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When your phone's limited storage and sound quality simply won't do Electrical Home Accessories
1. The list in brief 2. Best overall 3. Best budget 4. Best premium 5. Also consider 5. How to choose 6. How we test 7. FAQ 8. Recent updates 9. Today's best deals
Modern-day smartphones are multi-tasking marvels, and one of the many tasks we use them for is listening to music (and podcasts) on the go. But plenty of us still rely on a separate portable music player for dedicated listening – and with good reason.
Unlike smartphones, which juggle everything from GPS tracking and photo taking to video calls and internet browsing, portable music players or DAPs (digital audio players) are designed first and foremost to store and play music, therefore boasting large storage capacities and sound quality-first componentry. Even the best budget players sound miles better than even a premium phone. Nowadays, music players can likely handle any type of music file you throw at them, too, and offer built-in access to music streaming services like Tidal and Spotify.
So whether you have a trove of downloaded tracks you want to listen to on the go, want to hear streams in much better quality than your phone can offer, or are after a compact digital source to feed your hi-fi system, a hi-res music player is certainly worth considering.
Our in-house team of experienced reviewers has been testing portable music players since the heydays of the Walkman, iPod Classic and pill-shaped MP3 player, and while the choice has dwindled since then due to the rise of phone listening, fantastic players from the likes of Sony, Astell & Kern and FiiO still exist to offer stunning audiophile-level sound quality and gorgeous portable design...
All you could ever expect or want from a portable music player at this level – the SR35 is a true all-rounder.
A smart, affordable player that delivers sophisticated sound quality at an attractive price.
Astell & Kern’s high-end player justifies its lofty price tag with a seriously impressive performance and gorgeous design.
May 2024: No new entries this time, with nothing arriving to trouble the Sonys and Astell & Kerns on this list. We have, however, added an Also Consider section to offer more choice if our three picks don't suit your taste.
I am What Hi-Fi's managing editor and have been testing audio products – including portable music players and headphones – for over a decade. I do a lot of my listening when travelling, so a dedicated hi-res music player that holds all my CD-quality and hi-res music files is essential. A good music player should have a large enough storage to hold thousands of tracks, a long battery life (ideally over 10 hours to a full day) and great sound quality. Plug in a great pair of wired headphones, and you'll be in your own personal music-listening haven. I've tested and used every model recommended below and can guarantee they're the best players you can buy today.
The A&norma SR35 is Astell & Kern's budget offering, and while it stretches the definition of ‘entry-level’, being significantly pricier than the affordable Sony NW-A306 (below) and even the previous SR25 MKII model it replaces, there's no arguing with the astonishing level of performance it delivers. It's a current What Hi-Fi? Award winner, the best-value performer on this list and, to those who can afford it, our number one recommendation.
The excellent SR35 boasts many of the features that made its also-Award-winning predecessor so successful – including three headphone outputs (3.5mm, 4.4mm and 2.5mm); native playback of MQA, DSD256 and PCM up to 32-bit/384kHz files; 64GB of built-in storage (expandable by up to 1TB via a microSD card); and the neat ability to use the versatile player as a performance-enhancing DAC between your wired headphones and, say, laptop.
It supports the Roon platform and has built-in access to streaming services such as Tidal, Qobuz, Amazon Music and Apple Music, while two-way Bluetooth (aptX HD and LDAC codecs are supported) allows you to stream music to wireless headphones or speakers, and send music to the player from another source.
There's no chance the SR35 will miss a beat with the music you send its way. As our expert reviewers note in our A&norma SR35 review, "the SR35 has the punch and rhythmic drive to keep you tapping along to upbeat tracks, and the insight to draw you into the details of those calmer ones".
The presentation is indeed hugely likeable overall, with a tonal balance slightly on the rich side, and a combination of power and finesse that feels very mature for a source at this level that most headphones will get along just fine with.
"As the SR35’s price demands, this is a more sophisticated, next-level performance than the few budget players still around are capable of," we concluded.
Music-Centric Mp3 Player Read the full Astell & Kern A&norma SR35 review