Very quick and dirty first impressions.
Disclaimer: I'm a noob with this, I only have mediocre headphones and years of drumming in bands, my ears are probably toast!
The packaging and presentation are fantastic, they did a great job of boxing and protecting the AP200 unit. It looks really slick and has everything you would expect in the box. It shipped with firmware v0.1.8Beta and updating it to v0.1.9Beta from the download from Hidizs website was a piece of cake. - Yes Google Play Store is now available.
The UI is really clean and its faster enough to access the Hidizs music player (aka a custom HibyMusic) in either Android or Pure Music Mode. Otherwise the UI is pretty much stock Android. HibyMusic seems to be a little behind the Play Store version and is missing things like, “Hide Lyrics” “HibyLink” and for me the most important “ReplayGain”, fingers crossed these all come in a not to distant future firmware update. Also I couldn’t seem to find a the “Line Out” option, and thinking switching the output to “ Low Gain” maybe it;?? if this is the case it may need to be re-labeld or documented, if its not the case, I can’t seem find how to switch to line out unfortunately.
Now the sound quality, this is always subjective and can depend on the headphones and the quality of the music media itself, etc… I tested it with my Brainwavz B400’s, using FLAC files ripped from my own CD collection.
To be honest, I’m not really to excited about the sound, it does sound clean, but seem to lack any magic or punch as such. The same IEMs in my iPad with HibyMusic sounds cleaner and more defined at this point. I hoping I can tweak the EQ and/ or filters and get a better sound then the iPad. This will take more listening and playing, maybe I’m just doing something wrong or i’ve become custom to the iPad sound.
As I said, quick and dirty and I’ll report back once i’ve spent more time with the AP200.
Cheers.