Activo P1 review

What is the point of a dedicated portable music player? While your smartphone doubles up as your music player thanks to access to a multitude of streaming apps and internet radio, it has many other jobs to do as well. A dedicated music player’s job is to only play music, and free you of all the distractions that a smartphone brings, so you can enjoy your music library in peace, and in much better quality while on the move.

Dedicated portable music players have onboard storage for digital files, play CD-quality and hi-res files, support wireless and wired headphones, and have the technology dedicated to ensuring your music – even old MP3s – can sound their best.

Astell & Kern is one of the brands that have dominated this market, with numerous five-star reviews heaped upon their excellent music players that sound fantastic, bringing out more detail, dynamics and power than even the best-sounding smartphone is able to. A&K’s players tend to be rather pricey, however, and so the Activo sub-brand was created to cater to a younger, more ‘active’ audience whose budgets can't quite stretch to four figures.

Enter the Activo P1 portable music player. Does it do its job in replacing your smartphone as a music player?

Price

The Activo P1 costs £399 / $430, which is a considerably cheaper entry point into the world of hi-res music players compared with parent brand Astell & Kern’s repertoire. Astell & Kern’s current ‘entry-level’ portable music player, the excellent A&norma SR35, launched at £799 / $799 in mid-2023. We’ve seen prices for the SR35 dip to £599 / $649 before, and this model remains our top Award-winning recommendation if you want a great-performing dedicated hi-res player on the go.

Around the Activo P1’s price we have the Sony Walkman NW-A306, a compact and likeable if sometimes clunky player that is a smidge cheaper at £349 / $350.

Build & design

Despite the large difference in price, we mention the SR35 player for two reasons: the same team behind our favourite portable digital audio player (DAP) is behind the conception and design of this more affordable Activo P1, so we aren’t surprised to find some similarities under the hood. But the physical design is chalk and cheese. The SR35 (and indeed most of A&K’s premium players) are all sharp edges, dark metal and glass, and sleek, expensive-looking designs that justify their high price points. The Activo P1, in contrast, is light, bright and smooth.

Going for curved edges rather than the usual sharp corners of its parent brand’s designs is an immediate differentiator. The P1 is more akin to the size of a slim smartphone than the smaller, palm-sized Sony NW-306, but we’re in two minds about how it feels in the hand. We like the smooth curves, but we’re not keen on the rather cheap-feeling body that is a mix of polycarbonate on top and aluminium on bottom. It’s slippery and we can never get a firm grip on it. The thicker width at the top section also feels inelegant and odd to hold in-hand. Sony’s NW-A306 manages to create a lightweight body that feels of a higher quality, and we like its scalloped ridges at the back that help us keep a firm, secure grip on the player.

The physical volume and playback buttons at either side of the P1 also feel a touch cheap when clicked, but they are textured so you know exactly which button you’re pressing, and they are responsive in use.

The bigger issue we have with the Activo P1’s design is the screen. The 4.1in 720x1080 display screen has a dulled, grey/blue undertone to the white balance that never looks crisp or clean. It has poor contrast, too, and we find it quite uncomfortable to look at. It’s not too dissimilar to the effect a too-bright cool-toned overhead fluorescent light offers – it’s an unpleasant quality that strains our eyes, especially when looking at the screen at night. We turn the screen to full brightness and even try the warm-toned night mode, but it doesn’t help.

The touchscreen itself is fairly responsive otherwise, and the interface is simple enough to get around and use. Downloading music, finding your music files, changing the settings and playback are all perfectly logical. We just wish the design was more polished and felt of a higher quality for the price.

Features

Where we can’t fault the Activo P1 is its extensive features list. You get two headphone outputs (3.5mm and 4.4mm balanced), a USB-C port for charging and transferring music files, and you can also use it as a DAC between your laptop and headphones. Along with wired headphones, you can even connect Bluetooth wireless earbuds to the P1, and higher-quality aptX HD and LDAC codecs are supported too.

The internal storage is 64GB – which is double that of the Sony NW-A306 – and it’s mercifully not taken up by unnecessary bloatware (only 1GB is taken over by the operating system, which is hardly anything). As with most A&K players, it runs on a pared-down Android OS but you get access to the Google Play Store to download streaming service apps such as Tidal, Qobuz, Apple Music, and even YouTube. It doesn’t try to mimic your smartphone like the Sony Walkman does, and that’s to the P1’s credit.

This also means the P1 runs fairly quickly and smoothly in daily use. If 64GB isn’t enough to carry all your digital music files, you can expand that storage thanks to a microSD card slot that supports a maximum of 1.5TB capacity.

The 20-hour battery life is decent, but it can be power-hungry when you’re playing hi-res tracks exclusively and drains the battery noticeably quicker.

Delving into the settings and technical specifications is where things start to get familiar, as we’ve encountered many of the features and technology in A&K players before – from its DAR (Digital Audio Remaster) upsampling technology and ability to use it as a source with the line-out mode, to various settings for filters, gapless playback and Roon Ready certification. There is a 20-band parametric equaliser that you can tweak to your heart’s desire.

Internally, the Activo P1 uses Astell & Kern’s Tetraton Alpha Amp technology and ESS ES9219Q SABRE dual DACs, while an octa-core processor keeps things speedy. Dual-band wi-fi is also on board, although we had some issues connecting to our home internet at first. We never had any hiccups in streaming songs from Tidal once connected, though. The P1’s file resolution support is extensive: it natively supports up to 32-bit/384kHz PCM, DSD256 and MQA files. The sampling rate, file format and whether you have DAR enabled or not are clearly labelled when playing a track.

Sound

We load up the Activo P1 with our usual mix of hi-res FLAC downloads, CD-quality WAV rips and a handful of MP3 files, and download Tidal too. We tried a variety of wired headphones during our testing, from the open-back Grado SR80x to the more premium Beyerdynamic Amiron, but the majority of our time was spent with the affordable Rode NTH-100 closed-back cans plugged in.

Playing tracks from Lorde, Doechii, Fleetwood Mac and Khruangbin, we hear a smooth, even tonal balance, with no undue harshness or flab at either end of the frequencies. It’s not too dissimilar from the pricier A&K SR35’s balance, and there is decent solidity, body and power underpinning each song, with a big sense of space too.

But there is a distinct lack of dynamics and rhythmic precision. Musically, it all sounds rather flat and one-dimensional, with very little energy or subtleties in the melody. Most songs rely on a sense of rhythmic drive, with a tune either going through quiet/loud/quiet moments or ratcheting up towards a crescendo or building momentum – the Activo P1 isn’t able to communicate those elements of a song with much subtlety.

It’s a rather blunt sound. Doechii’s animated, crystal clear delivery in Denial Is A River doesn’t have its zest or rhythmic drive, and while most Khruangbin songs have repetitive notes and motifs, we don’t get much of a sense of agility or instruments working in cohesion with each other. The brooding, bombastic tones of a Hanz Zimmer soundtrack have a good amount of muscle and weight behind them when the orchestra starts to get dramatic, but we want want the propulsive nature to grab us and keep our attention fully rapt with anticipation.

Switch to Lorde’s Royals and we also notice the sound from the P1 is a touch subdued. We never seem to get the right volume level, which further suggests an unsubtle handling of dynamics. We keep pushing the volume up higher (past the warning limit) and even then we’re still yearning for more punch and more immediacy from the song.

For curiosity, we plug the Rode headphones into an iPhone 12 with the Lightning-to-3.5mm jack adapter (which does have a DAC inside it) and while it isn’t as big-sounding, punchy or have as much body as the P1, we do hear a better sense of agility, more precise rhythms and much more nuanced and engaging dynamics. Play Fleetwood Mac’s The Chain and the bass notes sound taut and shapely, and have the feel of someone plucking at them with varying intensities and pressure, while the electric guitar has that whining sheen around the notes as Lindsey Buckingham wails a solo. Switching back to the Activo P1, and it has dulled all that shine; the bass is woolier, and the whole song loses its energy and verve. It never manages to achieve that lively spark and pizazz when listening through the admittedly leaner and less powerful iPhone.

Turning on DAR mode on MP3 files does give the music a touch more punch and muscle, while playing downloads (WAV and FLAC) sounds more solid and fleshed-out than when streaming over Tidal, but the same overall sonic presentation remains. Connection to a pair of Bluetooth earbuds such as the Technics EAH-AZ100 is easily done, with the pairing process swift, and the connection is stable throughout.

Verdict

To say we’re disappointed by the Activo P1 is an understatement. It’s rare that we come across a product these days – of any type or price – that delivers such an underwhelming performance. The player has a good concept and all the right ingredients, but it falls short of what we would expect for its asking price.

Considering the pedigree behind its conception and despite being an ‘entry-level proposition’, £399 / $430 is still a sizable chunk of money to spend on a dedicated music device and we expect and hope for a certain standard of build and performance at this level. We’ve tested much cheaper players from Cowon, iBasso, Fiio and Sony over the years that have delivered a more pleasing mix of sound and build quality overall; let’s hope the next iteration of the Activo can deliver a more satisfying experience.

First reviewed: February 2025

SCORES

• Sound 3
• Features 5
• Build 3

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