings – it expertly handles every technical aspect of music reproduction, but without losing sight of the fact that it’s supposed to be entertaining. So it’s a delight in pretty much every respect.  

Astell & Kern A&ultima SP3000T review: Price and release date

• Priced at $2,999 / £3,199 / AU$5,299

The Astell & Kern A&ultima SP3000T is on sale now, and in the United Kingdom it will set you back £3,199. In America it goes for a marginally more reasonable $2,999, while in Australia it will cost you AU$5,299. 

That’s a lot, isn’t it, for something that (on the face of it) doesn’t do anything your smartphone can’t do?

Astell & Kern A&ultima SP3000T review: Features

• Bluetooth 5.0; SBC, AAC, aptX HD and LDAC codec compatibility
• 32bit/768kHz and DSD512
• Vacuum tube amplifications

Well, it doesn’t take long to show that ‘it doesn’t do anything your smartphone can’t do’ nonsense for what it is, does it? Yes, this is a digital audio player and so is your smartphone – but by this rationale a rowing-boat is the same as a yacht.

Perhaps the obvious sign that this is a device specified without compromise to make your portable music experience as enjoyable as possible is the Astell & Kern's three-mode amplification. The A&ultima SP3000T uses a pair of Raytheon JAN6418 miniature vacuum tubes – actually military-valves – in its amplification stage. Each pair is carefully matched, and then equally carefully suspended in a full-on silicone PCB arrangement to guard against noise derived from vibration or minor shocks to the player's chassis. And then you can select ‘Tube Amp’ mode to enjoy what Astell & Kern calls ‘the natural warmth of a vacuum tube amplifier’. Of course, you could go with the more usual ‘OP Amp’ mode (for ‘expansive soundstage and crystal-clear resolution’) or a mix of the two with ‘Hybrid Amp’ mode (‘the richness of analogue blended with high-resolution clarity’). 

Obviously, you’ll investigate the sonic characteristics of each of these options, but it’s worth pointing out here that if you select ‘Tube’ or ‘Hybrid’ mode, the vacuum tubes themselves glow redly through a little window on the rear of the player. Which is disproportionately satisfying.

Elsewhere, Astell & Kern has been just as thorough. The audio circuit configuration, for example, calls for two AKM 4191EQ DACs to act as digital delta-sigma modulators to reduce noise from the input stage on the left and right channels independently before a couple of AKM AK4499EX DAC chipsets process the analogue signals. After all this complicated work has been done, the SP3000T offers a choice of six DAC filters to further finesse the eventual sound.

A Snapdragon 6125 octa-core processor with 8GB of DDR4 memory takes care of user interaction. It promises fast system operation and a stable, smooth user interface and the CPU, memory and wireless communication components are all grouped as a single system-on-chip for optimum efficiency as well as minimal heat and digital noise.

The SP3000T uses Bluetooth 5.0 for wireless connectivity and is compatible with SBC, AAC, aptX HD and LDAC codecs. Dual-band Wi-Fi means the player can be Roon Ready (and also means it’s simplicity itself to install your favourite music streaming service apps). It can support digital audio files of every type, and is compatible with file sizes of up to 32bit/768kHz and DSD512. By using Astell & Kern’s DAR (digital audio remaster) technology, sample rates can be increased in an effort to maximise sound quality – 44.1kHz content, for instance, can be upscaled to 352.8kHz and anything below 96kHz can be converted to DSD128.

The 5050mAh battery is good for around 10 hours of playback - although it’s worth bearing in mind that that figure applies to 16bit/44.1kHz content heard at moderate volume. The figure when listening to properly high-resolution stuff at bigger levels is considerably less. Charging the SP3000T from ‘flat’ to ‘full’ takes a leisurely 3.5 hours or thereabouts.

Internal memory is a useful-but-hardly-spectacular 256GB. Happily, there’s a microSD card slot on the bottom of the player that can accept cards of up to 1TB.

Features score: 5 / 5

Astell & Kern A&ultima SP3000T review: Sound quality

• Spacious and well-defined sound
• Detailed and dynamic in equal measure
• End-user options don’t impact performance all that radically

It almost goes without saying that the bigger the digital audio file you listen to the better, and the more accomplished the headphones you use the better, too. But unlike quite a few digital audio players at quite a few price-points, the Astell & Kern A&ultima SP3000T doesn’t hold you to ransom. It just makes the best of the situation in which it finds itself.

And what’s equally noteworthy is just how consistent the SP3000T sounds, no matter how you might try to influence it with your amplification and/or DAC filter choices. There are differences to be heard, of course, but they’re far from fundamental. At its heart, and in pretty much every circumstance, the Astell & Kern is an eloquent, entertaining and absolutely wide-open performer. 

A listen to a 24bit/96kHz file of Chick Corea’s Return to Forever using ‘Hybrid’ amplification and ‘short delay slow roll-off’ DAC filtering allows the SP3000T to really show what it’s made of. It’s a spacious, rigorously defined listen, with a huge amount of dynamic headroom available in order to track the numerous changes in volume and intensity the recording indulges in. It allows even the most complex recordings the space in which to operate and manages to tie every individual element of a recording together in order to present it as a whole.

The tonal balance – naturalistic and convincing, whether you’re listening to processed, electronic music or analogue recordings of analogue instruments – is beautifully judged, too. Low frequency information is deep and textured, straight-edged at the moment of attack and rhythmically positive as a result. The midrange is similarly detailed, which allows vocalists of all kinds the opportunity to describe their character and attitude as well as their technique. The top of the frequency range has shine and substance in more-or-less equal measure and, just as with every other area of the frequency range, is absolutely loaded with detail. It seems unlikely in the extreme that the Astell & Kern is overlooking any information in your favourite recordings, no matter how fleeting or minor – and it puts them into appropriate context with real positivity, too.

Some alternative players that get all this sort of technical stuff right can overlook the simple fact that music = entertainment, though, and indulge in the sort of analysis that makes them sound more like lab equipment. The SP3000T is having none of that. It’s an energetic, entertaining listen that prioritizes the enjoyment of music over the minutiae of how it’s been recorded. Which is why you’ll find yourself listening for longer than you expected, time after time.

Sound quality score: 5 / 5

Astell & Kern A&ultima SP3000T review: Design

• Silver-plated stainless steel
• 142 x 85 x 18mm (HxWxD)
• 483g

As is standard Astell & Kern operating practice, the A&ultima SP3000T is pointily angular, and is the sort of weight (483g) and size (142 x 85 x 18mm, HxWxD) that manages to feel expensive without ruining its portability. As long as you’ve a nice strong pocket to put it in, anyway.

The frame of the player is made from 316L stainless steel, plated with 99.9 per cent pure silver, which looks and feels about as luxe as you might imagine. The bottom edge features a USB-C socket alongside that microSD card slot, and the left side has four little playback control buttons. The right side, meanwhile, features the company’s trademark knurled volume control in a deep, interestingly shaped recess. There’s a light behind the control – its colour depends on the type and size of the digital audio file that’s playing. 

On the player’s top edge there’s a power on/off button and all the outputs. There are 2.5mm and 4.4mm balanced headphone sockets and a 3.5mm unbalanced alternative which also doubles as a digital optical output.

The front of the machine is almost entirely touchscreen. It’s a big (5.5in) number of 1080 x 1920 resolution, it’s bright and crisp, and it’s responsive, too. Navigating menus, investigation playback options, loading apps and what-have-you can all be done easily and quickly.

It's also worth nothing that – for reasons best left to Astell & Kern itself – the case is made from calfskin. Vegans, and anyone opposed to using animal products in general, should look away now.

Design score: 5 / 5 

Astell & Kern A&ultima SP3000T review: Value

Obviously this is a madly expensive device by prevailing standards ($2,999 / £3,199 / AU$5,299). And obviously it’s not easy to make a product that is, by necessity, small enough to be realistically portable. But the SP3000T is beautifully made, from premium materials, is specified like there’s no tomorrow and is able to deal with each and every file type and size you might consider listening to. 

And, most significantly of all, it’s an uncomplicatedly delightful listen. Does it represent ‘value’? To those who want the best around and are able to pay for it, the answer has to be ‘yes’.  

Should I buy the Astell & Kern A&ultima SP3000T?

Buy it if... 

Don't buy it if... 

Astell & Kern A&ultima SP3000T review: Also consider

How I tested the Astell & Kern A&ultima SP3000T

• Tested for over a week
• Tested with streamed and downloaded content
• Tested with wired and wireless headphones

I installed my Qobuz and TIDAL accounts and I loaded the player with a lot of high-resolution content, too, from 24bit/96kHz stuff up to DSD128. I used expensive over-ear and in-ear headphones via the 4.4mm and 2.5mm outputs, as well as considerably less expensive true wireless earbuds connected via Bluetooth. 

I investigated amplification, DAC filter and EQ options. And then I listened to a variety of music, for several hours a day for well over a week. And then, rather tragically, I had to return the SP3000T to its owners… 

• First reviewed in June 2024

• Read TechRadar's reviews guarantee

Mechen M3: Three-minute review

The Mechen M3 appears to be feature-rich on the surface but when it comes down to it, it's not the most talented of music players. Because of this, it’s hard to avoid the feeling that Mechen’s engineers were so preoccupied with whether they could do certain things, that they didn’t stop to think if they should.

Mechen is a Chinese tech company that sells a small range of MP3 players. If you’ve seen one of them, it’s probably because you’ve found it listed on Amazon alongside a small army of similar low-cost Chinese MP3 players.

Most of the best cheap MP3 players focus on nailing one area: maybe they’ve got great file support for music tracks, or they have a lightweight and easily-portable design, or they have loads of space for music. Mechen’s angle is to go for breadth instead of depth: it’s not just an MP3 player but a portable video player, a mini eReader, a little recording device and more.

However, to return to that Jurassic Park quote from the opening, Mechen has seemingly stuffed in lots of these features without making sure that they’re worth including in the first place.

File format support for both video and e-book functionality is incredibly limited, missing out on most of the standard files you’ll probably have in your library – and then, if you spend ages poring over a file converter to transform your library into a compatible one, you’ll still be viewing these videos or pages on an absolutely tiny display.

Similarly the touch-screen is a neat feature in an MP3 player this cheap, but the interface doesn’t seem to have been designed with a touch-screen in mind. Navigation beyond the main menu is annoying and hard, and in my testing I often just gave up and started listening to whatever music was already in front of me.

That’s not to say that the Mechen M3 is rubbish. It can record your voice and also audio from a device connected via the 3.5mm jack, which could be really handy in certain situations. It also has a design that’s surprisingly premium-feeling for its price.

And at the end of the day, this is an incredibly cheap MP3 player that… well, plays MP3s. So if that’s all you need, it’s fit for purpose – it’s just a shame about all the failed attempts at making it more than that to compete with the best MP3 players.

Mechen M3 review: Price and release date

• Costs $39.99 / £29.99 / AU$59.99
• Available since January 2024

The Mechen M3 is positioned at the low end of the MP3 player price scale: you can pick it up for $39.99 / £29.99 / AU$59.99, and often for between 10%-25% less thanks to frequent sales on Amazon.

At that price, you’re probably finding this MP3 listed alongside countless similar affordable MP3 players, all with similar feature sets and specs.

It’s a relatively new MP3 player, having only been listed on Amazon from early January, so it’s a little more up-to-date than some rival devices which stay listed on the site for years.

Mechen M3 review: Features

• 64GB memory, expandable to 128GB
• Offers video playback, eReader, FM radio, images and more...
• ...but only select file formats, which hampers functionality

There are an absolutely massive number of features offered by the Mechen MP3, including some that’ll have very particular uses for savvy users.

For starters, this ‘MP3 player’ lets you view a range of other file types beyond MP3s, and beyond audio ones in general. From the homepage you can see options for music, video, radio, photos and more.

Let’s start with the radio: if you’re using wired headphones, you can tune into FM radio and even record live radio onto the Mechen. Why wired headphones? Well it’s because they act as an antennae, so you won’t be able to use Bluetooth connectivity for the radio.

The Mechen offers the ability for you to watch videos you’ve uploaded… with the massive caveat that they have to be AVI or AMV file types. That means the most common file formats like MP4, MOV, FLV and WMV are all out the window. I found an AVI file to test, but for some reason it still wouldn’t play on the device.

This same issue affects the eReader functionality. Almost all the standards are out: no PDF, no EPUB, no CBR, no MOBI, obviously none of the Kindle file formats. Instead, all you can read is TXT files, like what Notepad creates – my lengthy eReader library features exactly none of this type of file.

Mechen has also put in a voice recorder into its M3, so you can leave yourself voice notes or record meetings, but it’s expanded that in a neat way. If you connect a music-playing device to the Mechen via a 3.5mm - 3.5mm audio cable, you can record from that other device straight onto the Mechen.

In theory that’s great, though as always there are some kinks. If you’re recording set audio, you need to manually make sure it’s synced up. Plugging the Mechen to your device overrides the audio-out so, if you’re trying to record a call, you won’t actually be able to hear what the other person is saying. Plus, there are plenty of legal questions that’ll depend on your region and app; for example, Spotify bans the recording of songs in this manner.

What’s left on the homepage? There are stopwatch, calendar, alarm and theme-toggling options which all do what you’d expect.

The Mechen has Bluetooth functionality, so you can connect it to speakers, headphones or earbuds if you’d rather use them than wired audio. Curiously Mechen’s website lists the device as supporting Bluetooth 5.0 but Amazon bumps that to Bluetooth 5.3.

By default there’s 64GB on-board storage on the Mechen, which is a decent amount for the price. Using a microSD card you can bump that up by 128GB storage, which allows for loads of music, video or text files.

In terms of battery life, Mechen generally states 500mAh without giving a figure on how much entertainment this actually is; that’s because it’ll depend on what kind of format you’re using. I managed to get through many hours of music streaming without the battery dropping much, but battery use will increase a lot if you’re mainly looking at videos or reading with the display always on.

• Features score: 2.5/5

Mechen M3 review: Sound quality

• Neutral sound though with some peaking
• In-box headphones aren't great

The M3 plays a few different file formats including MP3, WAV, FMA and FLAC, all pretty standard options. There’s no on-board equalizer so you’re going to have to listen to what you get.

Your sound will mostly depend on which headphones you decide to use alongside the Mechen M3; as a word of advice I’d tell you to avoid using the in-box ones because they sound absolutely terrible. The M3 also has a built-in speaker but this sounds even worse – don’t use it!

Generally speaking, the Mechen M3’s sound is fairly neutral. It tends ever so slightly towards treble over bass, but not so much that it’ll annoy anyone with particular tastes.

I did notice some peaking across the board, and on headphones that really shouldn’t be exhibiting it, so I imagine audiophiles won’t be impressed by the audio capabilities of the M3.

• Sound quality score: 3/5

Mechen M3 review: Design

• Small body but heavy
• Premium design with glass body
• Five different color options

The Mechen M3 is quite small as MP3 players go – this isn’t a massive smartphone-replacement that’ll burn a hole in your pocket. It’s just 1 cm thick, 5 cm in width and  7cm tall, which makes it roughly one third the size of my smartphone.

I’ve felt lighter MP3 players though. It tips the scales to the tune of 87g, in part thanks to its glass and metal build which feels pretty premium for a low-cost device like this. While glass tech gadgets can be a little fragile, a silicon case included in the box will let the device survive a drop or two.

The earlier comparison to a smartphone stands for lots of the device’s design: it has a small screen on the front with a fairly thick bezel and chin, a volume rocker and power button on the right edge above the USB-C port, a microSD card slot on the left edge and a 3.5mm headphone jack on the bottom. Squint, and this is basically a smartphone.

That display is 2.4-inches across diagonally, with a resolution of 240 x 320, and unlike many same-price rivals it’s a touch screen. It’s not especially bright, but it’s fit for purpose if you’re not using it in direct sunlight.

Mechen offers five color options for the M3: black (as you can see in the review pictures), light blue, pink, purple and red. There’s no difference in these devices beyond the color.

While the premium-looking design sets the Mechen 64GB apart from some similar-priced rivals, the lack of portability consideration like a gap for a strap or lanyard, or a holding clip, does make the device a little awkward to carry around. It’s small enough to totally disappear in your pocket after all!

• Design score: 4/5

Mechen M3 review: Usability and setup

• Plugs into PC with USB-C cable
• Main menu is easy to navigate...
• ...but further menus aren't

The Mechen is pretty easy to set up, but when uploading your files, you’ll need to make sure you have your library in order.

That’s because when you plug the device into your PC, you need to upload different types of file into different areas: eBooks needed to be added to one folder, music to another, pictures to a third and videos to a fourth. You can’t just drag and drop your entire library into one area and expect it to work. It’s not an overly complex task, you just need to make sure your library isn’t one massive list of all the various file formats.

Initially, navigating the M3 is a breeze. Basically everything you need is housed in one of two menu screens, which you can swipe between like the most barebones smartphone in the world. Everything is clearly labelled and easy to find.

It’s when you get into long menus of tracks that things can be a little complicated. Arrows at the bottom let you move one option forward or backward, but if you’ve got hundreds of artists to sift through, that could take a while. Swiping up and down sometimes jumps through pages, but sometimes just didn’t do anything.

If I have another one small gripe, it’s that sometimes the options can be a little small; I’ve got pretty average-sized hands and I often mis-clicked and selected a different option than I intended to.

• Usability & setup score: 3/5

Mechen M3 review: Value

• Best considered solely as MP3 player
• Design feels very premium

Whether you’re just looking for an MP3 player, or an all-in-one mini entertainment device, the Menchen MP3 offers you great value for money.

Despite being very cheap, the Mechen doesn’t feel like a tacky Amazon-filler; it has an impressive number of features for a device so affordable.

• Value score: 4.5/5

Should I buy the Mechen M3?

Buy it if...

Don't buy it if...

Mechen M3 review: Also consider

How I tested the Mechen M3

• Three-week testing period
• Pop, rock, classical and spoken word music tested
• Used at home, in office and on walks

I tested the Mechen M3 alongside several other MP3 players, and it was the last I reviewed, so it enjoyed a three-week testing period.

For the majority of the testing time, I used the Mechen M3's in-box headphones and also the Sony WH-1000XM3s (via Bluetooth and wired). Most of the testing was done listening to music, with a range of genres tested, but I also tried listening to the radio, recording audio from my phone, watching videos and reading eBooks. Not all of these features worked due to file format issues.

As stated I tested the Mechen alongside some of its rival and I have a five-year history of testing various gadgets for TechRadar.

• First reviewed May 2024
• Read TechRadar's reviews guarantee

HiFi Walker H2: Four-minute review

The HiFi Walker H2 has carved out a very unique spot itself in the portable media players market. When it comes to MP3 players or digital audio players, the space between the super-cheap Amazon-flooding options and the super-premium bank-account-draining high-end best MP3 players is a no-man’s land. Into that desolate area strides the HiFi Walker H2, which is lovely and premium in some aspects and startlingly rough in others.

HiFi Walker is a Hong Kong-based tech company that, according to its website, only seems to make four products: a bone conduction headphone, an MP3 player carry case, a touch-controlled MP3 player and this, the HiFi Walker H2. I’d put money on the fact that you heard about this device on Amazon, or another shopping website, when looking for a new MP3 player.

So, should you pick up the HiFi Walker H2? Well, that really depends on what you’re looking for. If you’re looking for an alternative to the kinds of feature-flush digital audio player that make up our list of the best MP3 player, then the HiFi Walker H2 might be your best option that doesn’t cost an eye-watering four-figure sum.

The device supports a wide range of audio file types including MP3, WAV, AAC, FLAC and WMA, with a Texas Instruments-made DAC that’s a favorite amongst audiophiles and an on-board equalizer so you can tweak your sounds depending on your tastes and ears.

With two 3.5mm headphone ports, you can plug in headphones or connect the player to your home sound system or vehicle stereo; there’s also Bluetooth compatibility so you can stream wirelessly to other devices or from your smartphone using Qualcomm aptX. The HiFi Walker really ticks as many connectivity options as it can.

If you just care about your listening experience to the exclusion of everything else, then, this is a great device that far undercuts similarly-featured rivals. But that’s at a big expense: in almost every other department, the HiFi Walker is a bit of a dud.

Take the battery life, for example: the device lasts for roughly 10 hours of listening before going flat (a figure which is even lower if you’re listening via Bluetooth). For some people, that’s not even a full working day of listening, and it’s much less than the vast majority of the device’s rivals.

The design is another area that needed a second draft: it’s basically a big bulky block. The glass rear picks up fingerprints quicker than a crime scene investigator and the device weighs down your pocket like a big rock.

Perhaps the most questionable area is the software though, which would be most aptly described as ‘harebrained’. Over the course of my testing the HiFi Walker, I never quite worked out how to get around in a manner beyond ‘pressing random buttons to see what happens’. Sometimes pressing ‘back’ from a song menu will take you onto the music player, other times it’ll take you one step back in the menu list. I could never work out if I should play songs from the ‘explorer’ menu or ‘category’. There are two different settings menus with options randomly scattered between the two.

All of the above is to say, the HiFi Walker H2 has plenty of rough edges, and so it’s really only worth considering if you need great audio and the only cost you care about is the financial one.

HiFi Walker H2 review: Price and release date

• Costs $149 / £129 (roughly AU$230)
• Not the cheapest, but pretty cheap

The default price of the HiFi Walker is $149 / £129 (roughly AU$230) but you likely don’t need to reach that far into your wallet; at the time of writing, the device is on sale for $120 / £105 (roughly AU$200) and its price seems to fluctuate between these prices, sometimes going even lower.

At that price, this certainly isn’t the cheapest MP3 player we’ve ever tested, and there are options at the mid-two-figures mark that are certainly worth buying if you’re looking for a simple and portable music player.

However some DAPs (digital audio players) on the market go for eye-watering four-figure sums, and a brief perusal of our list of the best MP3 players shows plenty of much more expensive rivals. The HiFi Walker holds its head against some of those, making a decent case as to its place as a budget alternative.

If you see a pricier device on sale, that’s actually the HiFi Walker H2 Touch, a touch-screen version that’s about $20 / £20 more expensive and is different in a few ways. That’s not the device being tested for this review.

HiFi Walker H2 review: Features

• 10-hour battery life max
• Onboard equalizer is handy
• Two 3.5mm ports and Bluetooth connectivity options

According to HiFi Walker, the battery life of the H2 is 10 hours of use. Some of you may be wondering something to which the audio-tech-heads already know the answer: no, that’s not very long at all. It’ll be fine for listening at home or on short walks, but don’t expect to take it on long holidays (unless you’ll spend lots of time near a charging port).

I should also mention that users online have reporting a use time that’s somehow even shorter, closer to 8 hours. I tested using wired headphones and 10 felt like a more appropriate estimate, but if you rely on Bluetooth for your listening, this 8-hour figure is probably more apt.

So what features does the HiFi Walker H2 have on board? The first, and perhaps most important, is an onboard equalizer to let you tweak the sound of your music to your ears.

There are various presents including rock, jazz and ‘classic’ (presumably classical), but you can also jump into a custom mode if you dare. This requires an adept understanding of the various navigation hiccups of the H2 (more on that later), but it gives audiophiles a lot of leeway to control their musical experience.

Otherwise, the H2 is distinctly feature-bare. There’s no support for non-musical file formats, no in-device recorder, and relatively little way to customize the device.

The HiFi Walker’s saving grace is its range of connectivity options, which should impress people with lots of gadgets. There are not one but two 3.5mm aux ports, so you can plug in headphones or a jack to connect it to your existing hi-fi systems, and it connects using Bluetooth not just to headphones but to a smartphone as well.

This is done using Qualcomm’s aptX, and it’s meant to let you pull through your phone’s songs onto your HiFi Walker to control it in an extra way… in theory. In practice, the H2 failed to pair with my phone on every occasion, so I never got to test the feature.

• Features score: 3.5/5

HiFi Walker H2 review: Design

• Giant black obelisk
• Heavy, but not too heavy
• Plenty of buttons across the body

The images that accompany this review aren’t screenshots from ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’. No, it’s the HiFi Walker H2, which is perhaps cosplaying as the famous monolith, in that it’s a big black rectangle. 

The device measures 5.6 x 1.5 x 8.9cm so it’s about average sized for a DAP: bigger than your cheap MP3 player but not as big as some of the chunky top-end models on the market. However with a weight of 150g it’s really showing its heft; this isn’t gadget you can idly chuck in your pocket or leave on your chest as you doze.

An interesting little design feature is the presence of a gap at the bottom-right of the face of the device, which seemingly looks like it’s for a lanyard or wrist grasp to attach to. One is not included in the box. 

It’s fair to say that the H2 has more buttons in more places than a Bop-It game. The top edge has the power button, the right edge has the volume rocker and an exposed microSD card slot, and the bottom edge has one USB-C and two 3.5mm audio ports.

On the front you’ve got a forward and backward button on the right edge, with a back button below them. To the left you’re looking at an iPad Classic-style scroll wheel with a pause/play button in the middle, and under that is the M button. If you press M during music playback, it brings up a list of options including the equalizer and the option to add the song to your favorites.

The screen measures 2 inches diagonally, with a resolution of 320 x 240. That’s almost fit for purpose – almost but not quite, and so album artwork is generally cropped off for its lower fifth when you’re listening to music. Unlike most rivals it’s not a touchscreen.

Instead, you’re using that scroll wheel to navigate menus. Thankfully it’s nice and responsive, with a little physical ‘click’ at every interval to indicate that you’ve scrolled onto the next option. This may be blasphemous to some, but I think I prefer it to the one on ye olde iPod!

No official IP rating has been provided for the HiFi Walker H2, so don’t take it in the bath with you.

• Design score: 3/5

HiFi Walker H2 review: Usability and setup

• Easy to add files via USB-C
• Memory card is technically external
• Confusing interface layout

Adding music the the H2 couldn’t be simpler: you plug it into your computer, drag audio files onto its window and disconnect the device. It couldn’t be simpler!

By default, the HiFi Walker H2 has 64GB memory for storage. I say “by default” instead of “on-board” as there is no on-board storage, and this 64GB is thanks to a microSD card lodged in the side of the device. Remove it and you can’t listen to music; you can swap it for a higher-storage option up to 256GB for more space though.

This could be really useful for people who really want to easily swap between, for example, their jazz cards, or their opera cards, or their pop-rock cards. However for the average user, this is just a potential tiny piece of tech to use — particularly because the card is literally poking out of the H2’s body, and you can eject it by pressing it.

If you find the thought of juggling microSD cards daunting, then maybe click off this review now, because the process of actually navigating the HiFi Walker’s menus is an absolute nightmare.

The user interface layout of this MP3 player is illogical and confusing. It’s easy to sum this up by pointing out one thing: there are four options on the main menu: ‘category’, ‘explorer’, ‘settings’ and ‘system settings’. To make that clear; the first duo are two different ways to scroll through your music library, the second duo are two different lists of settings.

So which of those options do you press in order to explore your library of songs? If you picked ‘explore’ you’re wrong, it’s category. What about to change the system-wide wallpaper? If you picked ‘system settings’, you’re once again wrong, it’s just ‘settings’.

The myriad buttons you have at your disposal are confusing too, not least because they seem to do different things. Sometimes when you’re in a menu, hovering over a song, the M button will add a song to your favorites. Other times it’ll prompt you to start a new playlist, and in some other circumstances it’ll just act like the ‘select’ button. Same as with the back button and foward/backward buttons too.

Honestly, navigation in general is a pain, and it took me a while to figure out how to get around the user interface — after two weeks of testing, I sometimes still get lost. If you own this product, here’s my helpful tip: pressing the power button once just turns off the screen, and you need to press and hold to turn the whole system off.

As a reviewer, I probably shouldn’t also gripe about spelling and grammar mistakes in the user interface… but as a writer, I’d be remiss if I didn’t bring that up too!

• Usability & setup score: 3/5

HiFi Walker H2 review: Sound quality

• Neutral sound
• Plenty of file formats supported

I’m going to give it to the HiFi Walker: this review has been fairly middling, but it’s ticking all the boxes when it comes to sound quality.

The player’s default sound quality is slap-bang neutral: don’t expect any booming basses or shrill trebles here. It’s inoffensive but lovely and balanced.

I say ‘lovely’ because the equaliser is right there: you’ve got a nice blank slate so you can tweak the sound to your heart’s content.

The H2 plays loads of different file formats; whether your library is saved in MP3, WMA, WAV, OGG, AIF, AAC or even DSD, you can play them on this device.

• Sound quality score: 4/5

HiFi Walker H2 review: Value

• Much cheaper than high-end audio players
• Pricier than budget MP3 players

If all you care about is listening to a range of audio file types on a range of devices, then the HiFi Walker H2 absolutely offers value for money; its price is a fraction of what you’d pay for many rival devices offering similar feature sets.

However if you just want a simple digital audio player so you can listen to tunes when out and about, the H2’s price just won’t be worth it when you consider all the rough edges in the user interface and design.

• Value score: 3/5

Should I buy the HiFi Walker H2?

Buy it if...

Don't buy it if...

HiFi Walker H2 review: Also consider

How I tested the HiFi Walker H2

• Two-week testing period
• Pop, rock, classical and spoken word music tested
• Used at home, in the office and on walks

I tested the HiFi Walker H2 using a range of headphones including Bluetooth-connected over-ears, wired in-ears and my running headphones. The testing was done simultaneously to several other MP3 players to give some context to it.

The music I listened to was largely classical but I also tested using rock, pop and hip-hop to get a wide mix of genres. This was mainly done in the H2's default sound state but I fiddled with the equalizer a little too.

I have over five years of experience under the belt testing gadgets for TechRadar which includes, in the audio space, speakers, over-ear headphones, earbuds and radios.

• First reviewed May 2024
• Read TechRadar's reviews guarantee

Majority MP3 Player: Two-minute review

The Majority MP3 Player shines for its simplicity in a world where MP3 players are trying hard to be your replacement smartphone, radio and Kindle all wrapped into one. 

The Majority MP3 Player is not trying to be the best MP3 player ever invented; it’s trying to be a simple music device for people who don’t have degrees in sound engineering. Created by British audio company Majority, this is basically the cheapest MP3 player on the market that you should seriously consider buying, found on Amazon by searching 'MP3 player' and sorting 'price: low to high'. And it wears that budget badge with pride.

The Majority MP3 is absolutely tiny, and very lightweight too, so it’s not going to drag a hole in your pocket like many of its rivals. Its plastic shell may seem ‘cheap’ to some, but it'll take drops and knocks better than delicate premium options, and contributes to its lovely lightness.

My favorite feature is the sports clip on the back, which firmly clasps the MP3 player to your clothes, bag or anything else. This was so handy for keeping the player held still while keeping it within arms’ reach (ie, not in a pocket), and also means you can take the player for a run or workout and clip it to your clothes, to exercise hands-free.

Design aside, there’s more to like here too: the player is simple to use (well, once you’ve got your head around some user interface quirks) and has a battery life that outstrips lots of the competition.

As you can imagine from the price, the Majority MP3 doesn’t exactly have all the trappings of its pricier rivals. You’re not getting a touchscreen, so you’ll have to rely on a fairly rudimentary button system to get around, and don’t expect to fiddle with an on-device EQ, watch videos or read audiobooks, or download any more than 128GB of music (or 16GB, without an SD card).

However if you’re simply buying a nice lightweight little gadget that lets you outsource your music listening to a non-smartphone device, sometimes you don’t need bells and whistles; you just need simplicity. And simplicity is something the Majority MP3 delivers in spades.

Majority MP3 Player review: price and release date

• Costs $35 / £30 (about AU$60)
• Available since March 2023 (according to Amazon)

As stated in the introduction, the Majority MP3 is one of the cheapest MP3 players on the market at the time of writing. How cheap? Uh – that’s a good question.

At the time of writing, Majority has two separate listings for the device on Amazon UK: £29.95 and £34.95, and I can’t for the life of me tell what the difference between the two is. I’d hazard a guess that there isn’t one. The expert tech minds at TechRadar have come to the conclusion that you should buy the cheaper one.

What about outside the UK? It's available on Amazon US for $35, in mercifully just one entry. There's no Australian availability, but these prices would translate to around AU$60.

Majority MP3 Player review: Features

• 16GB memory, expandable to 128GB
• Limited list of extra tools
• 34-hour battery life, lower if using Bluetooth

You can fit up to 16GB of music onto the Majority MP3 player, which the company estimates will take 4,000 songs to fill. If you buy a compatible SD card you can expand that by 128GB which will fit countless hours of music in MP3 format. The only file format officially supported is MP3 – no AAC or WAV support is listed here.

Despite being a simple device, the Majority does have a few extra tools that may come in handy. You can record audio notes, change your background, use a stopwatch or check a calendar (though I couldn’t find a way to add anything to it) and create folders and playlists on the device.

Some features that many other MP3 players have are missing here. You can’t streaming over Wi-Fi, sync with audiobooks services, watch videos, or tune into the radio, so you'll have to rely on whatever MP3 files you manually download. There’s also no way to customize your listening experience, beyond picking your chosen headphones carefully.

There's a 3.5mm jack for wired listening, or you can ditch cables and set up a Bluetooth connection, which lets you stream the MP3 files through some of the best wireless earbuds or one of the best Bluetooth speakers – though it’ll harm your battery life of course.

That battery life is 34 hours by default if you’re using wired audio, which is a fair bit longer than some competitors (many of our favorite MP3 players last between 15 and 20 hours). Charging takes three hours, done with an in-box USB-C cable.

• Features score: 2.5/5

Majority MP3 Player review: Sound quality

• Quality depends on audio files and headphones
• No extra features to improve quality

The Majority MP3 Player isn't one to buy if you're looking for a device that ekes all the sound quality it can out of your tunes.

Unlike some pricier rivals, the device doesn't come with an on-board equalizer and doesn't support higher-quality music file types, so this isn't a portable music player for audiophiles – MP3 only here. You could probably tell that from the price.

Music played on the device will depend a lot more on the files you upload and the headphones you use than the pedigree of the Majority, then.

For what it's worth, I tested with a range of music files and they sounded effectively as good on the Majority MP3 as on pricier audio players, my computer and my smartphone. 

The bass and treble were bright and distinct, though the mid-range was a little lost compared to on some rival devices. The sound quality will best suit runners, but won't impress people who care about high-quality music.

• Sound quality score: 2.5/5

Majority MP3 Player review: design

• Tiny and light plastic body
• Small touchscreen and buttons for controls
• Plastic 'sports clip' holds 

The Majority MP3 Player is a small plastic rectangle, with a teensie screen and control panel on the front.

The player is absolutely tiny; it’s the smallest of its ilk that I’ve tested by a fair amount. It measures 4.4 x 6.8 x 1.9cm / 1.7 x 2.7 x 0.8 inches (ignore Majority’s website or Amazon, which both offer the dimensions of the shipping box as that of the device itself!). To give you a sense of that size, you’d need to put three and a half in a row to cover up a dollar bill.

It weighs only 33g too, so it’s slight enough that you can pop it in a pocket or on your clothes and forget it’s there. This lightweight form is partly thanks to the small size but likely mainly thanks to the fact it’s plastic, a material that’s often associated with ‘cheap’ tech but is also very hardy. I dropped the MP3 player a fair few times and there’s not a scratch or mark upon it.

A distinctive design feature is the use of a ‘sports clip’ on the back of the body, which you can use to clip it onto anything you want. As per the name, I used it a lot when going for a run so I could go hands-free, and it stayed attached despite all the associated jostling and bouncing. When not running, I also liked to attach the player to my clothes instead of drop it in a pocket, which made for easy access when I wanted to change the tune or turn it off.

Around the edges of the device you’ve got a USB-C port for charging and plugging into a computer, a 3.5mm audio jack (headphones are included in the box but you can use your own), an SD card slot that supports up to 128GB expandable memory, a volume rocker and a ‘hold’ button which deactivates any of the other controls so you don’t accidentally press them. On the front of the Majority is the screen and five buttons: the main selection one, ‘M’ (for ‘music’), previous track, next track and back. These are all you’ll have when navigating the menus.

That screen is 4.8cm across with a resolution of 240 x 240, and it’s bright enough that you can see it in direct sunlight. With those specs, it’s fit for purpose but won’t wow you with its fidelity, so I’m not exactly heartbroken that you can’t watch videos on the device. When you’re listening to music, a clock sometimes appears to tell you the time, but I could never figure out the rhyme or reason for it showing up or the Majority simply defaulting to a black screen; it felt pretty random.

• Design score: 4/5

Majority MP3 Player review: usability and set-up

• Plugs into PC using USB-C cable
• Navigate with physical buttons
• User interface can be a little confusing

Downloading music onto the Majority MP3 Player is incredibly easy. You don’t need to fuss over different folders or settings; plug the player into your computer, select ‘Transfer’ on the player, and simply drag any of your music you want into the player’s folder. No, you don’t need to put it in a certain place on the folder or upload it in a certain way; throw it all in there and it’ll sort itself out. Easy!

Finding the music on the device itself may be a little trickier. You can use the forward and backward buttons to scroll forward and backward in the list, and the central one to select an option. 

Back, as you imagine, takes you back, but only one menu, so if you want to return to the player’s main menu then you’ll just have to smash the back button loads of times. And want to pause or switch tracks while you’re listening to music? You’ll have to navigate all the way back to the main menu, and then forward into the music options to find ‘Now Playing’, as there’s no simple way to jump to the music player.

I got used to the navigation after a while, but it did take a little learning. Another gripe I had is that the player takes a few seconds longer to turn on or off than I’d have liked (both are performed by pressing and holding the central button). That’s also true of turning on and off the controls hold option; you have to wait a few seconds for an animation to play out, so changing volume or skipping tracks isn’t as quick as you’d hope.

• Usability & setup score: 3.5/5

Majority MP3 Player review: value

• MP3 player right at the lowest of the low end of the market
• Does what it promises, and only a little more
• Faults are easily forgiven at this price

If you’re looking for value for your money, you can’t find a better device than the Majority MP3 Player, and that’s simply because it’s so cheap.

You can spend literally thousands on an MP3 player if you want top-end features and audio, but Majority has gone for the opposite side of the spectrum, and you know what? You still get the same core function of playing MP3 files. 

Being unable to play hi-res music or watch videos really won't be an issue for anyone looking for something this cheap, and the storage is sufficient for its purpose. I really can't fault it for its value.

• Value score: 5/5

Should you buy the Majority MP3 Player?

Buy it if...

Don't buy it if...

Majority MP3 Player review: Also consider

Majority MP3 Player review: how I tested

• Two-week testing period
• Pop, rock, classical and spoken word music tested
• Used at home, in office, on walks and on runs

I tested the Majority MP3 Player using its provided headphones (though obviously you can upgrade to some of the best wired headphones for an improvement), and I paired it using Bluetooth to the Earfun Wave Pro and the OneOdio OpenRock S headphones to see how it measured up.

Musically, I loaded it up with a testing playlist of rock, pop and post-rock, and also used it to stream lots of running music and classical. As you can tell I used it on runs as well as when at home, in the office and on walks.

The testing period for the Majority MP3 Player was roughly two weeks, and I was able to compare it directly with two other similar devices: the Mechen 64GB and HIFI Walker.

• First reviewed May 2024
• Read TechRadar's reviews guarantee

Could your phone also be your hi-res music player? Moondrop certainly thinks so. The firm teased on social media that it is working on its very first phone but looking at the specs it's touting, this isn't just any phone but an audiophile-friendly phone with parts from the best MP3 players. 

In a world where even a 3.5mm jack plug is increasingly rare, Moondrop's upcoming phone stands out for its audiophile credentials. It has a 4.4mm output for the best wired headphones and high quality circuitry for hi-res audio.

Moondrop specialises in audio devices such as high-end headphones and DACs – you may have remembered when we reported on the launch of its DiscDream audio player for CDs – and its vision is to combine that expertise with the smartphone smarts of Android firms.

The phone, currently codenamed MIAD01, will be pretty to look at as well as listen to. It's got a 6.7-inch OLED display with 1080p resolution and 120Hz refresh rates as well as what Moondrop says is a "first-class audio-visual experience".

Moondrop MIAD01: key features

The key features here are of course the audio ones. According to Moondrop, the phone has a 4.4mm fully balanced output as well as a 3.5mm one, with the latter most likely via an adapter to fit the 4.4mm output; a "flagship decoding chip"; a low-dropout power supply; and a gold-sinking audio circuit.  

One way in which this phone differs from other Androids like Google Pixel is that round the back of the phone, where there's a protruding section that includes the camera lenses that look similar to what you'd see on the OnePlus Nord CE 3 Lite. According to Android Police, that lump is most likely there to house the extra audio circuitry for the 4.4mm output and to provide sufficient space in which to isolate the audio circuitry from potential interference.

So far all we've got to go on are professionally produced teaser images and the specifications detailed above – as yet there is no indication of a launch date or a price. But on paper at least this sounds like it could be a really interesting option for Android music fans who'd rather not carry a phone and a separate music player when they're out and about. It'll be really interesting to see, or rather hear, if this new phone can deliver the audio excitement it seems capable of.

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• Hidizs’ cheap hi-res player and earbuds just shouldn't be this good for the money
• Astell & Kern A&norma SR35 review: hardly an entry-level Hi-Res music player

Some ideas are just bad. From "shall we bring back dinosaurs from fossil DNA?" to "shall I go down into the cellar of this spooky house to investigate those noises alone?", there are plenty out there. But wise heads don't always prevail, so when Moondrop thought to bring back the portable CD player, it made sure to bring on board an engineer that had worked on Sony's original Discman. This time around, it's called the DiscDream and it's a lot more high specced than the retro portable CD players you might be remembering.  

This isn't the first time we've seen old audio tech brought back to life. Fiio brought the Walkman back at CES last month. But while I'm someone who loves retro tech, I'm also old enough to have experienced its downsides first-hand – and portable CD players were rubbish because CDs and motion don't go together. We don't have vinyl decks in our cars for similar reasons.

The DiscDream is slightly different, though, and one reason for that is that it isn't just a CD player. It also has an SD card so you can use its built-in digital audio player – like one of the best MP3 players – to play your digital audio files without worrying about anything skipping. The CD bit here is intended for stationary use, and it's a lot higher spec than any audio player that used to get bashed about on the school bus. 

What the DiscDream brings to the CD player party

The DiscDream was reportedly designed by a 30-year Sony Discman veteran, who redesigned the player to meet the more demanding requirements of modern audiophiles. There's a 32-bit MasterHiFi Cirrus Logic decoder and three audiophile-spec oscillators for accurate timing, what the manufacturer says is a top-grade motor drive, and a shock-absorbed laser head. The 3,500mAh battery feeds six independent power supply chips and the headphone out has its own amp with a claimed 115dB output and 0.00037% harmonic distortion.

The digital audio player supports a lot of the latest hi-res audio codecs, including APE, FLAC, LL-AAC, MP3, OGG, and WMA, from a memory card. Moondrop's DiscDream can also stream up to 384kHz PCM and up to 11.2896MHz DSD from your PC via USB-C.

The price isn't bad – it's $199 in the US – but if you want one you'll need to provide your own set of headphones, and to be patient: some pre-order customers are apparently still waiting for delivery of DiscDreams they ordered in September, and MOONDROP's retail partner Shenzhen Audio is not currently accepting new orders until "all pre orders [are] shipped out".

You might also like

• Streaming music is broken – here's why it's made me fall in love with vinyl
• The CD turns 40: why I love (and hate) playing music on compact discs
• Why I'm keeping my iPod Classic even though Apple's killed the iPod for good

Astell & Kern A&norma SR35: two-minute review

If you came here looking to buy into hi-res audio for a song, you’ve come to the wrong place. This may be Astell & Kern’s most affordable digital audio player, but the A&norma SR35 nevertheless represents a significant investment – and, what’s more, an investment that strongly suggests you should spend pretty big on headphones too.

The good news, though, is that it’s completely worth it. The A&norma SR35 is easily one of the best MP3 players on the market (and in terms of file support, even to call it such a thing is to do it a disservice). From the understatedly lavish nature of its build and finish to the in-no-way-understated nature of its specification, there seems no apparent compromise where the SR35 is concerned. 

Quite obviously, Astell & Kern set out to wipe the floor with any and all price-comparable competitors when the SR35 is considered as an overall package – and that’s what it’s done.

This player is nice to hold, simple and logical to operate, and a pleasure to listen to. Sonically, it’s very accomplished indeed, with the sort of all-court game that not only makes your smartphone sound like someone playing music in the next train carriage, but puts some quite well-regarded (but inevitably less expensive) dedicated digital audio players into sharp perspective too. 

Astell & Kern A&norma SR35: Price and release date

• Priced $799 / £799 / AU$1,299
• Released May 2023 

The Astell & Kern A&norma SR35 is on sale now, and in the United Kingdom it will cost you £799. It’s yours for $799 in the US, while in Australia you’ll need to part with AU$1,299.

Only in Astell & Kern-land can this be considered ‘entry-level’ – being one of the company's most affordable products in a range is not the same as being authentically ‘affordable’.

For context, the company's flagship offering, the fabulous A&ultima SP3000, will set you back an eye-watering $3,699 / £3,799 / AU$5,499. At the other end of the scale, its November 2021-issue excellent Astell & Kern A&norma SR25 MKII is now available for a little less than the newer SR35, at around $749 / £699 / AU$1,099. The difference in ticket price is negligible, especially when you factor in the age of the SR25 MKII. 

All of which is a roundabout way of saying that the SR35 had better be something pretty special to justify that price-tag…

Astell & Kern A&norma SR35 review: Features

• Quad Cirrus Logic CS43198 DACs
• 64GB of internal memory
• Three headphone sockets

Like I said, it’s only possible to describe the A&norma SR35 as ‘entry level’ when you’ve digital audio players costing the thick end of four grand in your line-up. Because make no mistake, Astell & Kern has specified this player well in excess of what you might reasonably expect of the ‘entry level’. 

Amplification, for instance, is provided by a new in-house A&K design called ‘New Generation AMP’. Digital-to-analogue conversion is handled by no fewer than four Cirrus Logic CS43198 DAC chips – and if you’re trying to eke out battery life, or listening to less than fully hi-res content, the SR35 can run in ‘dual-DAC’ mode instead. This hardware is part of Astell & Kern’s ‘Teraton Alpha’ platform, designed to minimise noise, maximise performance and offer what the company casually calls ‘ultimate sound’. ‘Teraton Alpha’ has featured in Astell & Kern players before now, but only the much more expensive ones.

There are wired and wireless connectivity options here, of course. Wireless stuff runs to dual-band wi-fi (handily, the SR35 is ready to download and run numerous music streaming service apps like Apple Music, Qobuz and TIDAL – and it’s Roon Ready too) and two-way Bluetooth 5.0 (with aptX HD and LDAC codec compatibility). The USB-C socket on the bottom of the chassis can be used to transform the SR35 into a DAC (if you want to use it to deal with content stored on, for example, a laptop computer), as well as being the way to charge the internal battery.

Battery life is very dependent on how you’re using the player. Listen to 16bt/44.1kHz CD-standard content at moderate volume using wired headphones, and you should expect 20 hours or so of playback. Switch up to some properly high-resolution stuff, at big volumes, using wireless headphones, and that figure will reduce by over 50 percent. Charging from ‘flat’ to ‘full’ takes around two-and-a-half hours.   

Wired headphones can be plugged into one of the three headphones sockets on the player’s top edge. There’s an unbalanced 3.5mm output, of course, and there are 2.5mm and 4.4mm balanced alternatives – because, as I said, this device is only nominally ‘entry level’.

Internal memory is 64GB. The operating system eats into this just a little, of course – and if you’re loading in big high-resolution files, it’s not going to be long before that’s all used up. There’s a microSD card slot next to the USB-C on the device’s base, though, and it can accept cards of up to 1TB. Which should last you a little longer.

• Features score: 5/5

Astell & Kern A&norma SR35 review: Design

• 108 x 64 x 16mm (HxWxD)
• 184g
• Angular and aluminum

No, at 108 x 64 x 16mm (HxWxD) this isn’t the smallest digital audio player you’ver ever seen, and at 184g it’s far from the lightest around. But believe you me, by Astell & Kern standards the SR35 is compact and lightweight. 

Some of this is explained by everything that’s going on inside, of course. But it also doesn’t do to understate Astell & Kern’s desire to ‘design’ all their products to within an inch of their lives. The SR35 is built mostly of aluminium, and its chassis is so complicatedly angular that the device’s 3.6in touchscreen has to sit at an angle to fit between all the pointy edges. 

It’s equally true to say that A&K doesn’t compromise when it comes to build quality either, though. The A&norma SR35 is beautifully made, impeccably finished, and has genuine credentials as a ‘luxury accessory’ almost as obvious as it does as a ‘very nice digital audio player’.

• Design score: 5/5

Astell & Kern A&norma SR35 review: Sound quality

• Lovely tonal balance 
• Scale and dynamism to spare
• Iron fist and velvet glove in equal measure

You may own some downloaded audio files you wish to load onto the SR35’s internal memory. You may be a top-tier subscriber to a properly worthwhile streaming service like Qobuz or TIDAL (or both). You may be the owner of some similarly expensive and appropriately talented headphones. If you are, then you’re good to go. 

And with everything I’ve already said about battery life (and how to maximise it) taken into consideration, it’s nevertheless safe to say you’ll end up needing to recharge the SR35 more often than you anticipate. This is one of those audio devices that will steal your time away, making even the most perfunctory ‘quick listen’ into a long and pleasurable session.

Even though the SR35 thrives on the best standard of content, it’s more agnostic than many alternative players. So while you should ideally be loading up on stuff like a 24bit/192kHz FLAC file of David Bowie’s Word on a Wing via TIDAL, the Astell & Kern is perfectly happy to tolerate a 320kbps Spotify stream of We’re in Love by Boygenius. In both cases, the sound this player makes is deft, musical and entertaining like you wouldn’t believe.

Low frequencies are authentically deep, loaded with texture and alive with variation, and so very well controlled that rhythmic expression is as natural as can be. At the opposite end, treble sounds bite and crunch with real purpose – but they carry plenty of substance along with them, so they’re never splashy or hard even if you like to listen at big volumes. In between, the soundstage the Astell & Kern generates is such that voices in the midrange have an absolute stack of space in which to stretch out and express themselves – and detail levels are such that every facet of a vocal performance, its attitude and intention, is made completely plain. 

The tonal balance is every bit as pleasant; it’s natural and convincing, and utterly smooth in its emphases from the bottom of the frequency range to the top. Detail retrieval is little short of epic, and the SR35 is able to identify and accurately contextualise even the most minor, most transient occurrence in a recording. It has the sort of barrel-chested dynamism that means the quietest moments in a recording contrast with the loudest in the same way night contrasts with day. And it’s just as attentive to the spaces and silences in a recording as it is to the sounds themselves – and it makes sure the silences are pitch-dark, too. 

‘Musical’ may seem like a redundant term when talking about a digital audio player, but not every DAP deserves the description. This one, though, is musical and then some.  

• Audio performance score: 5/5

Astell & Kern A&norma SR35 review: Usability and setup

• 3.6in 720 x 1080 hi-res touchscreen
• Adapted Android interface
• A few physical controls too

The A&norma SR35 sees the first appearance of Astell & Kern’s new crimson-and-black user interface – and the company is right when it says it’s easier on the eye and more straightforward to understand than the rather more sudden interface it replaces. And that’s just as well, because at 3.6in this is far from the biggest touchscreen around; users with fingers like His Royal Highness will need to be very careful indeed.

Astell & Kern is to be congratulated for not just porting over the full Android interface – after all, why take up valuable memory and processing power duplicating functions your smartphone is perfectly capable of dealing with? So this interface is familiar, but far more focused on what’s actually important.

This means that as well as the nuts-and-bolts of installing your preferred music streaming services, you can adjust the player’s audio output via a 20-band equaliser. You can rearrange the layout of playback controls. You can adjust screen brightness, set a volume limit, and toggle the USB mode between ‘media player’ or ‘DAC’. You can audition four different DAC filters and a few amp settings. And you can do plenty more besides – so if you’re the sort of end user who likes to get fully involved, the SR35 has you covered.

There are a few nicely implemented physical controls here too. The top right of the chassis features Astell & Kern’s trademark jewel-like volume control – it moves with very pleasing weight and resistance. On the top left, meanwhile, four little buttons take care of ‘power on/off’, ‘play/pause’, ‘skip forwards’ and ‘skip backwards’. A&K doesn't mark these buttons, that would upset the aesthetic. But you'll be listening so often, you'll soon get the hang of it. 

• Usability and setup score: 5/5

Astell & Kern A&norma SR35: Value

• A&K's entry-level player – but 'entry-level' is questionable at best
• Tech from models much higher up the food chain
• A&K's premium players cost quadruple the price, but still 

In absolute terms, the A&norma SR35 represents, at best, questionable value for money. 

That it is well-made and sounds excellent is not up for question, and it’s hard to argue with the user experience it offers too. But there’s no doubt you’re paying a premium for the industrial design that always sets Astell & Kern products apart.

• Value score: 4.5/5

Astell & Kern A&norma SR35: Should you buy it?

Buy it if...

Don't buy it if...

Astell & Kern A&norma SR35 review: Also consider

Astell & Kern A&norma SR35: How I tested it

• Myriad styles of music
• Lots of different file types and sizes
• A long listen (although not as long as I would have liked)

I plugged balanced and unbalanced headphones into the A&norma SR35, as well as wireless alternatives, and I used both in-ear and over-ear models. I listened to music from Arvo Pärt to Aretha Franklin and all points in between, and I listened to big, uncompressed FLAC files as well as indecently compressed stuff from Apple Music. 

Overall, I listened for what must have been a week or so – although it seemed much less than that when the time came to return the player to Astell & Kern… 

• First reviewed January 2024

• Read TechRadar's reviews guarantee

Astell & Kern A&ultima SP3000: One-minute review

The Astell & Kern A&ultima SP3000 is the most expensive digital audio player in a product portfolio full of expensive digital audio players. It’s specified without compromise (full independent balanced and unbalanced audio circuits? Half a dozen DACs taking care of business? These are just a couple of highlights) and it’s finished to the sort of standard that wouldn’t shame any of the world’s leading couture jewellery companies.

Best of all, though, is the way it sounds. It’s remarkably agnostic about the stuff you like to listen to, the sort of standard of digital file in which it’s contained, and the headphones you use too – and when you give it the best stuff to work with, the sound it’s capable of producing is almost humbling in its fidelity. Be in no doubt, this is the best digital audio player – aka best MP3 player – when it comes to sound quality you can currently buy. Which, when you look again at how much it costs, is about the least it needs to be. 

Astell & Kern A&ultima SP3000 review: Price and release date

• Priced at $3,699 / £3,799 / AU$5,499

The Astell & Kern A&ultima SP3000 (which I think we should agree to call ‘SP3000’ from here on out) is on sale now, and in the United Kingdom it costs a not-inconsiderable £3799. In the United States, it’s a barely-more-acceptable $3699, and in Australia you’ll have to part with AU$5499.

Need I say with undue emphasis that this is quite a lot of money for a digital audio player? I’ve reviewed very decent digital audio players (DAP) from the likes of Sony for TechRadar that cost about 10% of this asking price – so why on Earth would you spend ‘Holiday of a Lifetime’ money on something that doesn’t do anything your smartphone can’t do? 

Astell & Kern A&ultima SP3000 review: Features

• Bluetooth 5.0 with aptX HD and LDAC
• Native 32bit/784kHz and DSD512 playback
• Discrete balanced and unbalanced audio circuits

Admittedly, when Astell & Kern says the SP3000 is “the pinnacle of audio players”, that seems a rather subjective statement. When it says this is “the world’s first DAP with independent audio circuitry”, that’s simply a statement of fact.

That independent audio circuitry keeps the signal path for the balanced and unbalanced outputs entirely separated, and it also includes independent digital and analogue signal processing. Astell & Kern calls the overall arrangement ‘HEXA-Audio’ – and it includes four of the new, top-of-the-shop AKM AK4499EX DAC chipsets along with a couple of the very-nearly-top-of-the-shop AK4191EQ DACs from the same company. When you add in a single system-on-chip to take care of CPU, memory and wireless connectivity, it becomes apparent Astell & Kern has chosen not to compromise where technical specification is concerned. And that’s before we get to ‘Teraton X’... this is a bespoke A&K-designed processor that minimises noise derived from both the power supply and the numerous DACs, and provides amplification that’s as clean and efficient as any digital audio player has ever enjoyed. 

The upshot is a player that supports every worthwhile digital audio format, can handle sample rates of up to 32bit/784kHz and DSD512 natively, and has Bluetooth 5.0 wireless connectivity with SBC, AAC, aptX HD and LDAC codec compatibility. A player that features half-a-dozen DAC filters for you to investigate, and that can upsample the rate of any given digital audio file in an effort to deliver optimal sound quality. And if you want to enjoy the sound as if it originates from a pair of loudspeakers rather than headphones, the SP3000 has a ‘Crossfeed’ feature that mixes part of the signal from one channel into the other (with time-adjustment to centre the audio image) in an effort to do just that.

Features score: 5 / 5

Astell & Kern A&ultima SP3000 review: Sound quality

• Insightful, engaging and convincing sound
• Not too fussy about file sizes
• Only slightly fussy about headphones

Some digital audio players are quite picky about what goes into them and how it comes out again - but happily, the SP3000 is not among them. Obviously it performs to its fullest when given big, information-rich digital audio files to work with and is connected to appropriately talented headphones – but it’s not about to have a hissy fit if that’s not the case.

So no matter if you listen to a big 24bit/192kHz FLAC file of Old Man by Neil Young or a bog-standard 320kbps MP3 file of Cool About It by boygenius, the SP3000 is unflappable. It doesn’t matter if you connect £50-worth of Final Audio E3000 via the 3.5mm socket or a pair of £1299 Sennheiser IE900 into the 4.4mm socket, the Astell & Kern will make the best of the situation.

In each and every circumstance, the SP3000 is an uncomplicated pleasure to listen to. Its overall presentation is almost instinctively correct, positive without being pushy, and utterly convincing. 10 hours of battery life looks perfectly adequate when written down, but in practice it’s nothing like long enough. I could listen to this Astell & Kern almost indefinitely.

Detail levels are high in the same way that The Shard is tall. No element of a recording is too minor, too peripheral or too transient to elude the SP3000 - it extracts every scrap of information from a digital audio file and organises it confidently. There’s nothing uptight or fussy about the way this player puts you in the picture, though – everything is contextualised and serves only to ensure you’re fully informed. 

Control, from the top of the frequency range to the bottom, is unarguable. The attack and decay of bass sounds, in particular, is so well-managed that rhythmic expression is completely natural and momentum is maintained in all circumstances, despite the considerable weight and substance of the low end. There’s similarly well-supervised attack at the top of the frequency range, and in between the Astell & Kern communicates eloquently through the midrange.

Dynamic headroom is extensive, so big shifts in intensity and/or volume are made plain. Lower-key dynamic variations in voices or harmonics are made absolutely plain, too. Tonality is never anything but balanced and naturalistic, and the SP3000 knits the whole frequency range together smoothly. The soundstage it’s capable of generating is well-defined and expansive – even dense or complex recordings have more than enough elbow-room to let every element express itself without hindrance. And the SP3000 achieves this without losing sight of the fact that it’s presenting a performance – the unity and togetherness of its presentation is direct and unequivocal.    

You can fiddle around the edges of the way the Astell & Kern performs by investigating your DAC filter options, sure - but in broad terms, its methodology doesn’t really change. It’s precise and meticulous, but it's no dry tool of analysis. It hits very hard through the low frequencies, but it never gets bogged down under its own weight. It’s spacious and open, but it’s seamlessly unified. 

Sound quality score: 5 / 5

Astell & Kern A&ultima SP3000 review: Design

• 904L stainless steel chassis 
• 493g; 139 x 82 x 18mm (HxWxD)
• 1080 x 1920 touchscreen

‘Portable’, of course, is a relative term. The SP3000 is not the most portable product of its type around – it weighs very nearly half a kilo and is 139 x 82 x 18mm (HxWxD) – but if you can slip it into a bag then I guess it must count as ‘portable’. Its pointy corners count against it too, though – and while it comes with a protective case sourced from French tanners ALRA, the fact it’s made of goatskin is not going to appeal to everyone. 

To be fair, the body of the SP3000 isn’t as aggressively angular as some A&K designs. And the fact that it’s built from 904L stainless steel goes a long way to establishing the SP3000’s credentials as a luxury ‘accessory’ (in the manner of a watch or some other jewellery) as well as a functional device. 904L stainless steel resists corrosion like nobody’s business, and it can also accept a very high polish - which is why the likes of Rolex make use of it. I’m confident you’ve never seen such a shiny digital audio player.

The front and rear faces of the SP3000 are glass - and on the front it makes up a 5.4in 1080 x 1920 touch-screen. The Snapdragon octa-core CPU that’s in charge means it’s an extremely responsive touch-screen, too.  

On the top right edge of the chassis there’s the familiar ‘crown’ control wheel - which is another design feature that ups the SP3000’s desirability. It feels as good as it looks, and the circular light that sits behind it glows in one of a number of different colours to indicate the size of the digital audio file that’s playing. The opposite edge has three small, much less exciting, control buttons that work perfectly well but have none of the control wheel’s visual drama or tactile appeal.

The top of the SP3000 is home to three headphone sockets. There’s a 3.5mm unbalanced output, and two balanced alternatives – 2.5mm (which works with four-pole connections) and 4.4mm (which supports five-pole connections). On the bottom edge, meanwhile, there’s a USB-C socket for charging the internal battery - battery life is around 10 hours in normal circumstances, and a full charge from ‘flat’ takes around three hours. There’s also a micro-SD card slot down here, which can be used to boost the player’s 256GB of memory by up to 1TB. 

Design score: 5 / 5 

Astell & Kern A&ultima SP3000 review: Value

In absolute terms, of course, $3,699 / £3,799 / AU$5,499 for a digital audio player is nonsense. The law of diminishing returns is at work here as surely as it is anywhere else - and you can get a big serving of the SP3000’s talents by spending less than half of its asking price (mostly, but not exclusively, by spending it with Astell & Kern itself). But if you want absolutely, positively the best-sounding DAP around, and you are fortunate enough to be able to justify the cost to yourself, well, this player is currently number one in a field of one.

Should I buy the Astell & Kern A&ultima SP3000?

Buy it if... 

Don't buy it if... 

Astell & Kern A&ultima SP3000 review: Also consider

How I tested the Astell & Kern A&ultima SP3000

• Tested for over a week
• Tested indoors and out
• Tested with wired and wireless headphones

I loaded the internal memory of the Astell & Kern A&ultima SP3000 with quite a lot of high-resolution digital audio files, and I also installed the Tidal app – so ultimately I was able to lot of different types of music via a lot of different audio file types and sizes. 

I listened to the player in my home and while out and about (listening outdoors made me quite anxious at first, I don’t mind admitting – it’s an expensive device, after all). And I listened to it using a selection of wired and wireless headphones – generally, headphones able to do some justice to the SP3000’s unarguable quality. I mostly used the Sennheiser IE900 via the 4.4mm balanced input and the Bowers & Wilkins’ Px8 via Bluetooth. 

• First reviewed in December 2023

• Read TechRadar's reviews guarantee

Everybody loves the iPod, which perhaps explains why one of this week's top tech stories was the launch of some iPhone wallpapers that make your iPhone look like an iPod Classic. But if you're more interested in listening to iPods than looking at them, a new crowdfunder could be just the thing.

With an estimated price of $249, the Tangara music player is similar in price to the refurbished iPods recently sold by Urban Outfitters. But this is a brand new product, not an old one made good again. 

Unlike any iPod, the people behind it are also quite happy for you to customize it, take it apart, repair it, change its software or completely transform its inside and outside, which is not something the best MP3 players let you do. 

What does the Tangara music player deliver?

Beneath what looks like a highly sue-able exterior design somewhere between the original iPod and the iPod Photo, the Tangara can play MP3, FLAC, Opus and Ogg Vorbis and supports slightly better than CD quality – although not over Bluetooth, as that only has the very basic SBC audio codec. 

You're going to want a pair of the best wired headphones to get the best out of the music here. The 1.8-inch display is as low resolution as the Bluetooth, delivering just 160 x 128 pixels. Music is stored on a 2TB microSD card. While the Tangara looks like an iPod, it lacks the iPod's compatibility with AAC files – so if you have iTunes songs you want to listen to, you'll need to convert them first. 

One of the big draws here is that the hardware and software is open, so you can customize it or upgrade it as you see fit: there's a build-your-own option as well as the fully assembled version. As Crowd Supply, the firm behind the player, puts it, you can "tear it apart and put it back together again... experiment with alternative user-interface patterns, new types of content, tracker-based music production [and] much more". 

The crowdfunding campaign is about to launch in early 2024. You can register your interest here but in the meantime, you can download the open-source software and hardware details to start making your own.  

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It looks like tonight's Halloween outfit for me is going to be Barbie, specifically the "do you guys ever think about death?" version. That's thanks to Urban Outfitters, who are currently selling restored iPods. The bit that's making me think about death is that they're calling it "vintage retro tech".

Clearly, there's been some kind of mistake. Vintage retro tech is wax cylinders and wind-up record players, not the best MP3 players. I mean, it's not as if the iPod came out 22 years ago and is older than both my children, the entire recorded output of Taylor Swift and many people in the crowds at the concerts I still go to.

And to add insult to injury, the "vintage" iPods that Urban Outfitters are selling aren't even the oldest ones. Damn.

Why iPods are a big retro hit

The iPods that Urban Outfitters has been selling are fith generation iPods, which I know very well because I had those ones. I've had iPods from the very first one to the very last, the iPod touch that Apple finally killed off in 2022. They were brilliant things, and while getting music onto them now is a bit of a struggle – their connections are super-slow and most generations used the very obsolete 30-pin connector – the sound quality is potentially much better-sounding than the analogue tapes Gen Z has been buying from the likes of Billie Eilish.

For all their age, I think iPods are still very much worth having. I had an iPod classic in my car for years because it was a more affordable stereo upgrade than ripping out the in-dash ICE for something more current, and unlike the best music streaming services you don't have to pay a subscription to keep listening to your music. And the iPods were beautiful things.

But if you fancy one, you might be better giving Urban Outfitters a swerve. At $349, they're charging way over the odds for fifth generation iPods. And while they've currently sold out, there are plenty selling online on auction sites and other outlets. Just don't pay more than they're worth – and $349 is definitely more than any fifth generation iPod is worth.

Now if you'll excuse me I need to go shout at some clouds and yell at the kids on my lawn.

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• Apple officially retires the iPod
• Why I'm keeping my iPod Classic even though Apple's killed the iPod for good
• Gen Z is getting right what we Millennials got wrong about tech

The iPhone 15 Pro isn't the only high-end device to embrace titanium recently: Astell&Kern's SE300 hi-res audio player is now available in the super-tough metal too. The new SE300 Titan Edition uses aerospace-grade titanium to make it lighter and stronger than before. Titanium is more resistant to corrosion and, according to Astell&Kern, it delivers audio benefits too.

Here's the company's explanation: Because titanium can better withstand heat and electrical conductivity "this vastly reduces any temperature variations or electrical interference within R-2R DACS and analog amplifiers to produce the most natural, distortion-free sound possible". 

Will you notice the difference compared to the best MP3 players? I have no idea. But you'll definitely notice the difference in how it looks and how it feels. If you thought Astell&Kern's players were pretty premium already, titanium is even more metal. 

Astell&Kern SE300 Titan: key features

The exterior of the SE300 Titan is made in a five-axis, vibration-free CNC machine of the kind often used to make premium watches. It's been shaped by a combination of "six-axis control robots" and skilled engineers to create a "flawless" wave-like surface that's undeniably nice to look at. 

But of course, it's what's inside that really matters. And inside there's the same tech as the normal Astell&Kern SE300. So that's a R-2R DAC, a dual AMP mode with class A amplification and Astell&Kern's own Teraton Alpha tech to remove power noise and deliver consistent, unwavering audio amplification.

The new Astell&Kern SE300 Titan has an RRP of £2,299 and is available directly from the company's own website or via its network of trusted retailers. If that's a bit of a stretch, Astell&Kern is currently discounting its SE180: it's selling for £999 on Amazon UK, down from £1,869. There are also big discounts on the desktop amp/player, the ACRO CA1000.

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• How to choose the perfect hi-res portable music player for you
• Hidizs’ cheap hi-res player and earbuds just shouldn't be this good for the money
• How to buy into high-res audio without the high prices

In hi-fi, as in life, compatibility is key. There's no point investing in a stunning Moon amplification system if you plan on hooking it up to a set of budget bijou bookshelf speakers. Springing for a set of premium Wilson Audio Alexia V towers if your pre- and power amp can't drive them to their fullest would be ill-advised. And signing up for a hi-res subscription to one of the best music streaming services if a $12 shower-friendly speaker is your only option for enjoying those detailed tracks would be a crying shame. 

But that's all easy, rudimentary stuff – horses for courses, right? Right. So what happens when you're considering some of the best wired headphones we've tested, but crucially to complement a particular model found in our best hi-res audio players guide? Here, price is still a marker of quality, yes, but there are myriad options at similar price points, all boasting wildly different designs and driver configurations (headphones) and various onboard DACs and quoted power outputs (players). 

This game takes work, patience and usually, advice from others. There are audiophile forums dedicated to it; I get around four emails about it per week (sorry if I haven't responded to all of them). 

Anyway, I have an easy and affordable solution to all of this. If a small and portable hi-res music system is what you chiefly need, but without the four- or even five- figure price tag, cast your eye over the Hidizs AP80 PRO-X portable music player and MS3 in-ear headphones.

Let's cut to the chase: this little system will cost you $169 / £199 (which is around AU$260) for the player and $119 / £149 (approximately AU$180) for the IEMs – a grand total of $288, £348 or around AU$440. And I think it's the best gateway setup to a lifelong hi-res audio love affair I've heard. 

Considering that our top-dog portable pièce de résistance player, the Astell & Kern A&ultima SP2000T, usually costs $2,399 / £1,999 / AU$3,599 (and that's before you've arranged a set of compatible earbuds or over-ears to make it sing) it's a mere drop in the hi-res ocean. 

Peak hi-fi involves persistence and patience

That sub-$300 figure sounds great, right? But that isn't your total spend, of course – it never is. That's because you'll also need music from somewhere and here it's important to note that the AP80 PRO-X does not have any onboard storage. So, unless you're happy just using this lovely little setup as a wireless DAC to your phone (and I wouldn't blame you! The AP80 PRO-X easily matches the portability, detail and punch of the Fiio BTR7, which is also splendid) you'll need a microSD card of up to 512GB to get music on to it. 

I used the SanDisk Ultra (about $40), and after much experimentation – this is peak hi-fi, and you've got to invest time as well as money – I found that I preferred the sound of Tidal Masters tracks on this player, rather than my collection of Flac files. 

But getting them on there requires two more steps, and you've got to want it if you don't have a smartphone that accepts microSD cards. You'll need to download a music converter app to a laptop – I used Sidify's Tidal converter, which costs $14.95 per month. It's a cinch to use and I adore the sound quality, but can you see where all our saved money is now going? 

Secondly, not all microSD cards are exactly the same build and width. Simply put, you need a good push with the supplied pin to make sure whichever one you have stays in. This may sound a small stumbling block, but when you've spent an hour toying with the software, selecting your road-trip playlists, and making sure all of the music is organized to your liking, popping the thing in the side of your cute little player, only to have it ping out and get lost under the coffee table (and worryingly, perhaps inside the cat) is vexing. 

Why am I suggesting that you persist with this folly? Because if you do, Hidizs' little system sounds so good at this level. 

Get it right and this Hidizs setup will reward you 

This player and in-ear headphones will give you up to 11 hours of playback on a single charge. For reference, Astell & Kern's excellent A&norma SR25 MKII will give you up to 20 hours, but that walks all over the company's A&ultima SP2000T, which promises only nine hours – so the humbly-priced Hidizs is holding its own against much pricier rivals. 

Some key specs? Of course. The AP80 PRO-X features dual DAC chips and supports hi-res PCM, DSD and MQA files, as well as Bluetooth connectivity including Sony’s LDAC codec and HiBy UAT (Ultra Audio Transmission), which promises 192kHz passthrough with a maximum 1.2Mbps data rate.

On this, the free lossless HiBy app can control the AP80 PRO-X from your phone once you've got music on the player, and this is something I'd recommend – even if you don't usually bother with such companion apps. Although the Hidizs' little 2.45-inch 480 x 360 touchscreen is responsive, clear and remarkably colorful in any light I've tried it (you can adjust brightness too), it is by design small – and given the choice, I'd much rather deal with options such as the Bluetooth codec section in Settings (including LDAC variants, AptX and UAT) from my phone. 

But this is about two products, not one! The Hidizs MS3 headphones look and feel much more expensive than they are. They feature a shell cavity and panel made of aviation-grade aluminum alloy, and tote a 10.2mm dynamic driver with dual magnetic circuits and a bio-nanofibre composite diaphragm.

Entry-level IEMs that sound as good as this are rare

And look at all those tips and accessories! The MS3 IEMs feature little pneumatic sound-tuning filters, so you can tweak the sound of audio to taste physically, as well as within the settings. And that's not all: by changing the direction of the airflow, the MS3 headphones boast three different tonal signatures. Hidizs recommends ‘balanced’ for most music, ‘hi-frequency’ for jazz and classical, and ‘low-frequency’ for the heavier stuff. Even if you don't ever play with them, this represents incredible value. 

And what you really need to know is that the MS3 headphones are easily (easily!) powered and celebrated by this player. Switch out the IEMs and I simply don't like the overall performance anywhere near as much. These in-ear monitors are comfortable and secure too. Would they feature in our best wired headphones buying guide if this were a dedicated review? That is a more delicate matter involving compatibility to a range of devices. What I am saying is that if you buy the Hidizs AP80 PRO-X player I urge you to buy the MS3 to go with it; you won't regret it. 

Previously, I've advised spending more for a premium player if you possibly can, but in today's financial climate sometimes that simply isn't possible is it? And this setup is better than the sum of its parts.

I have spent happy hours playing with the rotary dial in the top-right corner of this beautiful little particular player (yes, it does remind me of Astell & Kern's design language), and glancing at its little screen to see the resolution of my music, even if I'm using it simply as a wireless enhancement to streamed music on my phone. 

Juicy, foreboding bass loops in Jamie T's Keying Lamborghinis are forceful, snappy and encompassing even at 50% volume, but the keys are sparkling and the vocal is three-dimensional. Sonic articles (and when Jamie screams "Oohaa!") feel as if they jump out to the edges of my auricle. The album continues to St. George Wharf Tower and the electric guitar is more pensive, detailed and fleshed out than I remember – and I swear I hear something being dropped in the mix (a cable?) I never heard before. 

Can you tell that I like this particular partnership, despite the player's particularities and foibles? I mean, I still love my iPod Classic 16 years on, but in direct comparison there's no contest for sound… 

Sony NW-A306: Two-minute review

Yes, there are some very good-sounding smartphones out there. But if you want the best mobile listening experience possible, you want a dedicated high-resolution digital audio player. These are often known colloquially as some of the best MP3 players, despite the fact that their talents go way beyond lossy compressed audio now. Trouble is, said hi-res players tend to be big and pricey, relatively speaking, which can limit their appeal. 

No such drawbacks apply to the Sony NW-A306. It’s small and light, despite the robust nature of its construction, and is priced to compete with the less well-known brands at the market’s entry level rather than the bigger hitters like FiiO and Astell & Kern. 

It’s not short of features or functionality though, and when listening to some hi-res audio content through some appropriately talented headphones, there’s an awful lot to enjoy about the way the NW-A306 sounds. Its talents are much less apparent when listening to less information-rich files, mind you, so you’ll need to be prepared to fill its (rather limited) internal memory with hi-res stuff if you want to hear what it’s truly capable of. 

Sony NW-A306: Price and release date

• Released in February 2023
• $349 / £349 / $AU499

The Sony NW-A306 has a small profile and a surprisingly small yet affordable price tag to match. It retails for $349 in the US, £349 in the UK and $AU499 in Australia, and is also available to purchase directly on Sony's site.

When considering that the top of the line Astell & Kern A&ultima SP2000T is priced at an eye-watering  $2,399 / £1,999 / AU$3,599, it's easy to to see how this entry-level digital audio player undercuts the competition – even the more reasonable Astell & Kern A&norma SR25 MKII at $749 / £699 / AU$1,099 is pricier still.

Sony NW-A306: Features

• Android 12 operating system 
• Wired and wireless connectivity 
• 32GB memory (but only 18GB)

Of course you’re interested in one of the best hi-res audio players because you want an audio experience that’s on another level to that served up by your smartphone. But that doesn’t mean you’re not interested in extended functionality, does it? Sony certainly doesn’t think so.

The NW-A306 is quite wide-ranging in the way it accesses hi-resolution digital audio content. It has internal memory storage, but it's also simple enough to either drag and drop digital audio files from, say, a laptop (or use something like Android File Transfer if your music’s on an Apple device). Bear in mind, though, that a lot of its 32GB of memory is taken up by the Android 12 operating system and what-have-you, so unless 18GB of memory – which is going to fill up pretty quickly if you have a lot of hi-res content you want to make available when off-line – is sufficient, then you’ll be making use of the microSD card slot on the bottom of the player. 

The device's Android interface gives you access to the Google Play store and so it’s no trouble to download the app of any of the best music streaming services for online listening. Integrated dual-band Wi-Fi makes this possible – the Sony digital audio player also features Bluetooth 5.0 wireless connectivity. It’s compatible with SBC, AAC, aptX HD and LDAC codecs, along with digital audio file compatibility that runs to MP3, WMA, FLAC, WAV, MQA, DSD256, Apple Lossless and more, making the NW-A306 unarguably a high-res device (Sony is coy about the details, but reading between the lines strongly suggests the NW-A306’s DAC chipset operates at a native 24bit/96kHz resolution).

No matter how you decide to get your digital audio information on board, though, and no matter its standard, it’s dealt with by ‘S-Master HX’ digital amplification that’s been specially developed for the rebirth of the Walkman. The latest version of Sony’s Digital Sound Enhancement Engine technology (DSEE Ultimate) is involved too. It intends to upscale compressed audio files in real time, and even claims to be able to do a job on 16bit/44.1kHz CD-standard content too. Or you may prefer the questionable charms of the NW-A306’s ‘vinyl processor’, which adds some low-end resonance and surface noise to create an ‘authentic’ vinyl listening experience. Chances are, though, you’ll give such nonsense the swerve and use the extensive EQ adjustment options instead if you want to finesse the Sony’s sound. 

As far as battery life is concerned, the NW-A306’s stamina can vary greatly. The lithium-ion battery can last as long as 36 hours between charges – but that’s when listening to poverty-spec 128kbps MP3 files using one of the best headphones that's hard-wired. Switch up to some 24bit/96kHz content and that figure drops to 32 hours, and if you go all-in with DSD256 then you’re looking at a maximum of 14 hours. Your best-case scenario when using one of the best wireless headphones, meanwhile, is around 20 hours – and that’s when enjoying some 128kbps content.

• Features score: 5/5

Sony NW-A306: Sound quality

• Spacious, detailed and spirited sound
• Dynamic and pacy with hi-res content
• Somewhat struggles to deal with more compressed audio files

First things first, if you are likely to listen to compressed audio files (the sort of 256 / 320kbps stuff that Spotify deals in, for instance) through some ordinary wireless headphones, the Sony NW-A306 isn’t going to blow you away. Listen to it like this and it sounds no better than a half-decent Android smartphone, which renders it a pointless purchase.

If you do the right thing though – which means digital audio files of CD-standard 16bit/44.1kHz as a minimum from Apple Music or Qobuz, perhaps, and some properly accomplished wireless (or, ideally, wired) headphones – there’s an awful lot to like about the sound this digital audio player makes. In the right circumstances, it’s capable of sound quality that makes its price look like a misprint. 

A 24bit/96kHz file of Grapevine by Weyes Blood heard via a pair of Technics EAH-AZ80 – which we rank among our best earbuds – makes the point in some style. It’s a robust, full-figured sound the NW-A306 presents, but with no shortage of delicacy or deftness. The overall tonality is nicely balanced, and there’s no overstating or understating of any part of the frequency range. Integration is smooth, and the Sony  NW-A306 establishes a big, properly organised soundstage that has both depth and width.

Bass is deep, square-edged and punchy – and it’s controlled well enough that the NW-A306 has no problem giving rhythms believable, naturalistic expression. At the opposite end of the range, treble attacks crisply, with plenty of substance to complement the bite. And in every instance, detail levels are impressively high – the Sony has no problem handling the most minor and/or transient occurrences, and can identify and describe even quite subtle harmonic variations.

But it’s through the midrange that the NW-A306 does its most convincing and agreeable work. It’s an eloquent and revealing listen, with any number of interesting observations to make about a singer’s technique and attitude. And with a technician as warm and accomplished as Weyes Blood, the Sony communicates in torrents. No shred of information seems to elude it, and it manages to sound spirited and musical even though it’s getting through an awful lot of analysis.

The dynamic headroom is considerable. The NW-A306 can put a lot of distance between a recording’s quietest, most contemplative moments and its headlong charge into the crescendo. And in those tunes that require it, it’s never short of momentum. It’s an entertaining, entertaining listen, striking a pleasing balance between attack and insight.

Safe to say a lot of this expertise and positivity deserts the Sony if you step down to say a 128kbps file of Scott Walker’s Black Sheep Boy. Broad dynamics flatten out more than somewhat, while the more subtle second-stage dynamic insight all-but disappears. Detail levels fall away, and the entire presentation becomes less three-dimensional and, ultimately, much less convincing. So there’s a lesson here somewhere…   

• Sound quality score: 4.5/5

Sony NW-A306: Design

• 98 x 57 x 12mm (HxWxD)
• Weighs just 113g
• Milled aluminium frame

The first thing you’re likely to notice about the NW-A306 is how little of it there is. At just 98 x 57 x 12mm (HxWxD) and 113g, this digital audio player is small and light enough to slip into even the snuggest of pockets without a problem.

Somehow, though, Sony has managed to make this little player look and feel like a premium device. The milled aluminium casework is rigid and pleasant to the touch, and the ridged and rounded sides make it eminently grabbable. The 720p 3.6in TFT touchscreen is bright and sharp, if a little more reflective than is ideal, and the physical controls along one side are cleverly shaped – it’s easy to know what’s what without even looking.

Physical connections are all along the bottom of the player. There’s a 3.5mm headphone socket, a USB-C input and a microSD slot that can officially accept cards of up to 512GB (anecdotal evidence in those corners of the internet that concern themselves with such things, though, suggests that 1TB cards are compatible too). And there’s a recessed bar for attaching a lanyard or wrist-strap if you fancy. 

• Design score: 5/5

Sony NW-A306: Usability and setup

• A very smartphone-like experience
• Useful suite of physical controls 
• Mildly frustrating touchscreen

You’ve set up one of the best Android phones before, right? Well, setting up the NW-A306 is basically the same process. You’ll be prompted to switch onto your local Wi-Fi network, transfer any backed-up data from an existing Android device, integrate your Google accounts, and so on. How long it takes depends very much on how much like your Android smartphone you want your NW-A306 to be, but even at its most lengthy the set-up here is painless and almost entirely automated.

That’s just as well because for all its crisp legibility and brightness, the Sony’s TFT touchscreen isn’t the most responsive around. There’s a very specific sort of frustration brought on by pressing an on-screen button, waiting in vain for something to happen, pressing it again and then finding you’ve in fact issued two commands that will both be acted on. And it’s the sort of frustration the NW-A306 routinely deals in. Just try to bear in mind that it doesn’t take all that long to set up and once it’s done, it’s done. 

After that – and once you’ve reached an accommodation with the rather leisurely responses of the touchscreen – using the NW-A306 is pretty straightforward. I’m still yet to learn how to stop it having a panic attack every time I turn the volume past ‘50’, but in every other respect it’s logical in the way it operates inasmuch as it’s an Android device of the broad type we’re all familiar with. And the addition of a ‘hold’ button to disable the physical controls (which run to ‘play/pause’, ‘skip forwards/backwards’, ‘volume up/down’ and ‘power on/off’) is a very useful inclusion. 

• Usability and setup score: 4/5

Sony NW-A306: Value

As long as you’re prepared to indulge just a little, the Sony NW-A306 hi-res digital audio player represents very decent value for money. It’s small, but perfectly formed. Its operating system is familiar, if a little sluggish. It’s extremely capable with hi-res content, but rather less so with bog-standard stuff. And it’s just about the most affordable big-brand portable music players around.

• Value score: 4.5/5

Should I buy the Sony NW-A306?

Buy it if...

Don't buy it if...

Sony NW-A306: Also consider

• Read our complete guide to hi-res audio

Ah, vinyl, how dedicated hi-fi lovers adore you – and I humbly include myself in that mix. I covered the re-release of Audio-technica's iconic, 40-year-old red Sound Burger back in January, alongside its turn on the CES 2023 stage. 

And as with all icons of a certain age, we were told we'd have to wait for its arrival. We had to set our alarms. And today's the day! The Sound Burger is available in black and white from today (May 31, 2023) exclusively on Audio-Technica's website, priced at $199/ £199 / €229 / around AU$379 – only, if you're reading this now, you may already be too late in some territories. 

We should have known considering this bit of kit sold out in days when it initially came back to market last November, but you'd think its insane popularity might be waning by now. Not at all – in fact quite the opposite. 

AT re-issued the Sound Burger vinyl spinner to mark its 60th anniversary and it's not the first piece of updated history to be a smash hit: Naim is on a similar 50th-anniversary nostalgia trip, updating its 1973 power amp alongside a trio of hi-fi separates harking back to their 1970s original iterations. 

But just as Audio-Technica was utterly floored by the response to its original limited-edition re-release of the product, (now called the AT-SB727 and I admit, coveted by me when I saw it) I have to agree: who knew there was such continued demand for it long into 2023? 

Acknowledging the loud chorus of fans who are still hungry for tasty Sound Burgers, the company has at least announced that the product will also become available in a yellow finish (pictured, above) later this summer – so if you missed out this time, there's still a chance!

Opinion: they're retro-stylin' and perfect for condensed living arrangements

Gary Boss, Director of Marketing at Audio-Technica US, has said that while this re-issue "will not feature the 60th anniversary numbered badge, color, and packaging of the limited-edition version, it will be more widely accessible. We hope Sound Burger fans will be just as excited about this new model and that it will inspire the next generation of analog enthusiasts.” 

And clearly, they are. 

So is it the best affordable deck on the market? Well, for this money I might steer you towards the company's own AT-LP60XBT, one of the best turntables on the market at the money – but I'd also put in a good word for the Victrola Stream Carbon with Sonos compatibility. However, the Sound Burger is an affordable entry-level machine and it's almost certainly the coolest of the bunch. 

For those new to vinyl, it's a gateway to a deeper understanding of analog music too – and thanks to its new Bluetooth connectivity (Bluetooth in an early 80s product? Yes! It easily connects to Bluetooth headphones or speakers for up to 12 hours of wireless record listening) and compact, lightweight design, the Sound Burger is the perfect partner for condensed living arrangements. If you can get hold of one, that is.

It offers a belt-driven system that plays 33-1/3 and 45 RPM records. To achieve both portability and stability, the tonearm employs a dynamic balance system in which stylus pressure is applied via a spring. In addition, a "high-precision DC motor" promises to maintain stable rotation. Accessories include a 45 RPM adapter, RCA audio cable (3.5 mm male to dual RCA male), and USB cable for charging (USB Type-A / USB Type-C).

The stylus on the Sound Burger can be replaced with the ATN3600L (sold separately, for around $24 / £20 / AU$40) too, so it's a thing built to last. 

One final word of warning to anyone impatient to get their deck: remember those cute little vans that could 'drive' around your record playing music? Yes, you can still buy those. But I wouldn't. 

Look, I don’t want to throw any shade whatsoever on either of the hi-res audio players I'm about to discuss. Both are quite frankly superb for the money. I love Astell & Kern's new cheap USB-C DAC and entry-level A&norma SR25 MKII player just as much as I adore the A&ultima SP2000T and the new A&ultima SP3000 – which is one of the options I'm here to talk about. 

But there comes a crossroads in any audiophile's journey (or fledgling music lover tentatively looking into it as a lifestyle choice) when the simple and reasonable question is posed: "Come on, which of these would you have if money were no object?" 

And I need to give you an answer. Despite my enduring love for my humble-res iPod Classic and respect for some of the best MP3 players at cheaper price points (Cowon Plenue D3, I am looking chiefly at you) I'm afraid it isn't good news for the more frugally-minded. If, like me, you can't drop $3,799 / £3,799 / AU$4,999 on the A&ultima SP3000, you're going to have to trust me on this one (and hey, maybe we could start a Just Giving page?) but if you've got the folding, there's one player you should be holding. 

Can't buy me love

But you can buy me hi-res audio players or digital audio players (sometimes shortened to DAPs). 

The two hi-res audio players I tried? Astell & Kern Kann Max and A&ultima SP3000. The headphones: various, but mostly the Audeze Euclid, Focal Bathys, Grado SR80x, and Sivga Oriole. 

Now, some simple comparison via cold, hard specs.

A quick glance shows the extra DACs and better specs of the wildly more expensive SP3000 (apart from that battery life), but what the above grid doesn't explain is that the flagship player is the world’s first digital audio player with independent Dual Audio Circuitry, thanks to that new top-of-the-range AK4499EX DAC chip from Asahi Kasei, used in the HEXA Audio Circuitry structure. 

This complete separation of balanced and unbalanced output boasts "the purest possible sonic reproduction" – no, A&K isn't holding back on the merits of this one. And nor should it, because I believe that statement is correct. 

But let's start with the basics. Both are objects of brutalist beauty and actually, the Kann Max slips into the pocket like a treat. Some of the team actually prefer Kann Max's dark and brooding looks to the shiny SP3000, even though the latter's casework is quickly covered by the included premium leather case. The A&ultima SP3000 is also the world’s first portable player to be hewn from a watch-grade 904L stainless steel body, a premium-grade and extremely durable metal, beloved by luxury watchmakers that has never been used on a portable player – until now.

But that's all just looks, isn't it? Well, actually no. The glorious rotary dial that has become a calling card of A&K players does click delightfully on each player, but only the one on the flagship model can be pressed for power. The Kann Max has a little power button on the top right corner, but it doesn't exactly feel like one physical button to rule them all. 

The SP3000 is also the first player to use the new flagship AK4499EX DAC chip from Asahi Kasei. It's used in the innovative HEXA Audio Circuitry structure that separates digital and analog signal processing. Then again, both players can handle just about any hi-res file format going, with support for all key formats (including MQA, Native DSD 512) and streaming-service connectivity. So why pay the extra? 

Here's one reason: A&K's staple watch-style crown rotary dial joins a new 5.46-in full high-definition display and a new-generation on-screen interface in the SP300, which means that Tidal and Apple Music (my go-to streaming services when hi-res audio is on the menu) are much easier to access and link – because the screen is so much bigger. Anyone who's ever tried keying in their emails and passwords to link such services on their DAP knows what I mean here. 

And thanks to the "reimagined user interface", you can slide across to cue up an album in your downloaded collection, with album artwork placed in CD-case-type frames, just like old times! And there are myriad other details here, such as the fact that when tweaking the volume, which goes up to 150 increments in both cases, the SP3000 glows red as you go higher. It just makes the Kann Max's display, while perfectly adequate for the level, a little congested in (completely unfair) comparison.

Gimme the beat boys and free my soul 

Just as the proof of the pudding is in the eating, the proof of any hi-res audio player is in the listening. Both of these propositions walk all over your smartphone. But the SP3000 is three times the price and, I have to tell you, it is emphatically worth it in the sound-per-pound stakes. 

Is this value? That depends on whether you really want to hear separation, space, and detail between each of Tom Yorke's simultaneous layered vocals in Radiohead's Let Down. The neutrality, the three-dimensional breathiness, the cleanness – all are just that bit more apparent. And Radiohead aren't going to play this one any time soon, are they? The studio version makes it incredibly difficult to perform live. It truly depends on what price you put on hearing that and it's not an easy one, I'll grant you. But your music sounds remarkably agile, emotive, and alive here. 

The pensive bass riff in Dire Straits' So Far Away From Me (on DSD, which makes the volume knobs on both players glow purple) is just that bit more crisp through the leading edges of notes and as the track builds, the dynamics have me shaking my head to the hidden oomph just waiting to come across in the SP3000. 

Again, the same track comes over beautifully in the Kann Max (and it'll ruin your smartphone and cheap earbuds for you – even if they're some of the best wireless earbuds going), with all musical strands held resolutely in check just as you'd expect. It's just that for the discerning audiophile, an even better performance exists – and why else would Astell & Kern have offered to throw out the budgetary concerns and try to do it? 

So there's the truth, much as it pains and excites me. Now, if I only had the expendable income.

Having recently impressed us with its mid-range FiiO M11S portable digital audio player, Chinese audio firm FiiO is back with a decidedly high-end offering for its next on-the-go device.

The new M15S portable player comes packed with two desktop-grade ES9038PRO digital-to-analog converters, with individual DAC chips dedicated to the left and right stereo channels.

Each chip makes use of four D/A converters for what FiiO claims to be extremely high-quality decoding, with the device able to support playback of audio files up to 384kHz/DSD256. 

The new M15S also supports MQA, allowing listeners to directly stream Tidal Masters as well as MQA files stored locally, while further hi-res audio options come in the form of aptX HD Bluetooth, alongside LDAC and LHDC wireless codecs. 

There's onboard 2.4GHz/5GHz Wi-Fi allowing for support of Apple AirPlay and DLNA streaming, as well as compatibility with the increasingly popular multi-room music software platform Roon.

Weighing 345g, the device runs on Android 10, which allows for lossless access to Tidal, Qobuz and Apple Music, and it's powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 660 processor – the same CPU which features on FiiO's flagship M17 hi-res audio player.

Along with a regular 3.5mm headphone jack and both 2.5mm and 4.4mm balanced headphone outputs, there's a 5.5-inch multi-touch HD display with 64GB of onboard storage that can be expanded up to 2TB of extra storage via the microSD card slot.

The FiiO M15S is available now to order for $999 / £979 / AU$1,599 from FiiO's website, and set to ship later this month.

We can't wait to put it through its paces and see how it matches up to best MP3 players currently out there. Watch this space… 

FiiO M11S review: One-minute review

The M11S portable music player by FiiO is relatively small and affordable compared to its rivals, such as Astell & Kern which offer big and expensive alternatives. When you consider the M11S’s specifications, its numerous connectivity options and the quality of its build and finish, it’s hard not to shake the idea that the M11S might almost be a bargain.

In almost every sonic respect, the FiiO M11S makes a very persuasive case for itself. Its presentation is big but detailed, punchy but controlled, and upfront without being raucous. It’s an entertaining and informative listen and is admirably unfussy about the standard of the audio files you’re playing. By the standards of today's music players, it’s not picky about the sort of headphones you pair it with either (although ‘better’ is always better, of course).

The FiiO M11S is definitely built to compete with the other portable music players in our best MP3 players guide, no matter how high-quality your files are. It's only when treble reproduction is concerned that the M11S overplays its hand. We’re all for ‘lively’, of course, but the line has to be drawn somewhere – and in the case of this FiiO portable music player, that line is just a little before where the treble attack becomes too much.

FiiO M11S review: Price and release date

• Released in January, 2023
• Costs $499 / £489 / around AU$799

The FiiO M11S was released in January 2023 and costs $499 / £489 / around AU$799.

This is a lot of money for a product that doesn't do much more than your smartphone. But then it’s equally fair to say that portable music players often cost a great deal more than this, whether they’re made by FiiO or a competing brand. 

When the Fiio M11 launched back in 2019 it came with a similar price tag, costing £449 / $459 / AU$699. But these days the best audio players, like the Astell & Kern A&ultima SP2000T, will set you back an eye-watering $2,399 / £1,999 / AU$3,599. It's probably best to compare the FiiO M11S with the brand's expensive yet more affordable Astell & Kern A&norma SR25 MKII model, which is $749 / £699 / AU$1,099.

FiiO M11S review: Design

• Premium look and feel
• 720 x 1280 HD touchscreen
• Weighs 271g

By smartphone standards, the M11S is chunky; by portable music players, the M11S is notably compact and convenient. It measures 125 x 74 x 19mm / 4.9 x 2.9 x 0.7 inches and weighs 271g / 9.6 oz. Although these are not inconsiderable numbers, they constitute brevity in the world of media players.

The quality of the M11S's build and finish is equally notable. It uses machined aluminium for its frame, with just enough non-parallel sides to make it (slightly) interesting. The rear is of fairly prosaic plastic, while the front (which is almost entirely touchscreen) is glass and is factory-fitted with a tempered glass screen protector. Everything fits seamlessly, there are no exposed bolt-heads or anything distasteful like that, and the overall standard of materials and construction gives the FiiO the air of a premium product.

• Design score: 4/5

FiiO M11S review: Features

• Android 10 operating system
• 32bit/384kbps twin DACs
• Touchscreen is smooth and responsive

The M11S is designed to get the job done and thoroughly. That means dual ESS ES9038Q2M DACs (one for the left channel, one for the right) capable of dealing with digital audio files of up to 32bit/384kHz and DSD256 resolution, with MQA decoding available too. It also means a three-stage Texas Instruments op/amp amplification arrangement, with each stage individually powered to keep the noise floor to a class-leading 1.8uV. And it means 32GB of internal memory, with a microSD card slot available when you inevitably require more.

There are three headphone sockets on the bottom of the player: your common-or-garden 3.5mm unbalanced output, and 2.5mm and 4.4mm balanced alternatives - the 3.5mm socket doubles as a digital coaxial output (maxing out at 32bit/384kHz and DSD128) in case you want to connect your M11S to an external DAC. 

There’s also a USB-C socket down here. This socket is used for charging the battery (you should expect no fewer than 10 and no more than 14 hours of playback from a single charge, depending on how you’re listening and to what), and it’s also how you use the FiiO as one of the best portable DACs. For instance, attach it to your laptop over USB, and suddenly your computer becomes a valid source of high-quality audio. This configuration can deal with files of up to 32bit/768kbps and DSD512.

If you prefer wireless to wired headphones, the M11S uses Bluetooth 5.0 for connectivity, with support for SBC, AAC, aptX-HD and LDAC codecs. As well as transmitting, it can also serve as a Bluetooth receiver, wirelessly taking on board digital audio info from another source (although it does lose its aptX-HD abilities when working in this direction). It’s also packing Wi-Fi connectivity. 

The 720 x 1280 five-inch touch-screen is smooth and responsive, thanks to the same Snapdragon 660 controller unit (with eight Kyro cores) as FiiO deploys in its flagship M17 media player. It’s by no means the most up-to-the-minute controller around, but it does the business in fine style. 

The customized version of Android 10 that FiiO is using as an interface will be familiar to anyone who’s ever used a non-iOS smartphone, and it’s easy to install any and all relevant apps. And you can do so without worrying about affecting audio performance – one of the M11S’s operating modes is called ‘pure music’, which effectively frees the player from the noise and interference that multiple open apps can cause.

In addition to the touchscreen, a few physical controls cover the basics. This is handy if you want to put your hand in your pocket to operate the FiiO rather than fish it out. On the right are three buttons handling ‘skip forwards’, ‘skip backwards’ and ‘play/pause’; on the left, there’s ‘power on/off’ and a ‘custom’ button, the function of which can be specified in the player’s set-up menus. A carbon-fiber effect ‘slider’ deals with ‘volume up/down’. The more expensive FiiO M11 Plus allows you to swipe to adjust volume, but it works as a rocker here.      

• Features score: 4.5/5

FiiO M11S review: Audio performance

• Punchy, controlled and detailed sound
• Dynamic heft to spare
• A little latent treble trouble

There are some decent-sounding smartphones around, that’s for sure. But what’s also true is that a dedicated portable music player – even one as relatively affordable as the FiiO M11S – leaves even the most accomplished smartphone in the dust when it comes to sound quality.

You don’t have to listen long, hard, or through especially accomplished headphones to realise the M11S is the real deal. In every meaningful music-making respect, it has skills – and in some areas, it’s a genuine expert.

To establish exactly what the FiiO is capable of, I tested it with Sennheiser IE900 earbuds using a 4.4mm balanced termination and Technics EAH-AZ60 true wireless earbuds via Bluetooth. Digital audio content varies from poverty-spec MP3 files to big 24bit/192kHz files, and DSD64 tracks. And no matter the specifics, the overall results remain consistent: the FiiO is a lively, informative and convincing listen, occasionally too enthusiastic for its own good.

As far as the nuts and bolts of music-making are concerned, the M11S is well-judged across the board. Tonally, it’s neutral across the entire frequency range in the Goldilocks style: not too warm or chilly, but just right. It shapes low frequencies well, gives them real weight and substance but keeps them straight-edged and prompt at the same time, so rhythmic expression is good, and momentum is undeniable. Detail levels are as high here as they are throughout the frequency range – although the amount of information the FiiO can unearth and deliver through the midrange is hard to compete with.

The M11S is insightful enough to make minor or transient information apparent, and it can describe the most nuanced dynamic variations in a solo instrument with ease. It has more than enough headroom to dispatch the big dynamic shifts with no difficulty, and it can also describe a big, wide and properly defined soundstage.

It’s really only the top of the frequency range that could be described as ‘problematic’. Treble sounds are just as detailed, just as robust and just as loaded with variation as everything that happens beneath them, and the integration between the midrange and the top end is so smooth as to be imperceptible. But no matter how you might seek to manipulate the FiiO’s numerous EQ settings, gain controls, playback modes and various other methods of finessing the overall character of the sound, treble sounds are never less than enthusiastic and can, in the wrong circumstances or when given an unsympathetic recording to deal with, edge towards the relentless. 

No one wants their music player to roll off the top of the frequency range, of course, but the M11S goes just a little too far in the other direction. If you’re listening using similarly balanced headphones, the brightness of the player’s treble response could conceivably get a bit much.

• Audio performance score: 4.5/5

FiiO M11S review: Value

• Cheaper than A&K's nearest rival
• Packed with flexible features
• Not a game-changing package, though

The Fiio M11S does an excellent job of gently undercutting the real rival elephant in the room, which is the Astell & Kern a&norma SR25 Mk II. You've got so many great options, such great sound, and such high-spec parts that it's very easy to look at the saving and decide it's worth putting into a nice high-capacity microSD card instead of the higher-priced music player.

But it's still a premium product overall, and a lot to spend beyond the phone you already own. It's not going to rock the music player industry, but it delivers value that others are going to have to step up to match.

• Value score: 4/5

Should I buy the FiiO M11S?

Buy it if...

Don't buy it if...

Also consider

Sony is fully embracing music streaming with its latest Walkman, the NW-A306, which features a new sound engine that can enhance your favorite tracks from your streaming service of choice.

Digital music has made carrying your entire audio library around with you wildly convenient, and using one of the best music streaming services takes this convenience one step further – now your tunes don’t even have to take up virtual space for you to be able to listen to them wherever you want (provided you have internet access).

However, streamed songs are as much a curse as they are a blessing for serious audiophiles – the compressed music files can lack the dynamic range and acoustic subtleties of the original tracks. Sony’s NW-A306 might change this, though, thanks to its Edge-AI and DSEE Ultimate (Digital Sound Enhancement Engine) features, which are designed to upscale compressed digital music files in real time – providing a much richer and more dynamic experience during playback.

These new tools join the Walkman’s existing hi-res features like LDAC – which allows anyone using a pair of the best wireless headphones to enjoy high-quality audio without wires – and its 360 Reality Audio feature, which allows the player to immerse you with its 3D soundscape.

We’ll have to see how the Sony NW-A306 performs for ourselves to know how capable it really is. But Sony’s audio expertise has seen its devices appear in – and dominate – several of our buying guides (including our best wireless earbuds list), so we’re expecting that this new gadget will be no different.

That being said, there are a couple of potential drawbacks.

For one thing, it’s not got a lot of storage. The Sony NW-A306 has 32GB of storage space, but once you account for all the software you need to have installed you'll only have around 18GB left to play with. That’s certainly enough to hold more than a few albums, but those of you with a huge music library might find that you run out of space fairly quickly.

Then there's the price. The NW-A306 will set you back £350 / AU$499 (around $425 in the US). There’s no word yet on a North American release date or official pricing, but it’s set to launch in the UK and Europe later in January 2023, with a February 2023 release for those Down Under.

Compared to the best MP3 players out there, that's a super-affordable price – the Astell & Kern A&ultima SP2000T, which occupies the top slot in the guide linked above, is priced at $2,399 / £1,999 / AU$3,599 – but if you're content with your phone's passable portable audio experience then you might not appreciate the NW-A306's cost of entry.

However, if you’re after an audio player that's much better rated than 'it’ll do', then the Sony NW-A306 could be the gadget for you.

It’s been a while since we’ve seen anything new from portable audio specialist FiiO, but it's back with a bang – specifically a new portable music player that may give high-end rival Astell & Kern plenty to think about.

With its sleek angled corners, the minimalist design of the new FiiO M11S isn’t the only similarity with A&K’s output, with comparable file compatibility, built-in streaming apps and a dual DAC configuration akin to the South Korean company’s much lauded A&norma SR25 MKII high-res audio player – albeit with a significantly cheaper asking price. 

Running on Android 10, the M11S boasts a 5-inch HD touchscreen display and two high-grade ES9038Q2M DAC chips – one for each stereo channel.

Alongside support for high-res audio files up to 32-bit/384kHz, there’s also MQA compatibility for high-res Tidal Masters playback. The M11S also comes with a pretty comprehensive list of supported streaming codecs, with LDAC, aptX HD and LHDC Bluetooth compatibility, alongside DLNA and AirPlay streaming. 

Apps can meanwhile be installed for high-res streaming service like Tidal, Qobuz and Apple Music along with Spotify.  

The M11S comes with a regular 3.5mm headphone jack, along with 2.5mm and 4.4mm balanced headphone outputs, plus a dedicated line-out. The player can  handily be used as a USB DAC for your desktop PC or laptop, as well as a Bluetooth transmitter/receiver for portable devices like tablets and smartphones.

FiiO claim the M11S has "one of the lowest noise floors" in a portable music player at just 1.9uV, despite a claimed power output of 670mW at 32 ohms, thanks to an "innovative" new headphone amplifier circuit.

The built-in battery lasts for a claimed 14 hours, while there’s onboard storage of 32GB that’s expandable via a micro SD card slot up to a further 2TB.

The M11S is available now direct from FiiO for £489 / $499 (which is around AU$736). 

Analysis: this new FiiO may open up an affordable audiophile price war

We’re well used to Chinese tech brands undercutting their Korean and Japanese counterparts, but the launch of FiiO’s M11S feels different, largely due to the fact that no corners appear to have been cut on its spec sheet.

At just under £500 it’s by no means a cheap device, of course, but with it being almost £200 cheaper than Astell & Kern’s similarly featured A&norma SR25 MKII, it’s likely to have a fair number of cost-conscious audiophiles considering making the leap to a dedicated hi-res digital player not made by A&K.

We can't wait to put it through its paces and see how it matches up to A&K's brutalist baby, and see if it also makes our list of best MP3 players. Watch this space… 

Considered splurging on a dedicated hi-res audio player this Black Friday? Care about music? Then you really should think about it – and the ideal time to take the plunge is now. Why? Because it's Black Friday deals season, and because of this exceptional deal I'm fitting to tell you about. 

Right now, the Astell & Kern A&norma SR25 MK II is just $599, down from $749 – a sweet $150 saving. And it is worth it – this, after all, is a device that earned a coveted five TechRadar stars in our Astell & Kern A&norma SR25 MKII review. (Not in the US? You'll find hi-res audio player deals where you are further down the page.)

It's a beautiful, brutalist and, I'll admit it, still-expensive thing – but Astell & Kern has legions of fans in the hi-res audio world, and I am one of them. It's because of me that this deal is being resolutely brought to your attention; I can't let it lie. I love a sub-$50 earbuds deal roundup as much as the next person, but I also love exceptional audio quality, and this will give you that.

The best Black Friday hi-res audio Astell & Kern deal

Anyone familiar with this publication will know that I have written odes to Astell & Kern about its various audio players, but of crucial importance here is our review of the A&norma SR25 MKII – and no, I still don't really know how you're supposed to say the name 'A&norma'. It doesn't matter, it's how it sounds when it's playing music that's important.

What you need to know is that it got five sweet stars under intense review, and that was at its regular MSRP of $749. Five-star products rarely get a discount anywhere near $150 (which equates to 19% off) and when I saw it at Crutchfield, I had to check it was actually this player; my player. And it is the SR25 MK II that is discounted, otherwise known as the A&K that rarely leaves my side. 

You see, as much as I love my iPod Classic, this hi-res option beats it. It was only released in November 2021 too, so it is very much a current winner. It's still a fair wedge of money for one of the best MP3 players on the market, however you look at it. 

You're worth it though…

More Black Friday hi-res audio player deals

Scroll down for more Black Friday deals in the US and UK.

More US Black Friday deals

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More UK Black Friday deals 

• Amazon: up to 60% off TVs, laptops, and more
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