The Biggest Name in Portable Hi-Fi Just Launched Its Cheapest Player Yet

Astell & Kern is one of the biggest names in portable hi-fi, best known for its gorgeous yet expensive lines of digital audio players (or DAPs) that let audiophiles listen to true lossless audio on the go.

To date, owning an Astell & Kern digital audio player has been a fairly pricey endeavor. The company’s most affordable option has been the SR35 ($799), which is considerably cheaper than its flagship player, the A&Ultima SP3000 ($3,600), but still just as expensive as an iPhone 15.

Basically, if you were looking for an entry-level portable hi-fi player that was also reasonably affordable, you weren’t going to Astell & Kern. You were looking at entry-level options from the likes of FiiO, Sony and Hidizs, instead. Well, that’s now changing.

The Astell & Kern P1 is the company’s most affordable portable hi-fi player ever. It sacrifices some design elements of A&K’s higher-end players, but it’s also super versatile and includes some modern conveniences as well.

Meet the Astell & Kern P1

The Astell & Kern P1 has almost everything you’d want (and then some) in an entry-level portable hi-fi player. It features dual ESS ES9219Q Sabre DACs, a powerful headphone amplifier, a 20-band equalizer, gain control and 3.5mm (unbalanced) and 4.4mm (balanced) jacks. It supports lossless audio up to 32-bit/384kHz PCM and DSD256, as well.