I received my Pono last night. Unboxing was a thrill! I woke up early this morning to load up some tunes and give it a careful listen. Here are my initial impressions - positive, neutral, and negative - and my overall assessment of the Pono mission to bring hi-res to the masses. I backed Pono on Kickstarter as much for the vision as for the player.
+ :
Sound quality. It is quite awesome to have my FLAC files in my pocket. I compared sound quality for the exact same tracks loaded onto my Pono and on my iPhone 6+ running FlacPlayer. I’m listening with JH-13FP custom iem’s. The edge goes to the Pono player, but it’s slight - a consistent but subtle increment in sound quality. Particularly, the instrument separation and sense of space are somewhat better on the Pono. Perhaps, also the fullness of the sound, but I couldn’t detect that as consistently. There were no bumps in the spectrum to make it more bassy or more lively. Overall, nice job, Ayre.
If sound quality in a portable device is your sole criteria, you should be happy with a Pono, especially at its price point. I haven’t heard the truly top-of-the-line PMPs like the A&K players, but the Pono is definitely going to be a good entry-level portable FLAC player for those who are looking for that.
Another positive - they more or less met their deadline! I'm happy for that - it's the first substantial Kickstarter project I've backed that arrived on schedule. Perhaps the price to pay for that is some kinks still needing to be worked out.
0 :
Build quality. The device is larger than I expected, and it’s also lighter. It is nice that it is light, but it doesn’t feel substantial, durable. Its got visible seams and ridges, and it doesn’t quite melt into your hand the way some other products manufactured in Shenzhen do. It picks up fingerprints easily too. Perhaps most importantly, I haven’t found a way to turn off the screen to prevent accidentally changing the song while I’m carrying it.
- :
The software interface is truly horrible. Truly. The menu layout on the device itself is also clumsy. When I first ran the Pono software on my laptop, it grabbed my iTunes library. I don’t want my iTunes music on my Pono; I have an iPhone for that. I want my FLAC on my Pono. I spent nearly an hour noodling around looking for a way to add my FLAC music to the Pono library. All the obvious things (dragging it, creating a new library, etc) didn’t work. I finally got it figured out, but I had to watch one of their tutorials. The device then spent four hours transferring over my music, I ejected, and none of the music appeared on the device! I got really frustrated. I powered it off, and when it came back on, the music was there, thankfully. There have also been intermittent problems, like the device not staying connected to my laptop, and the charging indicator stuck on till I gave it another reboot. I am sure firmware updates will clean up this stuff. Finally, it was time to give it a listen, but so far, my soul had only rediscovered frustration.
So, is Pono going to bring high-quality music to the masses? No, not a chance, not like this. I’m not paying $20 for a Taylor Swift album. I don’t think anybody’s going to. I’m not going to pay $32 for Mr. Young’s new album when iTunes has it for $15. If you want to bring hi-res music to the masses, then match iTunes on price. Match iTunes on ease of use. As it stands, Pono is offering a slightly better-sounding product for substantially more money, and hassle. That's not going to disrupt anybody's way of getting music, it just isn't. Unless big things change, nobody’s going to remember Pono a year from now, and that would be a real shame.
