Astell & Kern's inventive portable music player doubles up as a streamer for the home, too

Astell & Kern has launched a clever twist on its tried-and-tested hi-res music player formula. The new A&K PD10 is a portable music player that you can listen to on the go, but it also comes with a docking cradle that transforms it into a music streamer for your home audio system.

The South Korean brand is no stranger to innovative products (check out the ACRO CA1000T desktop player), and the PD10's dual-purpose use is ideal for those who want high-performance audio but don't want to go down the traditional separates route.

The PD10 looks like most other Astell & Kern digital audio players (DAP), such as the Award-winning A&norma SR35 and high-end A&ultima SP3000, which are among the best portable music players we've tested.

The stainless steel and glass design features a Full HD 6-inch touchscreen display, with 256GB of internal storage that can be expanded with microSD cards up to 2TB. The customary tactile volume wheel of most A&K players has been replaced by buttons in this model, while a colour-changing LED ring around the power button signals the bitrate of the track playing.

A&K has taken plenty of care with the internal circuit of the PD10 to deliver "an astonishing level of sound". To do this, it uses the same HEXA audio circuit design first seen in the five-star flagship SP3000 player. The PD10 uses two AKM AK4191EQ chips for the digital signals and four brand-new AKM AK4498EX DAC chips for the analogue stages, thus keeping the digital and analogue signal processing stages completely separate.

Performance is optimised even further thanks to two separate audio circuits for the balanced and unbalanced outputs respectively. The PD10 also features two amplifiers with different sound tunings (Normal Gain AMP and High Gain AMP) so users can select the sonic character that suits their tastes and headphones best.

And finally, the PD10 has a smart gain mode that automatically selects the best amplifier mode match to your headphones' impedance. This is especially useful if you have multiple wired headphones of various types and impedances that you use regularly, so the PD10's ability to automatically distinguish between low and high impedances takes out a lot of manual tweaking.

The docking cradle, meanwhile, has a pair of balanced XLR outputs so you can directly connect it to a pair of active speakers or your home system's two-channel amplifier. Slot the PD10 into the cradle's USB-C connection and you'll be able to stream your digital library to your home speakers.

You can use the PD10's volume button to control output levels or set a fixed level by using the line out option. There's no display, but the cradle has a colour-coded LED that informs you of the current track's bitrate.

The PD10 can be used in conjunction with a variety of other hi-fi products and storages: it has wi-fi, supports AirPlay, is DLNA compatible and has Roon Ready certification. As a portable player, it has 15 hours of battery life.

Its USB-C port can be used for charging, file transfer and as a DAC, while Bluetooth 5.3 is on board for wireless compatibility. The PD10 supports native playback of high-resolution files up to 32-bit/784kHz PCM and DSD512, while aptX HD, LHDC and LDAC codecs are supported over Bluetooth.

Of course, you can achieve much of this set-up's features with an A&K SR35 player (£599) and a WiiM Pro Plus (£219) or Cambridge Audio MXN10 (£349) streamer, but the PD10 has a fair few more technological advances and it would be missing the point of this sleek two-in-one solution.

The Astell & Kern PD10 hi-res portable player/streamer is available from May with a rather hefty price tag of £2499 / $2499.

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