Astell & Kern PD5 review

The demise of the Astell & Kern A&norma SR35 has not been music to our ears. There aren’t many outstanding hi-res portable music players on the market, with the multiple Award-winning SR35 holding firm within something of a niche product category as one of the few devices that really cut the mustard.

Happily, nature abhors a vacuum, and so into the yawning chasm left by the outgoing A&norma SR35 comes the PD5, Astell & Kern’s latest portable music player designed to deliver hi-res audio in the palm of your hand.

The price of the Astell & Kern PD5 has gone up – from £799 / $799 / AU$1299 to £899 / $1049 / AU$1399 – meaning that the new kid on the block is going to have to work that much harder to prove itself worthy of consideration.

Given its stellar reputation in this category, if anyone can do it, it’s Astell & Kern.

Build & design

From the outside, the Astell & Kern PD5 is a definite departure from the player which preceded it.

The newer model is a little taller than its predecessor, with a 12cm height that edges towards a full-grown iPhone 15, but it’s still easy to carry in one hand and place in your pocket. At the top of the unit are standard 3.5mm and 4.4mm balanced headphone connections alongside a power button, while a trio of vertically arranged play/pause and track-skipping buttons adorn the left side.

A pleasingly tactile control wheel sits alone on the opposite side for adjusting your volume by satisfyingly incremental clicks.

So far, so standard for Astell & Kern, but place the PD5 next to the outgoing SR35 and the differences are clear. Gone is the old model’s slanted screen – which sat at a slight angle against the main chassis to give the player a sharp, almost Art Deco look – replaced by a display that now sits straight within the outer frame.

The new model feels different in hand, too. Whereas the SR35 felt satisfyingly substantial, the PD5, despite weighing a touch more, feels somehow less dense and not quite as premium. Still, it is nice that there are no longer any sharp edges that might snag on our clothes. It is also fair to say that the new look is cleaner and less fussy.

The new portable player’s 4.1-inch display takes up most of the unit, save for a block of empty space at the bottom end. It’s a good display, too, showing text information and album artwork with pleasing sharpness and clarity. Our only issues arose when we took our PD5 outside and, even in the gloomy British autumn, we sometimes struggled to see what was playing thanks to an excessively reflective screen.

Unlike some rivals, the Astell & Kern player features a stripped-down version of Android OS that keeps the focus on your music library and doesn’t have any unnecessary additional bloatware. The PD5 is reasonably effective in its overall operation, although it’s not quite as slick and fast as a modern smartphone, such as when typing on its keyboard, and we wish Astell & Kern would address this in future models as it’s something we noticed in the previous SR35, too.

Overall, the PD5’s interface is nicely laid out and easy to navigate across the simple menus, giving you easy access to your library of hi-res tunes, streaming apps and device settings thanks to its logical, uncluttered layout.

Features

Despite its primary function as a portable music player, the PD5’s extensive feature suite grants it impressive flexibility.

The PD5 gives you the option to choose how many of the eight Cirrus Logic CS43198 DAC chips work at any time, so you can either choose four of them to work in parallel, or the full quota. The sonic dividends are bountiful if you choose all eight – the sound is far punchier and more expressive when fully unleashed – but doing so will significantly slash the device’s battery life.

The new Astell & Kern will get to around 28 hours of playback in standard ‘Quad’ mode, but this will drop to around 15 hours with all eight DACs employed. If you get low on juice, it takes around 2.5 hours to charge your device to full capacity.

The A&K PD5’s file support is extensive, supporting hi-res tracks up to 32-bit/384kHz PCM and native DSD256, and the unit’s internal 64GB storage capacity can be expanded by up to 1.5TB using a microSD card for large libraries.

For those wanting wireless compatibility, the higher-quality aptX HD, LDAC and LHDC Bluetooth codecs are available too. We imagine that, if you’re paying this kind of money for a dedicated hi-res player, you’re likely to spend most of your time listening via wired headphones for the higher-quality sound they tend to provide, but the PD5’s stable, solid Bluetooth performance is welcome all the same for those that want the extra convenience.

Four digital filter options are available, ranging from a default ‘Low Latency Fast’ option to the punchy character of ‘Phase Compensated Fast’. They’re fun to play around with and are all distinguishable from one another, but we settle on the natural, reasonably neutral balance of ‘Low Latency Slow’ during the majority of our testing.

For further tinkering with your sound, a 10-band equaliser is provided, or you can go really fancy and use the advanced EQ settings to plot your desired frequency response across a coordinate plane graph.

Dual-band wi-fi (2.4/5GHz) grants solid network stability, and you can download popular streaming service apps such as Tidal, Qobuz, Amazon Music, Deezer and Apple Music from the Google Play Store.

The PD5 can even be used as a dedicated desktop DAC for your laptop. Simply connect the player to your laptop via a USB-C cable, select DAC mode from the drop-down menu, and the PD5 will process audio via its internal Octa-DAC architecture.

Away from the confines of your desk, a new switchable feature called EnviroTune analyses your surroundings and optimises the sound for the level of ambient noise detected, with the aim of keeping your music clear and consistent no matter your environment.

The technology works as it should, with playback retaining its core character without our being able to sense any synthetic processing working away in the background.

Sound

£899 / $1049 / AU$1399 is a considerable sum to pay for a portable music player.

As such, we use a variety of headphones during our testing period. We dig out the budget-friendly Røde NTH-100 (£149 / $149 / AU$249) as our starter pair of wired headphones, as well as the more premium and revealing Beyerdynamic T1 (3rd Gen) (£899 / $999 / AU$1599) and, for testing the unit’s balanced connection, the audiophile-centric Sony MDR-Z1R (£1700 / $2100).

For open-backed listening, we also use the Grado SR325x (£247 / $295 / AU$425) and the Award-winning Beyerdynamic DT 990 Pro X (£189 / $199 / AU$399).

No combination leaves us feeling disappointed. Overcoming the marker laid down by the superb A&norma SR35 was never going to be easy, but the new PD5 is a clear step up from the model it now replaces. Yes, that price increase is tough to take, but our testing soon reveals that the newer model justifies its extra outlay by making significant strides in out-and-out sonic ability.

It’s unquestionably clearer and more detailed than its predecessor, serving up an expansive, uncluttered soundscape in which instrumental textures are sharply drawn. Listening to a 16-bit/44kHz FLAC recording of Agnes Obel’s Fuel To Fire reveals the strides Astell & Kern has made in revealing greater textural detail as the new player starkly reveals the full lifespan of each piano stroke as it lands, resonates and then decays back into inky silence.

The PD5 showcases further talents with regard to its class-leading organisational abilities. Regardless of genre, our music has an expressive, three-dimensional cohesiveness that makes tracks such as Radiohead’s Reckoner sound enthralling and wonderfully immersive, and the A&K picks apart the dense cacophony of Slipknot’s Left Behind to provide each varied instrument its own space to shine.

Astell & Kern’s hi-res player has a wonderfully natural way with dynamics, favouring a controlled yet expressive approach that shines on tunes such as Massive Attack’s Atlas Air or a DSD64 recording of Michael Jackson’s Billie Jean. Nothing here sounds forced or mechanical – instead, changes in volume move as naturally as sands shifting on a windswept dune.

The PD5 is happy revealing the capabilities of any of the headphones we choose to pair it with, but you can also choose to integrate it into a fully fledged stereo system, something we try out by connecting the player via the 4.4mm balanced output to our reference system of Burmester 088/911 Mk III pre/power amplifier and ATC SCM50 speakers.

Acting as the system’s dedicated DAC and music streaming source, the Astell & Kern player does surprisingly well slotting into such a high-end set-up, with Fuel To Fire retaining much of the delicacy and agility we enjoyed when listening via wired headphones. This flexibility further justifies the portable player’s high price, and its performance is good enough that you could potentially use it in a more modest, price-appropriate hi-fi system without needing to invest in separate DACs or streamers.

Even if you’re not planning on using your premium portable player as part of a hi-fi set-up, you can give your laptop a boost by connecting it via USB-C and engaging the PD5’s desktop DAC mode. Once more, the player’s talents shine through, confidently outstripping the respective built-in DACs of our Lenovo ThinkPad and MacBook Pro 2026 laptops for instrumental detail, expressiveness and overall clarity.

We even give the PD5 a chance to flex its Bluetooth powers by streaming a 24-bit/96kHz FLAC rendition of Fleetwood Mac’s The Chain to a pair of Bowers & Wilkins Px7 S3 wireless over-ears, and it happily obliges. While Bluetooth isn’t the most transparent means of transmission, it’s hard not to marvel at just how much of that expressive, natural character is retained within the snap of the drums or the layered wails of Nicks, Buckingham and McVie.

Whatever the context, the PD5 proves its worth. No matter the headphones with which we pair it or the system into which it integrates, its obvious talents continue to shine through.

Verdict

Despite the hefty price tag, the PD5 remains a great buy. If you’re looking for an exceptionally detailed, refined and dynamic sound that brings your hi-res music library to life – along with plenty of extra functionality – this Astell & Kern portable music player is the one to pick.

Review published: 7th October 2026

SCORES

• Sound 5
• Features 5
• Build 4

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