An audiophile pal gifted me this $22 AGPTek A02 MP3 player. It reminds me of a shrunken down version of the early Click-wheel iPods, but with higher quality audio.
The battery seems to go forever. I’ve been testing these with everything from Skull Candy, Westone, Sennheiser, and some dirt cheap $15 headphones. They do a great job of driving any and all IEMs, and a fine job of driving an old pair of Sennheiser HD-680s. The sound quality is great when compared to the iPhone 6 or the water-proofed iPod Shuffle I usually use.
The device supports MP3, WMA, FLAC, Ape and some other file formats. There is 8GB of on-board storage, and the unit’ll take a 64GB microSD card. Same ones I use in my GoPros, so there are plenty around.
The UI is simple, and direct. The buttons work. The unit is super light. The screen is tiny, but this is a single use audio player and you won’t be reading the news on it.
I checked and the forums at HeadFi don’t hate it, they have a super long discussion around this device and its brethren. Even if you spend an extra $3 to get the black cased version, I don’t see how you can go too far wrong.