AGPTek A06

 

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Preamble:

The company AGPtek, based in Brooklyn, New York, was founded in 2001 and is offering many different product types since then, reaching from MP3 players to LED lights, laptop batteries and many others.
There is a wide variety of different cheap MP3 players on the global market, especially in the Asian territory. The features of the various models differ from very simple ones without any screen to more complex ones with Bluetooth, screen and something that could be more or less described as user interface. Once, just for fun, I have bought and tested an ultra-cheap DAP for $1.49 (the original article in German can be found here: http://kopfhoerer-lounge.blogspot.de/2015/07/cheap.html). Although its output impedance was really low and operation was surprisingly good, there were (not much surprisingly) sonic flaws, such as a really high amount of hiss as well as static noise from the LED and decoder all the time.

What sets the AGPTek A06 apart from most ultra-budget DAPs and makes it unique (at least I haven’t seen this feature in any other player) is its ability to output FM radio over Bluetooth.
If the player is any good for the very little price and how it performs is to be found out in the next few paragraphs.

The AGPTek A06 (http://www.agptek.com/AGPtEK-A06-blue-713-126-1.html) was sent to me by AGPTek’s German distribution Linking Mart for the purpose of an honest evaluation. It retails for €39.99 on Amazon.de (http://amzn.to/1m142qI).


Technical Specifications:

♠ Up to 50 hours of music playback( 10 hours FM Radio playeback) when fully charged; intuitive controls, you can get used to it very soon
♠ Up to 1500 songs by 8GB memory capacity, supports up to 64 GB Micro SD Card for 4000 Songs! To avoid incompatibility, please use AGPTek Memory Card
♠ Lossless Sound quality, support formats:MP3(MP1,MP2,MP3),WMA,OGG,WAV,APE,FLAC,AAC-LC,ACELP.( Supports APE with sampling rate 8KHz- 48KHz, Bit Rate: Fast/Normal compression 800 Kbps-1000Kbps.)
♠ The main design of this player is Bluetooth, so the FM Radio may not as decent as the Bluetooth function


Delivery Content:

The cardboard box has a shiny blue AGPTek logo on the top and an unofficial user’s guide on the back. Inside are the A06 DAP, a micro USB cable for charging and data transfer, a quick-start guide as well as white earbuds.
 

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Looks, Feels, Build Quality:

The design is quite simple and it is quite obvious that the player is a cheap model. The front has a (relatively) large screen whose resolution is however quite low – colours however are still more or less decent and rich. Below is the D-pad with five buttons; pressing them causes a rather loud “click”, pressure point however is not bad (though it doesn’t feel premium).
The left side contains the micro SD slot (my 120 GB SanDisk card in exFAT format was by the way recognised without any issues), internal memory is 8 GB. On the right side is the physical on/off slider; the bottom contains the 3.5 mm headphone out as well as micro USB socket. On the top side is a lug to attach a carrying band.
The DAP’s surface is the typical soft-touch plastic thing known from many other low budget gadgets, however it is a bit harder and therefore not as much prone to scratches.
The outer dimensions are really small wherefore the A06 is very pocketable.

Visually and haptically the player looks and feels like what it is – an inexpensive low budget product.
 

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Operation, User Interface:

The DAP can either be turned on/off with the mechanical switch on the right side or by a long press on the centre button. A button lock can be enabled by a long press on the “M” button.
The user interface is kept rather simple, however operation is very intuitive, smooth and quick – this actually doesn’t need much explanation, as tech-savvy people should be able to get used to the operation within minutes due to how intuitive operation is.
The main menu shows a small digital clock in the upper left corner, a battery indicator is in the upper right. The sub-menus are a folder browser, tools (calendar, stop watch, alarm), settings (which are very simple and mainly there to select the language, set time plus date and adjust brightness), Bluetooth, a “Now Playing” screen, a “Music” database browser, a video player, records, a picture viewer, an FM radio and last but not least an e-book reader.
I’ll concentrate on the folder browser, as that’s the menu I have used the most: in there, one has access to the internal as well as external memory; multiple sub-folders are supported (quite important for me, as my music folders are organised by “Artist -> Year -> Album”). Unfortunately, as with many other cheap DAPs, folders aren’t sorted alphabetically but by the date they have been added, which is somewhat inconvenient.
The playing screen shows the album cover art in the centre, above is a track counter for the sub-folder one’s currently in (“000X/000Y”). Below the cover is a time line which displays the exact minutes and seconds, title tags are shown as well (and are horizontally scrolling). By the way, static “folder play” is also something the A06 offers.
One click on the “M” button lets another sub-menu pop up where one can choose either to return to the main menu, change playback mode, activate an EQ, delete the file, set and manage bookmarks and finally add the file to a playlist.
Pressing the centre button a little longer, screen and operation switch into something called “Easy Mode” where one can adjust the volume directly by pressing up/down and doesn’t have to activate it first by pressing the “VOL” button; in the regular menus changing volume can only be done by pressing the “M” button for a few seconds and then clicking up or down, which is a bit inconvenient. Overall there are 30 volume steps (plus mute), whereby the lowest setting isn’t super low with very sensitive in-ears (and depending on the recording), but not exaggeratedly loud either for people like me who prefer listening at low volume.
The player does not support Gapless Playback, but I haven’t really expected that anyway.
 

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Battery:

Battery time is stated to be around 50 hours. I haven’t explicitly tested it with a stop watch, but this value appears realistic.


Sound:

For listening I used FLAC files (44.1 kHz, 16 Bit). The in-ears I used the most for testing were the Shure SE846, UERM, Ultimate Ears Triple.Fi 10 and Ostry KC06A. I also used some other models out of my inventory, but the mentioned were the ones I mainly used for testing.

Frequency Response, Output Impedance:

Unloaded frequency response is perfectly flat:


 
Excellent and something one doesn’t always see in the low price range – some extremely cheap mini-speaker-amplifiers around $50 I measured had bass and/or treble roll-off, the AGPTek however plays commendably flat.


Now let’s make it a bit more challenging: complex multi-driver in-ears that have a varying impedance over their frequency range require a source device with as low as possible output impedance (best 1 Ohm or lower) so that their sound (mainly frequency response) doesn’t suffer from deviation.
Just as usual, I used the Ultimate Ears Triple.Fi 10 for this test:


 
As you can see, the deviation from the ideal is just as low as about 1 dB – the A06 has a very low output impedance that is comparable to the iPhone 4’s, therefore around 1 Ohm or slightly less, which is really good.
Low output impedance: check!

Hiss:

Both with the Shure SE846 and Ostry KC06A, two of my most hiss-sensitive in-ears, noise levels with empty files are extremely low and very close to being non-existent. Hiss is somewhere between the Cowon Plenue D and FiiO X3 (first generation), two DAPs that are already known for having very low hiss levels (the Cowon has even less hiss than the FiiO).
The player has only very little hiss with sensitive IEMs - excellent!

Resolution, Precision, Soundstage:

Now to the more subjective part of my review. My opinion and experience regarding the sound signature of source devices and amplifiers goes like this: there is an existing audible difference between various devices, but it shouldn’t be overrated – as the basic character of a headphone won’t be completely changed (if the circuit follows a clean design philosophy), but sometimes rather “shaped” a bit and in many cases is extremely subtle.
Now let’s continue with my subjective impressions:

I have nothing bad to report here either – the A06 doesn’t show any flaws.
I have compared the AGPTek A06 to the Sansa Clip Zip (which was a very good product for the price, too); volume levels were matched to a difference of just 0.2 dB (but tests weren’t done blind-folded).

While I always perceived the Sansa as minimally dark sounding and with a slight veil, the A06 sounds brighter and more open, without adopting the Sansa’s veil.
What I also heard with better BA in-ears on the Clip Zip was a slightly softened bass response – the AGPTek has more arid lows.
But here again, one should keep in mind that the differences are rather nuances than worlds (just like in most other level-matched direct comparisons – who knows a little about how our hearing “works” depending on the volume should quickly realise why it is like that).
A06’s soundstage however is audibly smaller than Sansa’s, especially regarding width.
Dynamics are good.

What we have here is a tendentially “digital” (however still neutral) sounding audio player hat doesn’t show any issues and sounds subjectively better than a similarly priced Sansa Clip Zip, however with a rather small soundstage.

In very quiet parts of the music or with empty audio files, there is very little audible interference from the buttons/screen and some little noise from the DAC’s decoding – this noise is however very little and already disappears in rather quiet passages (, additionally it doesn’t degrade sound quality). With in-ears that aren’t extremely sensitive, this noise isn’t audible anyway.

Bluetooth:

The player supports Bluetooth 3.0, however streaming is done solely in SBC format which isn’t much surprising as aptX, AAC or MP3 license fees would not be reliable for the company.
For this, I tested with the MEE Air-Fi Matrix² and X7 Plus.

Sound over Bluetooth isn’t quite comparable with well-harmonising devices with aptX support, however still very decent, without too many or too obvious compression artefacts (A06’s Bluetooth chip is already much better than the one used in the Brainwavz Kidwavz KV100 and the chip in my laptop). All in all, I would consider the sound over Bluetooth even as very decent, without a too obvious loss of sound quality. Moreover, there is no stuttering and connection is very stable. Playback here is solely possible in folder browse mode.

FM Radio:

To my very big surprise, FM reception is quite good and clear, without noise, and very stable.

FM Radio over Bluetooth:

This feature makes the player unique: it is possible to listen to the radio over Bluetooth! This can be done even without connected wired headphone (as antenna), the A06 seems to have a built-in antenna.
It works quite well, however quality and stability aren’t the best and there is some noise and dropouts – this can be fixed by plugging in any kind of headphone, then reception is stable and wireless radio sound is almost as good as with wired connection.


Conclusion:

The intuitive and quick operation as well as the simple but well-structured menu were a positive surprise. The amount of (hardware and software) features is just simply stunning for the little price (e.g. quite decent Bluetooth and FM radio streaming over Bluetooth), in addition the DAP has got really good measured values with low output impedance as well as very good SNR, good FM reception and doesn’t show any sonic flaws.
The AGPTek A06 therefore gets a really good score of 4.3 out of 5 stars with ease and a distinct recommendation – there are just few things that are a little bothering: folders are sorted by added date instead of alphabetically, the volume adjustment could be more fine-grained (“only” 30 steps), adjusting the volume is a bit cumbersome and there is no Gapless Playback.