26.10.2016

Got this player just a week ago after long dilemma between Pioneer XDP-100R-K and this one. Pioneer has a better (and bigger) user interface but downside of that is the fact tat is significantly bigger and not quite “pocket-friendly”. It has dual microSD slots accepting 2x200GB external memory expansions plus its internal 32GB memory but than again, it looks like its main target is home usage as it’s not exactly “compact”. AK Junior, on the other hand is proper “carry-size” player with 64GB internal memory plus up to 200GB microSD extension slot so I made a decision to snap it! ☺Sound:I may say that I haven’t heard anything better from a portable-player world and will stop there with a description!I cannot fairly judge it versus Pioneer XDP-100R-K as I haven’t had Pioneer XDP-100R-K in hands for extended period of time but from a brief encounter with Pioneer player, I may say that there may be some subtle differences between the two but it’s purely subjective and probably not very accurate judgment. Also, a choice of a good cans and/or supporting HiFi system also plays a huge role so I would rather leave a comparison between those two on the side. A bottom line is that AK Jr is a fabulous player!Interface:There is definitely area for improvement that will hopefully be addressed with a new model as the current one is going to be replacement (as per my best knowledge) in a near future. Home menu contains Songs, Artists, Albums, Genres, Playlist and Folders options. I am personally using Folders 99% of the time . “Add to play” feature is not very intuitive but it works.Settings options:Date& Time, Language, Display, Power, Bluetooth, Auto Library Scan, Line Out, Lock, System Info and Reset. That’s it! Those that took my attentions are Bluetooth and Line Out. Bluetooth needs some work every time when player gets shut-down as turning it back on doesn’t automatically connect to a paired headphones. Line Out sets the volume to a max. (!) for the external non-headphone output, creating quite a significant level of distortion so that option is totally useless!EQ:Graphic EQ has only 5 setting levels: 62, 250, 1K, 4K and 16K levels making it useful only for a not so good recordings that shouldn’t be placed in this player in a first place. There is also a selection (option) for a “PRO EQ” that, when selected, gives you a message that “PRO EQ can not be modified.”?!! There is another “mystery” feature just bellow play/pause selection that enables user to see the lyrics?! My best guess that it shows lyrics if such is available in the song metadata, if available.Battery lifeI have managed to get about 5.5hr with Bluetooth on and about 1hr longer with a “cable” connected to a headphone (AKG Y45bt). Very lame battery duration considering Android OS that handles absolutely nothing than player and Bluetooth beside its basic background tasks!! This is a HUGE minus for a company that claims to deliver a top-end portable music player, even considering the fact that JR is their bottom-of-the-line (read: “Basic”) model.External accessPower on/off, charging socket, output, microSD holder, volume, previous, next and pause controls – pretty much everything you needConclusion:This is an excellent portable player with some small, annoying downsides. If you can “live” with some inconveniences that I mentioned earlier - get it now! A new version will most likely be +£100 or so more expensive than JR that is currently an absolute bargain at £269.00.I am giving it 4 star rating purely for a sake of AK - they should pay a bit more attention to some details on otherwise brilliant product.

10.1.2017

This is a fantastic product and at £250 its a total bargain to boot. There have been a number of comments about latency and stability of the touch screen graphics, there have been two firmware updates for this product one of which specifically deals with this issue. The latest version is V1.03 and new payers are shipped with this version as mine was, I can say that I have experienced no issues at all with the touch screen interface which works perfectly so I assume the issues mentioned have been resolved. If you have an older version of firmware you can get the updates from the AK website so resolving the issue is fairly straight forward. In terms of sound quality the player is stunning,I tried a range of players up to £500 before making my decision and regardless of cost this little player won hands down, and without the risk of having to carry a brick around in your pocket. Its easy to use and has a really robust and eye catching design, its also small and light and isn't designed as a glorified smart phone like some of the competition, its a music player pure and simple and that's really all it does, but boy does it do it well! There has been some discussion about MP3 320kps being as good as CD, its not! As a minimum standard you will want to use a lossless format like FLAC to transfer your CDs and a quick comparison with MP3 will show MP3 up for what it is, muddled incoherent rubbish. To really appreciate the sound quality on offer from the AK Jr 16 bit 44khz (i.e. CD) is a minimum and to understand its true potential you will need to move to some of the hi definition formats the device supports. There have been some complaints about the lack of output options available for connection to other devices, this is not a problem for me but there is Blue Tooth available and the headphone output can be configured as "Line-Level" so with a good quality 3.5mm Jack to Phono converter you can connect directly to a pre-amp and enjoy pretty good quality. Battery life is around 6/7 hrs but my experience is that the unit charges quickly and I never listen for more than a couple of hours a day so no issue really. The unit is easy to connect to your PC for file transfer and the touchscreen based interface is easy and intuitive to use. I have a high end CD/Amp/Headphone hifi set up using Sennheiser HD800 headphones which I used to do a comparison using the Sennheiser's and while the AK Jr couldn't match my HiFi kit it gave a pretty good account of itself for the money. So my final point is related to headphones, you will need to get some higher end headphones to really get the best out of your AK Jr, this is true for any high end audio equipment so there is no point pairing the player with mediocre headphones and thinking the player isn't that great because it will be the headphones that are limiting performance not the player. I am using Sound Magic E80s day to day with the AK Jr and they sound superb, that said it sounded another world better with my Sennheiser's which are way too good but which emphasise my point.So in summary if you want a hi def music only player that sounds amazing, is easy to use, is built to last and will fit into your shirt pocket for the bargin price of £250 look no further. Hope that helps with some difficult decision making, although the decision is pretty clear to me.

3.1.2018

I have had this player for a few weeks now as I didn't want to be too hasty to review it.After some consideration here are my thoughts:SoundThis player sounds fantastic. You can really tell the difference in quality between MP3, WAV and FLAC files.Obviously the better the headphones the better it sounds. I have a pair of AKG K452 headphones and it sounds very good through these. I also put it through my Beyerdynamic DT990s and it sounds superb.I tried other headphones in Currys just to test out and a lot of them paled in comparison, particularly Beats which just sounded flubby, for want of a better word.InterfaceThis is very simple and intuitive. It doesn't do anything fancy and in some respects this is detrimental.

20.10.2015

Fine sounding though let down by bad interface software, which stumbles and stutters through the menus, sometimes fast, sometimes slow. Grabbing the thin orange side bar to scroll down quickly is a tad tricky, especially if you have a case fitted.Gapless play doesn't work on M4A files, well it does, ish, sort of, if you don't mind a click or sometimes loud crack where the tracks join. This isn't a biggie for me as most of my stuff is FLAC or WAV which work fine, playing HR tracks with no problem.It also doesn't sort multi disc CD tracks correctly as it ignores the disc number data, and arranges the tracks D1/T1, D2/T1, D1/T2, D2/T2 and so on, so albums will play jumbled up.

15.6.2016

I was looking for a replacement for my treasured iPod classic that could fit a significant amount of music on it, when Apple discontinued the classic line. I'm very happy with this, although it's not perfect.Pro:- Excellent sound. Noticeably better than any apple product. Really brings music to life- Capacity. Can fit a 200gb memory card, large enough to fit a lot of music, and hey, you can always use 2 cards if 1 isn't big enough- Simple to transfer files - just drag and drop mp3s using windows explorer- Light- Looks good.- Decent battery life- Bluetooth - works, good sound.Con- Interface isn't quite up there with Apple, although it's good and much better than similar products I've used before from other manufacturers.- Price.

10.8.2015

After much research and deliberating I decided on giving the ak jr a go. Upon arrival, instantly impressed with packaging and build quality - everything top notch and lovely from an aesthetic point of view.Loaded in my micro sd card with circa 1050 flac files on - took around 45 seconds to scanUI is a simple but very straightforward affair, if you want cameras, app stores, wifi etc then look elsewhere, this is a music only machine and it does this superbly.Partnered with flare audio r2a you can immediately tell this player means business! ! Clarity is superb, bass is excellent and in decent quantity but not overpowering, treble is equally clear without being bright or harsh.I have a lot of dance albums ripped to flac and the combo above is sublime,

26.6.2015

I've had mine for a couple of weeks and I'm very happy with it.The UI is clear and easy to use, the user manual is stored on the internal memory but you need to connect it to your computer to read it. It's not that different to using an iPod nano 7th gen.The screen isn't as responsive as something from Apple and I've noticed the UI is slow sometimes, but it's not too bad. Certainly not enough to ruin the experience.The headphone out has plenty of power and so far I haven't felt the need to use a separate amp. Headphones I've used are,Sennheiser ie80Sennheiser momentum in earsSennheiser momentum over ears 2.0Shure se535Westone w40Philips fidelio x2Akg k702Battery life isn't too bad at around 9

28.7.2015

I bought this to replace my tired ipod touch which was on its last legs.. it did last for 2 years so no complaints. I was a little worried at first as all my music is stored on iTunes, and therefore didn’t know how easy it would be to get it on to the junior player. Luckily it’s as simple as drag and drop from the itunes window which is great. The most noticeable difference is how loud and clear the music comes through from my Sony earphones, The junior player is a beautiful solid piece of music hardware so I’ll be buying a case to protect it. One of the features I really like is that its so easy to control the volume whilst the player is in my pocket, along with the track adjustment and play/pause buttons on the side.

21.9.2017

Excellent Hi-Res player, yes the interface is awful but if you are used to using an Apple product then it does feel sluggish.I would update to the latest Firmware as this has helped with some of these issues.But the sound is fantastic, play a 24bit hi-res track and you will hear the difference. Playing the recently released Steven Wilson Album 'To The Bone' you could hear every finer details and the soundstage was breath taking.I would recommend using FLAC rips of tracks as you can really hear the compression of MP3 files on this player.Only real issues I found was that my Beat X wireless headphones will not work in Bluetooth.Overall an excellent product.(Update) The Beat X wireless headphones do work !

13.1.2016

i have recently purchased the A&K Jnr and it looks impressive and sounds fantastic when working.I have found my interface to be sometimes ( more often than i would like) slow and unresponsive.It also just wont connect to my bluetooth B&O A2 speaker unless i have my iphone 6 connected as well!!I have found the bluetooth very poor indeen whereby if i pick up the Jnr it seems to affect the bluetooth sound and sometimes breaks up and stops.I then have to turn bluetooth on & off again on the device which takes an age to re-connect to my headphones or speaker.It has also frozen a few times and i have had to turn on & off.I have also reset it once but still the same.i`m worried about this device as

2.12.2016

I read many reviews prior to purchasing that stated how good this player is when fed a diet of 24 bit flac files. I am very pleased to say that, in my opinion, these reviews are accurate. The quality of the sound is excellent when coupled with a decent set of headphones. It is by far the best portable device I have ever heard. Some smart phones on the market will play hi-res files but then require a separate DAC/amplifier to get anywhere near this quality. To say I am happy with this purchase is a gross understatement. This is a classic example of beautiful design with exceptional functionality that brings music to life. I am in the process now of re-ripping my CD collection to 16 bit lossless files as this player optimises these as well.

6.12.2016

High quality playback, especially of DSD files. The UI can be slow/laggy, especially when playing back DSD files, but I personally don't find that too much of an issue. It does get warm when in use, but again not really a problem as it's really all about the sound.Here the sound is good across a variety of formats - it does have a slightly 'warm' sound and isn't as analytical as more expensive players but it is very portable with a decent battery life (7 hours playing DSD files, longer for FLAC/WAV/AAC).If you are looking for a dedicated player that can easily provide 264GB of storage (with a 200GB card) at a good price, this is a fine purchase.Note: [...]

3.5.2017

What a treat this is, I had high hopes and the sound is just fantastic! I play mainly CDs, but have started transferring my vinyl into it digitally and I am incredibly pleased with the results.The build quality is fantastic, it feels solid and premium and turns some heads for sure. The file transfer is super simple, as is everything else, the touch screen is good and the menu system is clear and concise.Playback is great, the gapless function works very well and the equaliser settings are great, the Pro equaliser sounds good, but I prefer my own tweaks depending on what I listen to.This paired with B&O Beoplay H2s or Sennheiser M2 in ears or any other good headphones will put a smile on your

29.7.2015

Similar to a previous reviewer, I bought my Junior to replace and ageing IPod, I have been absolutely blown away with the difference. The sleek, slim design is stunning, the menu's are easy to navigate & dropping files onto it is a breeze. I am still only a novice when it comes to higher resolution music, so I have a lot to learn on where to shop for them, however the few I have are worlds apart from regular MP3 tracks. I have ordered a pair of the Astell & Kern Angie headphones, which are due to arrive this week, as I really want to squeeze as much as I can from what I expect will be an amazing partnership. I am just scratching the surface with this fantastic player..

24.6.2015

I purchased this after reading a lot of great thing about it in various magazines and I have not been disappointed. I used to use my phone to listen to music but this has bought new life to my music library. It plays most, if not all file formats including 24bit and even DSD of which I have a single track. I read the DSD playback is converted to PCM but it still sounds great. I also purchased an SD card for extras storage. I mainly listen through my Atomic Floyd Super Darts or B&O H6 headphones but it does have Bluetooth which is good for the car connection. I would never go back to my phone after this!!

Astell&Kern AK Jr - Reviews

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