[sheldaze]

Right! It had a wooden case, but everything was stacked in a slimmer fit - the paperwork right on top of the Pono. And no leather...
 
I just sold mine yesterday, so I looked at it just this morning to pack. I love the Pono, but the convenience of steaming music sent me down the upgrade path - to an Ayre Codex. A streaming or USB-connected Pono, I would have kept.

 

[doctorjazz]

AT least you kept it in the family (the Ayre family )

 

[FFBookman]

The regular version was nothing so fancy...

The regular yellow kickstarter version i got had everything but the leather case shown in that picture. 
 
But maybe not - my bamboo box is about a 3rd of that size.

 

[FFBookman]

Just bought my second Ponoplayer - this one for my father in law.
 
Got the Fathers Day special -- player + 64gb card + $25 store credit for $300. 
 
Got him black. He borrowed mine for a week so he knows what's up. Huge music lover, will probably spend plenty at ponomusicworld.com.

 

[_gl]

I've had one yellow and my current one is black.  The yellow material got dark marks from friction, the black is fine so far and I'm not being careful with it.
 
Some people mentioned the yellow dark marks (and Pono acknowledged it elsewhere as normal for the yellow ), yet others don't seem to have that problem, so I wonder if Pono got a new supplier for the material at some point that doesn't have the problem.  Both my players were used, so no idea when they were made.
 
Also interesting was that the black material on mine was thinner than the yellow.  I prefer it, it makes the player look slightly less bulky.  But yeah, the black one has been great.  The only thing I'd really worry about is screen marks, but I'm pretty careful so it may not be an issue for me.  If someone's worried about that, just get a phone screen protector and cut it to size.

EDIT: if you do that, make sure the screen is completely clean before applying.  On both my players, sometimes if the screen is grimey it treats drags as clicks and that's annoying.

 

[FFBookman]

New black one arrives. Nice retail packaging over top of the bamboo box. This out of box experience is actually better than apple due to the wood and the personal notes from neil and other artists. Very well done.
 

 
Black one feels slightly heavier, and card door is slightly thicker. Other than that seems exactly the same from the outside.

 
Happy Father's Day - About to load up his new player with some CD's I ripped from him 2 years ago...
 

 
 
We will set up PMW and his store account in the near future - I will post my experiences there. I was a kickstarter so i'll be interested to see what else has changed.

 

[doctorjazz]

Hmm, I have a black Kickstarter version. Very curious what, if anything, has changed.

 

[barondla]

Great Father's Day present. I have a yellow KS. My new black one came in an even smaller wooden box. The wooden box wrapped in outer cardboard sleeve is about the size of my naked KS box. Add in the even larger LE box and there have been at least 3 different sizes.

 

[BRCMRGN]

I have two Ponos, a CSN limited edition from the Kickstarter campaign and a yellow one from one of the periodic Frys sales.  I have have lots of 3rd party balanced cables, and I am afraid to add how much they cost me.  I really love the Pono (at least in balanced mode) and have learned to live with it's shortcomings (what, no folder mode???). But recently, both units have had their internal storage go into zombie mode.  Deleting files happens at the amazing speed of 1-2 files per second and file copies onto the internal storage fly by at 355KB/second.  While doing any file activity to the internal storage, the USB subsystem of whatever computer it's connected to gets very flaky.  This is not a unique problems - it happened to a lot of Ponos and has been much discussed in various forums.  From the frequency, I would assume it's either a design flaw or bad parts.
 
So, I finally got around to contacting Pono support and they said that a system board replacement is required.  Since both units are over 1 year old, they want $149 each for the repair.  Given how common this problem this, I think that this is irresponsible.  I really don't want to spend $300 to fix them just to get back 64GB of storage on each (that's Apple level memory pricing).  I guess I'll just have to live with it.  I certainly won't be buying anything else from Pono.

 

[bmoregnr]

That stinks. Very sorry to hear that and I can understand your disappointment.

 

[doctorjazz]

I haven't had to deal with Pono for any problems so far, thank goodness, but, from what I read, they don't go out of their way to support the products or their customers.

 

[Venture Guy]

Whoops! Wrong forum!
 

 

[frankrondaniel]

I've been happily listening to my Pono on 1.0.5 since my purchase earlier this year. Normally I leave well enough alone if I'm happy with the way a device works and I like the way it sounds. For some reason something possessed me to upgrade the firmware to 1.0.6 today and I find that I'm not at all happy with the changes that I hear in the sound. Is there a way to revert back to a previous firmware release? I wasn't able to find a way to do so but maybe there's a method that I overlooked.

 

[doctorjazz]

Didn't even know there's WAS a 1.06...

 

[T.R.A.N.C.E.]

Cool time to update to 1.06 I'm looking forward to the sq improvements.