HiBy R3 Pro Saber 2022 Hi Res Music Player HiFi Lossless Audio Player mp3 Player with Bluetooth and WiFi/Tidal&Qobuz Streaming/Dual ES9218P Chips/2.5mm Balanced Output/Full Touch Screen (Red)

The promise of this player, for genuinely HD sound on a £200 price point - seems incredible. When you add in it has HD LDAC bluetooth too, that seems too good to be true. Yet once I had it working fine, that promise is delivered. For the money, it's worth a bit of set-up time. Hopefully I can help users in this review so they are up and running very quickly too.First, this player genuinely has brilliant music quality. The Saber version has a clean, expansive sound that is balanced across all frequencies. I found it very easy to set-up the library on a MicroSD card and intuitive user interface. Just put it in, scan and it was all there - along with the covers and right tags.The sound is highly customisable, but for me - ace as it is with the right gain setting. There are two fain settings, 'normal/high gain' and a 'maximumise output'. It's worth playing with these to fit your headphones or desintation device as how you like the sound is always a personal choice. In particular I found it possible to get the best Bluetooth sound I've had sending to speaker systems by using the maximise output - it makes a big difference.This is a player that benefits from you taking a bit of time to work through the settings and try them out.For anyone who likes trying out tech or audio equipment, that's a fun part. This works and sounds great out of the box, but there's more you can do.Updating the firmware was straight forward - go to device manufacturer site, download and put onto the microSD card with the files in root folder. Put card in again and start-up. That was easy and all fine. You can do it over wifi, but it was easy doing it via a download and avoids any issues mid-way through an update. Please note that being a Chinese site, Google tried to restrict me opening links from it so I used the Mozilla Firefox browser which worked fine.My only initial issues related to wifi and bluetooth set-up. At first I couldn't get either to work. For wifi, after reading up, it was because I had a mesh network set-up, so I turned that off temporarily and the device then found the hub first time. It then set-up okay with the mesh after, so a touch sensitive but all fine after that. This isn't an issue with Hiby itself and will be a security measure we all experience increasingly across a range of sites by Google.For Bluetooth this proved a touch more tricky, but I think that was my fault. It's important to pick the right Codec your headphones/speaker supports and then do the search for devices. So if your speaker supports AptX, choose that and then do the search. The headphones/speaker need to be in an active pairing mode - so AKG headphones weren't tricky, but Sony noise cancelling earbuds took a few goes until I used the 'put in active pairing mode' by holding fingers on both earbuds in the flat panel for seven seconds. Then it found it first time. Once connected for the first time, Bluetooth then works fine and seems to find the best, highest quality codec to use (generally for the ones I have AAC or AptX, not dropped to SBC once). Once the first pair was done, I set up about eight more in only a few minutes. HD streaming via LDAC to my Sony soundbar was brilliant and gave the soundbar the quality input that enabled it to shine in its performance.An update on Bluetooth is that I have now paired the device with two headphones, earbuds, a soundbar (playing hi-res via 990kbs LDAC codec which is stunning to hear) and five speakers/hi-fi systems. So once you make your first connection, pick the right codec and you should fine it easy to make bluetooth connections.Now that the connections are made, the music is playing without any stuttering or drop out. The connection is reliable and keeping the best codec connection. This includes LDAC too which has one very slight crackle in over two hours of constant play. Wifi is working fine and I do not have a problem on either front. But some users may understandably get frustrated and for that I docked a star.The device also arrived with French language set, but that was pretty quick to sort back to English.Now all is sorted in first hour or two of trying it out, I'm delighted. The music quality is fantastic and has real depth to it. Sound isn't just across the stereo spectrum, it sounds infront, behind, under. With plugged in headphones the sound is best of course, but wireless headphones sound great too. Just make sure you sort the codec as I described and choose the right gain settings for you from the 'System Settings' panel.In playing from MicroSD card at great quality - I'm set. Scanning five thousand FLAC/HD tracks took a couple of minutes. I've had a lot of players from the first Creative, Ibasso, Onkyo/Pioneer, multiple of Cowon, Sony, Samsung phone etc and this is probably the best sounding for a fraction of the price (the Onkyo/Pioneer is still fantastic though in its upscaling and resultant clarity).I haven't experienced any slowdown in the interface, sleeves are loading fine (mine are all 500x500 or 700x700), the device is stable. So I'm now very happy indeed. I did have a few sleeves that didn't show which upon checking were all 1500x1500 in size, so I reduced them and rescanned - they then showed up immediately.True HD files I have purchased above CD quality are playing fine and without any dropouts.(Note if tempted by the R5 Pro Saber by the same company, it's not an audio step up and closer in sound to the R3 Pro, not the R3 Pro Saber due to the sound processing chips used. It does have Android 8.1 with ability to use apps, but is bigger than this tiny but wonderful digital audio player).I'm now delighted and hope this review both helps with initial set-up and in making the choice. For the performance this is a very low priced unit and is therefore worth a little bit of initial set-up for me.

Pros:Sound is very precise.Good sizeNice screenWell builtCons:Bluetooth very hit and missButton arrangement in one hand operation, can change track when trying to change volume.Out of the box, on first listening, the sound is super clean and detailed. After a couple of hours listening, I found it too clinical and tiring. After very minutely tweeking some of the MSEB settings it sounded warmer, which for me was perfect. Sound wise I have no complaints.I bought this to run Qobuz and my wireless headphones. The streaming is slow between tracks, but I can live with that. However the bluethooth will sometimes switch on and sometimes won't. Having to keep rebooting it gets seriously frustrating after a while.Get this if you plan on using wired headphones/IEMs, you won't be disappointed at this price for a DAP. If you're planning on wireless, save yourself some stress and look elsewhere.I returned the R3 Pro Saber 2022 and purchased the SonyNW A306 instead. Sounds marginally better, but importantly it has reliable Bluetooth.

The sound quality of this unit is fantastic. However, the whole user experience is let down by a poor user interface.Simple things like toggling WiFi on and off...Switch it on and it'll connect to your selected network no problem, then switch it off and it'll display a message saying disconnected but the WiFi connection indicator still displays implying that the WiFi is still connected.I was more than happy with the sound quality but the user interface let me do frustrated I ended up sending it back.To sum up...If you just want it for the sound quality, go for it. If you value ease of use then possibly look elsewhere.

Firstly I think a 3.5 rating for the player is fairer that 3. I genuinely like the player and it's diminutive form factor and with the right headphones (in my case Grado SR 80x) my lossless files sparkle. It's quite feature rich (perhaps unnecessarily so) it offers a lot of functionality but seemingly doesn't have the RAM to get itself out of a bottleneck! 15 + consecutive commands (volume, track skip,equaliser,search,etc.) and the player is prone to crashing/rebooting! Set up and UI was/is fiddly and required patience and online research. I thought I had been sold a dud player because I had an unresponsive Bluetooth screen (no device scanning functionality) after repeated attempts to get Bluetooth to work the player rebooted itself and the Bluetooth screen appeared with scanning functionality restored. The touch responsiveness (UI) was my biggest learning curve, it's super sensitive! The slightest touch will do the trick. I get the best out of the player when I just choose an album, playlist, artist or shuffle, and just let it play. Other than turning the Gain function to high, none of the onboard functionality (MSEB or Equaliser) settings have contributed to improving the quality of the sound above the stock settings. More robust software would definitely elevate this player. I like it though!