Forget Spotify Lossless vs Tidal vs Qobuz vs Apple Music vs every man and his dog. If you’re as old as I am, you’ll remember a time when the big fight for music fans’ attention was Apple iPod vs Zune. Sure it was a short-lived fight and very one sided, but I was there, man – it happened.
And in that fight, early on Zune had the technical advantage, with its players being the first to have colour screens, offer higher storage capacities and the ability to “squirt” (wireless share) music between devices. But, longer term, we all know who ultimately won the war.
For many of us, the silver bullet that won us over wasn’t a fancy big iPod, it was the tiny, colourful iPod Nano – a device many of us back in the day went so far as to describe as “totes fetch”. Google / ChatGPT it kids, some people (idiots) actually spoke like that back in the noughties.
Editor’s note: There’s a reason everyone hates my generation. I also want to take the time to apologise personally for low-rise jeans and Indie sleaze.
Smaller, made with flash memory to improve its durability, and offering good at the time audio quality, the tiny player was a staple sight wherever you went. We gave later models, including the iPod Nano 8GB and iPod Nano (7th Gen) five-star ratings – which we didn’t bestow upon a lot of players at the time.
But since smartphones dethroned portable players as the most common way most people play music, times have changed and streaming has become the norm.
This, of course, has its advantages. The subscription model means you have a huge library of music a mere tap away and don’t have to hoard pile upon pile of physical media. I still have two boxes full of Mini Discs in my attic and God knows how many crates of CDs and vinyl stashed away at my parents' place.
But it has also brought one unintended consequence I have gradually come to hate as I’ve walked further down the road into cantankerous old man territory: that, in most instances, I need to be “online” and have my phone with me when listening to music.
Yes you can locally download music on most services, but unless you’re in a black zone with zero signal, most of the time you still have your phone with you.
That means, if you’re like me, you are contactable and will engage with your favourite apps (I’ve got a really good thing going with TikTok right now where I have trained it to show me just red-panda and cat related content) or respond to that out of hours Slack message from work.
I know I shouldn’t but, if my phone is in the immediate vicinity, I will, even if I have snoozed notifications – I just can’t help myself.
And that’s a problem as I love listening to music as a way to chill out and traditionally use it as a way to switch off.
Which is why for many moons I have secretly yearned for a very specific portable player from Apple that would serve the same purpose as the iPod Nano I loved so much as a sprog: an Apple Watch capable of hi-res music playback.
Yes, I know that sounds weird. But stay with me and I’m hoping the idea will make more sense.
I love music, but I like it to sound good and retain decent levels of detail, offer solid dynamics and generally sound as the artist recorded it. You don't get that with a low-quality source.
That’s why I have always used Tidal, even when streaming, and am very specific about which recordings I listen to, especially with jazz, classical and post rock – the three genres I generally like to chill out to.
But, I also hate having loads of different devices to lug around. I like my pockets to be a barren landscape free of any superfluous items. Which is why a large dedicated portable player, from the likes of Astell & Kern, iFi or Sony has never appealed.
So my big three criteria for a portable music player are that it must work offline, offer hi-res, good quality file / codec support and be something I have to hand all the time without thinking about it.
The current-generation Apple Watches don’t have hi-res support, with all the ones I have tested or seen limiting you to lower-quality local downloads and streams due to the device’s storage and processing limitations.
If you added hi-res support to its specifications, though, an Apple Watch would tick all of those boxes.
I wear a watch all the time, so it would be with me wherever I went. But the non LTE versions require a connection to a phone to let any of the apps distract me. So if I went offline and took a “switch off” trip to my local pub or park minus my phone to enjoy some uninterrupted music listening, I wouldn't be contactable or have access to TikTok (God help me I love the red pandas).
And, with Tidal offering local playback and the ability to download music at the service’s High, or ideally Max (24-bit, 192 kHz) tier, I could still enjoy good music at a suitably hi-res quality for me to enjoy the experience with a decent set of wireless cans (I’m currently rocking the Beyerdynamic Aventho 300 as my daily drivers) when I want a “switch off” listening session away from the noise.
Yes there would still be compression as I'm using wireless headphones and yes the quality and volume of local storage, alongside other hardware upgrades, required would ramp up the price.
But I can't help but want a hi-res-ready Apple Watch; it makes so much sense for my very specific needs. Sadly though, given Apple’s recent focus on AI during its latest launch event, where we saw the iPhone 17, AirPods Pro 3 and Apple Watch Series 11, Ultra S3 and SE3 appear, I don’t think I’ll be getting my wish any time soon.
Still, here's hoping…
Let me know if you agree the Apple Watch would be better with hi-res playback in the comments or our social media channels and forums!
MORE:
These are the best portable music players we have reviewed
We rate the best DACs for music fans
Our picks of the best wireless headphones
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