It's a question of priorities here. The Astell&Kern AK70 offers phenomenal sound quality, but in doing so it jettisons some of the additional features offered by a typical smartphone, such as access to streaming services and decent Bluetooth...
The sonic improvements made by the AK70 over the Jr are more evolutionary than revolutionary - but that, combined with additional features and a more mature interface, is easily enough to garner another five stars for Astell & Kern.See all our Astell &...
It’s not just a great music player; the AK70 is a lovely thing, a pleasure to hold and use. There are cheaper ways into Hi-Res Audio, but the AK70 is a better buy than Astell & Kern’s entry-level AK Jr, offering a slicker experience and longer battery life. The Sony NW-A10 starts at just £170 and has gargantuan battery life, but comes with just 16GB of built-in storage, a tiny 2.2-inch screen and just doesn’t sound as good.
Clearly $999 makes the Astell & Kern AK70 an expensive portable music player. But, adjusted for inflation, it's cheaper than an early model iPod was in its day. If you have a library of high resolution music (or even losslessly compressed CD-quality...
Apart from hardcore music lovers and audiophiles, most people can't understand why anyone would opt for a dedicated music player. You can play music right from your phone can't you? Sure, but pair your phone with high-quality headphones and download...
Apart from hardcore music lovers and audiophiles, most people can't understand why anyone would opt for a dedicated music player. You can play music right from your phone can't you? Sure, but pair your phone with high-quality headphones and download...
Spotfiy is great and all, but more often than not streaming music means you're only hearing a fraction of the music your favourite artist recorded as you're listening to extremely compressed music files. The Astell & Kern AK70 can change all that. This...
SizeThe AK70 is barely larger than the original AK120, which was a bare stretch on what I still consider the best-sized audiophile player of all time. The thing is that today, the AK100 handles like a dog. Slow, with strange interface hiccups, and...
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