How do you follow an Award-winning product? If you're high-end portable music player specialist Astell & Kern, you beef up the specs no end. The new PD5 follows the Award-winning A&norma SR35 with eight hours of extra battery life and twice the number of DACs.
Like its predecessor, the Astell & Kern PD5 can switch between the number of DACs at work. But whereas the SR35 could only switch between two and four, the PD5 can go from four to eight.
Using all eight Cirrus Logic CS43198 DACs unleashes the device's full sound quality, while dropping down to four will help extend the battery life.
Astell & Kern quotes a total battery life of 28 hours (it hasn't said how long it lasts with all eight DACs firing). Thanks to PD 3.0 charging, it only takes around 2.5 hours to juice it up to full capacity.
A new feature called EnviroTune analyses your surroundings and optimises the sound for the level of ambient noise detected. So your music should stay perfectly clear whether you're walking past lots of traffic or relaxing in a quiet cafe.
Like the SR35, it supports up to 32-bit/384kHz PCM and native DSD256 files.
Its octa-core processor and Android OS-based platform pack enough power and smarts to handle music streaming, and while Astell & Kern hasn't confirmed which services it supports, we assume that Tidal, Qobuz, Amazon Music and Apple Music will all be compatible.
In terms of wireless tech, it has dual-band wi-fi and Bluetooth 5.3, and supports the Qualcomm aptX HD, LDAC and LHDC codecs. Which means plenty of options for high-resolution wireless listening.
A lot of details are still to be confirmed, including its price and release date. The SR35 launched at £799 / $799 / AU$1299, so we would imagine the same or a little higher.
The Astell & Kern PD5 will go on show at the Hong Kong AV show this weekend, and then continue its tour at China's Shenzhen International Audio Show (SIAS) from 14th – 16th August and the US' CanJam SoCal 2026, from August 29th – 30th.
We'll bring you a review as soon as we can.
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Read our Astell & Kern A&norma SR35 review
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Also consider the Astell & Kern Alpha Max
