It looks like one of those tiny gaming handhelds designed for playing ROMs of classic games from yesteryear. Except, the Hidizs AP30 Music Boy is actually a high-res music player designed for lossless music playback on the go.
So why does it look like a miniature Game Boy? According to the outfit, they wanted to make a music player that brings the nostalgic vibes and dopamine hit of old-school gaming, which is why they settled on this retro gaming handheld aesthetic.
The Hidizs AP30 Music Boy is a compact music player measuring just 2.7 x 2.1 x 0.7 inches (height x width x thickness), so you can comfortably slip it inside most any pocket. While easy enough to carry on its own, the device also gets a magnetic backplate that allows you to snap it to the back of MagSafe iPhones and other similar setups. Outside, it gets a 2.0-inch full-color IPS display with 296 x 240 resolution. It’s not a touchscreen, by the way, so you’ll need to use the Game Boy-inspired physical controls to navigate the UI. Speaking of the controls, it gets a D-pad, two round buttons, and two slim buttons, much like the classic gaming handheld from many decades ago.
Inside, it gets an RKNanoD microcontroller, which has a 250 MHz system core, a 500 MHz calculation core, and built-in 24-bit/192kHz audio decoding, allowing it to provide hardware acceleration for lossless formats like FLAC, APE, and OGG, among others. From what we know, this is one of the more popular microcontrollers out there for budget audiophile portable players, so it’s quite the tried and tested hardware. It’s also got a dedicated DAC and a dedicated amp, so this thing is designed to deliver an elevated listening experience.
The Hidizs AP30 Music Boy coms with a microSD slot that supports memory cards up to 256GB, making it easy to load your own music files, so you can enjoy them on-the-go. While it can’t connect to your favorite streaming services on its own, you can use it as a portable DAC for your phone or laptop by simply linking them up via the built-in USB-C slot, so you can enjoy Spotify, Tidal, or whatever other music service you like getting your music from with the same audiophile quality the music player delivers. It comes with 3.5mm and 4.5mm audio ports, giving you a good amount of choice in headphones to use with it, although it also has integrated Bluetooth for wireless listening.
Aside from serving as a high-res music player and a portable DAC, it also gets a built-in ebook reader, in case you don’t mind reading on its tiny screen, and a Tetris knock-off game for those times you want to do some puzzle play while listening to your favorite songs. Other features include a 1200 mAh battery rated at up to eight hours of playback with wireless headphones and 10 hours with a wired connection, six EQ presets, custom EQ, and five digital anti-aliasing filters.
A Kickstarter campaign is currently running for the Hidizs AP30 Music Boy. You can reserve a unit for pledges starting at $99.
