What it does claim is the best auditory performance on the market, and after testing it out for a few weeks we’ve concluded it lives up to the hype. With a bulky, heavy casing (using durable steel also found in some expensive watches), this high-end music player doesn't even pretend to be portable.

Oozing luxury from every port, the Astell and Kern SP3000 is a stainless steel-plated beast of a digital audio device. Here are the best MP3 and audio players worthy of your attention:Īudiophiles rejoice. So, get your headphones at the ready, pull the curtains, turn off your phone, and relax into the sound. And if you have spotty wifi, a quality player is always there for you. They give you brilliant sound quality – especially when accompanied by the best over-ear headphones or paired to a set of top noise cancelling buds – and it’s our preferred way of amassing a collection without having to rely on Qobuz, Apple Music or Spotify (although the best devices work with those, too). But we counter with a question: what’s wrong with that? We still have a deep love for physical media through record players, Blu-ray players, and even CD players – so why shouldn’t we add the best MP3 players to the list? So, what’s the appeal of having a dedicated device for music in an age when vast libraries of albums are only ever a click away via the device that’s already in your pocket? Well, they’re for the audiophiles, the collectors, the hardware lovers, and anyone who doesn’t want their listening to always be curated by algorithms or interrupted by TikTok. Buying a digital audio player in 2023 has absolutely nothing to do with convenience we’ll leave that to the smartphones.

Mp3 from you