HiBy R3 II Hi Res Audio Player Dual DAC MQA Qobuz Tidal Player with Bluetooth 5.1/3.5mmSE+4.4mmBAL/2TB Extended Memory(2025 Version)

This is a hard wearing and well built player. I'm currently running it with a 512gb card but it will support up to 2tb. It has good power and is plenty loud enough. Works well with Bluetooth headphones but for more volume and quality there is a 2.5mm headphone jack or a 4mm balanced headphone outlet. These allow an extra volume boost option to appear on the screen. There are a few quirky things, such as the arrangement of buttons on the exterior, but overall this is very good value for the money, compared to many of the ridiculously priced options on the market. I would definitely recommend getting some balanced in-ear monitors. As a bonus, the player has wi-fi, great for updates or using the pre installed Qobuz or Tidal for high level streaming. It's not an android system, which is a relief as I think these make them too much like a phone and slow them down, the Sony taking a minute to start up! The clean sound is great but there's a powerful programmable EQ and other alternative ways of manipulating tone. It also supports gapless playback and both album and single replay gain to keep volume even, if you've encoded that days into your MP3 tags with something like EASY CDDA EXTRACTOR. The screen is bright and clear and looks nice if you've included album artwork in your ID3 tags. Supports FLAC and DSD effortlessly. Sometimes the touch screen can take a second to switch to the next menu when it's running, but this could be down to the memory card. Comes in a very nice box and includes a hard skin to protect the player. This is hard to fit but once you've got the memory card in and fitted it, you won't need to remove it much. This provides very good protection for the rear and sides. It comes with a spare screen protector but already has one fitted, making this a great package. Battery life is great and it can be charged from a power bank.

I took a risk buying this, as I remember the early Chinese music players were a nightmare, oh how things have changed.This player has put the fun back in portable music 🎵. For me I haven't heard such an alive & punchy sound since my Sony Walkman in the 80s!Of course wired headphones recommend. Bluetooth is Bluetooth my hi-fi has not the best BT receiver, it was ok. Can't comment any more on BT, if you have fancy BT equipment then their are EQ/protocol options.MP3 play is what it is. It is fine enough sometimes.Hi res, Holy smokes, first time I have heard Hi res, blown away!. I used Qobuz, wow. What a beautiful library they have. Classical is without doubt the best, you can hear the breathing of the players and all the other subtle sounds that bring the orchestra into your room!You must use the Hiby app for streaming and you can use it for transferring music. You can actually purchase Hi res music off Qobuz.If you want to stay offline, that's ok so long as you have music on your device, you can just connect the device to your pc, or just preload an SD card.The build quality is very good, very functional design. Easy to use. You can go deep into the settings, but I haven't yet. Overall this is a great device. Battery is very good. Love it.

The player itself is small and extremely easy to place in a pocket. The shell is metal and made of a nice material, I have the red model and it looks excellent to me.The screen seems good enough quality, I have not had to increase the brightness too high to use this outside (although we have not had much bright sunlight lately).This player handles playback of my FLAC collection well. I have over 13000 tracks and it indexed them fairly quickly. I am not sure I like the way it works out tags, if you go by “Artist” you get all artists (including from various artist albums) and then it allows you to browse by the album. This is fine for some but of course any “various artist” albums will be scattered. If you use “Album artist”, it shows all tracks from the artist but no album view. Instead it shows all tracks? Weird.I have used this with headphones and via Bluetooth to a wireless speaker. For headphones, I have used single ended and balanced and it seems to drive a large variety of my headphones (HE-560, Oppo PM3, Denon 5200 and the ATH MSR7) with authority. There appears to be more than enough power for me. Via the Bluetooth, I could not get it to connect via anything but SBC, so I might need to experiment with different devices to see if this is common or down to the speaker.The unit battery life seems reasonable. I haven’t done a definitive test but the 12 hour battery claim seems reasonable. It also does not take too long to charge, which is a bonus.There other aspect in regards to this player I don’t like is the knob on the side for volume. I found the knob getting caught on my pocket as I took the player in and out. There is an option to disable the knob changing volume when the screen is off, which saved it for me. However, I do wish the knob had considerably more resistance.Another niggle I have is that the “gapless” functionality does not appear to work correctly for me. I get an audible “glitch” between tracks that I do not get when playing with other players in the past and on my PC.However, that all being said, I would still recommend this player. It’s a good price and has all the functionality I require for playing my music from a micro SD card.