Just want to weigh in on the AP200. I like to read reviews on equipment before I buy. So if that helps me, maybe I can pass it forward. Anyway, I took the plunge on a used AP200 on Fleabay from somebody who was frustrated with trying to use his Cord Mojo as an external amp with only older firmware working properly. beta .0280, I think was the only one that responded to the Mojo. The thing is/has been buggy, eh? Android apps, Playstore, etc. Various cable recognition, etc. Wifi, bluetooth, and on and on. I read about the 1.0 firmware's improved Hiby (& pure music mode HIby) player and thought I'd give it try at a sacrifice price as a pure digital audio player. I don't want to stream a service, use it as a DAC, etc. I just want something that sounds interesting and maybe a bit different. The specs were impressively interesting if not downright weird with two discrete channels but no balanced output. Solid gold plated stuff, too, eh? Why not. I downloaded 1.0 firmware and upon receiving the DAP, I found a micro sim with music, copied the firmware to the root directory and started her up. Android loads first the then you get a modal screen asking if you want to upgrade the system. After loading the firmware and waiting for it to update the operating system (which took a few minutes - I did fully charge the battery first, eh?), it did it's job and then asked me if I'd like it to delete the new firmware file from the card, which I thought was a nice touch. I rebooted, started up Hiby, went to the menu and told the unit to update it's library of music. Not a big card but I was impressed with the speed of the update. My Pono can take days, it seems. This took mere seconds but not a big card. I fiddled with it a bit, sliding on the left screen from Hiby and turned on the MSEP mode (don't even know what that is, but hey, let's try it) and left the sliders at their default, center position. The volume was about at about 4/5s. My online reading led me to believe that the player didn't have enough power to push high demand headphones but I plugged in the HiFi man HE560s anyway and chose the random play mode (shuffle all). And it did it's job and played my music randomly. Its got a folder option (which I'll use) but I often just want to run it in shuffle when I sit down to listen. The sound was IMHO amazingly revealing, clear, strong and full. Song after song I found the soundstage to be decent and the drive and clarity to be really good. The highs, the mids and the bass were separate, full and entertaining. The HE560s do normally require a decent amount of power to push them to sound robust and, again, IMHO this player works fine with them. Now, is it frustrating to continually touch the touch screen to get the system to recognise my input? Yes. But if I hold my mouth just right and hit the screen 5-6 times (sometimes) for the smaller icons, sooner or later it will respond. Swipes work okay, it seems. Big icons too. But on the edge of the screen the smaller icons don't respond well. What, you wanted perfection? Sound-wise, it compares favorably with my better DAPs and I have several good ones. I got it cheap because of its flaws, so I can't complain about the screen (I mean I can but like Chickenman, I knew what I was getting into, so it's tacky). Anyway, if you want to hear your music played in a revealing, dynamic and strong way, you might want to get one of these used, upgrade to 1.0, go pure music and have some fun and get to pound your finger on the screen over and over like playing the lottery. Go for it.
