Amazon.com: Customer reviews: Astell&Kern AK70 MKII Portable High Resolution Audio Player, Noir Black

Top positive review

Positive reviews›

Andrés Jorquera

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United States on January 27, 2018

Great interface, amazing sound, beautiful design. The only bad thing is that the battery doesn't last too much.

6 people found this helpful

Top critical review

Critical reviews›

Sue

Sounded Great, until it quit working

Reviewed in the United States on June 6, 2019

Awesome sound for the first 15 times it was used, now it simply will not turn on. Very disappointing!

56 total ratings, 45 with reviews

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From the United States

Andrés Jorquera

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United States on January 27, 2018

Verified Purchase

Great interface, amazing sound, beautiful design. The only bad thing is that the battery doesn't last too much.

6 people found this helpful

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Sue

Sounded Great, until it quit working

Reviewed in the United States on June 6, 2019

Verified Purchase

Awesome sound for the first 15 times it was used, now it simply will not turn on. Very disappointing!

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no one of consequence

This. Sounds. Fabulous. ... A great device though it could use a couple extra features

Reviewed in the United States on December 16, 2018

Verified Purchase

I had a Fiio Alpen E7 DAC and headphone amp I'd drive via usb from my Samsung S7, and it worked, and it sounded a lot better than the phone, and it drove my headphones very well (AKG Q701). But hanging by an OTG USB cord was a huge pain and a barrier to portability, and the the battery started to fade. Plus, I wanted to try out some HD Audio tracks. I did a lot of device research before buying this; Onkyo, A&K, Fiio, Sony, etc. But this device, a generation older, was selling for an excellent price given its superior specs and dual-differential DAC architecture. So I bought it, figuring if it doesn't dazzle me, then for all that money it could go back.

And then... WOW. What a true sonic wonder! I won't write up an audiophile review to convince you. If you're looking at this device you already know a little something about high-end audio and can find the same reviews online that I did. But, needless to say, after listening with high resolution audio tracks, I was not giving this thing back!

So, what are the drawbacks, then? There are some, and they are not necessarily going to be found in other units if you happen to be considering other options:

Volume: My AKGs have 62-ohm impedance and although it isn't astronomical, for all the output power the AK70 MkII may have, it doesn't drive them to deafening levels. (Who'd want to do that?) But for some listening and recordings I need to set the volume to rather near the top of its range. There isn't much headroom there. If you have higher-impedance or lower-efficiency headphones, you may find listening volume to be a challenge. This may be due to its delivering 2.0Vrms at the headphone jack, somewhat lower voltage than other players.

While this product focuses on hi-res audio, it is still a music player and should play music from whatever source the listener demands, but streaming options are very limited. It has Wifi and plays hi-end streaming service Tidal. Why not play Spotify and Pandora as well, like any other network music player? Sometimes I listen casually, while doing other things, and I don't need 120+ dB dynamic range and crystalline accuracy. Kind of an oversight for what is essentially an Android-based system. Surely lots of examples of Pandora and Spotify clients are available.

Finally, it provides a potentially fantastic Wifi feature with DLNA compatibility. While accepting a 256GB Micro SD card for storage, one is nevertheless unlikely to carry around their entire music collection-- especially if it is bulky hi-res audio. Many of us run DLNA services at home, whether a feature of our Internet router, a NAS device, or software running on a desktop computer. So DLNA gives access to everything while you're on the local network. However, I found the AK70 MkII DLNA compatibility is hit-or-miss. It works with A&K's own Windows-or-Mac server software. I had no luck with the "minidlna" linux service I've been running for years, though. I just switched to Plex Media Server and have better luck, but that's commercial, and it doesn't seem to work with my Marantz network AV equipment. So it causes kind of a problem for me

Either way, this well-built player is silky gorgeous to listen to and for all its wonders I am delighted with it. A good high-end option while staying out of the nearing -$1000 zone.

4 people found this helpful

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carybndc

I liked everything about it except that it would not play ...

Reviewed in the United States on February 15, 2018

Verified Purchase

I liked everything about it except that it would not play through car audio system - so it can’t replace music on my phone.

7 people found this helpful

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Amazon Customer

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United States on May 3, 2018

Verified Purchase

Great product. Quality finish and handy. User interface is much better compared to my FIIO X5 Mk III.

4 people found this helpful

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Glenn

Too many buggy issues to warrant the price tag.

Reviewed in the United States on December 20, 2017

Verified Purchase

I wanted to like this music player, but being that Astell & Kern is a smaller company, there are a number of glitches in its performance from lack of product testing that just aren't excusable for such an expensive device.

Negatives:

-The Bluetooth connection is iffy. It connects to everything, but in the car, it doesn't send the music data to the screen and artist, album and title all say "unknown" I can still control it from the steering wheel, but its a little frustrating having to pick up the player to see that info (and dangerous while driving). I have tried this in several cars. Occasionally, the bluetooth connection craps out and it sounds like a skipping CD. That's ok, I'll just connect it to the car with the AUX Cable! But then I think of what I paid for it. It shouldn't have this problem...

-On most devices, when I connect it via bluetooth, the volume sounds too low, I check the player, and it is set to 150 (max). I fiddle with the physical volume dial and suddenly the music returns to full blast, deafening me and anyone in the car or listening to my home stereo.

-The EQ doesn't work. You can mess with the levels to death and the sound doesn't change at all. (i saw another mention of this on another website)

-Every time I turn it on, the SD card has to re-mount and it has to index the data. This can take a while, and I can't immediately resume where I left off without waiting for it to scan. If I try to force it to and hit play, it jumps to a random song on that album.

-Volume knob is very very easy to turn, and it adjusts every time i pull it out of my pocket.

-Literally 2 choices for cases, all expensive and not very good.

Positives:
-The player is a good size.
-It sounds really good
-It doesn't slow down navigation as you pack on GB and GB of music, which has happened with some players.
-It has a nice weight to it

Overall, I will be returning this for a SONY player. I figure there will be better product testing behind a bigger company.

20 people found this helpful

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David

I loved this product

Reviewed in the United States on March 27, 2018

Verified Purchase

I loved this product, it is great for its intent, unfortually I had an issue with the 3.5 Jack where you can only hear the right output. Contacted Customer Service and did'nt get concrate response about the issue, instead I was asked to contact them through E-mail where they took several days to give me a final responce, for the price there should be a better quility to the DAC output jack, overall great product unfortunetlly there isnt a great support on customer service . I will return the device and switch to Sony.

3 people found this helpful

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Francisco -

WORST BRAND EVER, EXPENSIVE, NOT WORTH IT.

Reviewed in the United States on October 10, 2019

Verified Purchase

TERRRIBLE PLAYER, NO BUG CORRECTION, NO UPDATES, NO MQA SUPPORT FOR A $500 DOLLAR DEVICE, NO TIDAL DOWNLOAD SUPPORT, IT JUST SUCKS IN EVERY TERM! EVERY SINGLE ASTELL & KERN PLAYER IS COMPLETELY FORGOTEN AFTER A YEAR OR SO, NO UPDATES, NO SUPPORT. BATTERY IS WORST THAN THE FIRST IPHONE, IT IS THAT RIDICULOUS..... STAY AWAY FROM ASTELL & KERN PRODUCTS, EXPENSIVE CRAP IM RETURNING THIS CRAP, SOFTWARE IS A JOKE, PURCHASING A FiiO WITH MORE CAPABILITIES AND BETTER PRICE

2 people found this helpful

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Fritz

Surprised by how much I use and with so many other products

Reviewed in the United States on April 18, 2018

Verified Purchase

Before this, I was mainly using mobile phones on the go or loaded SD cards and CDs in the car. Since I purchased it, I have not listened to music off my phone again. The sound is smooth, detailed and even when I ripped some of my CDs in to uncompressed FLAC, it was like listening to a completely different album. The separation and clarity between L/R channels and the size increase of the soundstage were the most noticeable differences for me when compared to something like an iPhone X. Everyone I have let listen to the unit, with my headphones or theirs, has been blown away by how much high quality sound comes out of such a small package.

As I bought it, I was a little worried I was only going to use this for critical listening on my days off from work and then eventually turn in to a dust collector. Since I got it, I have found myself using it on days off, using the line out to my home stereo and car stereo. I even connect it to my PC in DAC mode so my PC sees it as a sound card and sends all the audio to the AK70 (really amazing for gaming). More recently I discovered that when I connect my Nintendo Switch and the AK70 through the USB ports, I can also activate DAC mode and process the switch’s audio through this unit.

A couple of things to know before hand: when I first got it, I found it almost frustrating to get used to how to properly catalog albums so that they are named properly, show the album artwork and don’t combine with another album that might have a couple of key overlapping pieces of information (i.e. “various artists” for artist name and “best of” for album name). Once you get over the first learning curve, everything smooths out and becomes quick and easy. Some people have complained about the user interface lagging and I don’t exactly agree, there is a touch of delay here and there but if you have ever used an android phone, it feels exactly like that (it runs android in the background). The last item of concern for some is that the body is a machined piece of aluminum and has some fairly sharp edges. I picked up the leather case and it is much more comfy in the hand. Regardless, the AK70 feels extremely well built and is a pleasure to hold on to while listening to music.

I would highly recommend picking up a huge memory card (I choose the 200gb since it was half the price of the 256gb). I would also recommend a TIDAL HiFi subscription since you can stream CD quality to this unit over WiFi on the go and when you use it as a sound card on a home PC, you can listen to the MASTER quality content through the TIDAL PC app (proper HiFi content).

As a whole, I am extremely happy I purchased this product. On the minor items I mentioned, I feel you can tell it is more of an entry level item (on A&K standards) but it only pulls me more in to the HiFi genre and already has me dreaming of buying one of A&K’s higher end units.

17 people found this helpful

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mark rubin

beautiful, small

Reviewed in the United States on May 25, 2018

Verified Purchase

beautiful, small, lightweight player that is fast and does everything right...except for its Bluetooth performance: the player loses BT communication with aptX headphones often while walking or moving: my Sony NW-ZX300 and Onkyo DP-X1 linked to same headphones (Beyer dynamics Avento) might exhibit a rare glitch with the same movements but never lost connectivity. If not for the BT issue, I would have rated it 4.5 stars, so if you do not use BT this is a great little player

6 people found this helpful

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