Although some people might argue that smartphones have eliminated the need for music players like iPods or MP3 players, we aren’t as quick to disregard the classics. Having a device purely for listening to music can clear up a lot of storage space on your phone or computer.

If it’s been a while since you’ve used an MP3 player, but you’re looking to purchase one, you don’t need to guess which music player is right for you.

At a glance

Product Category Rating Activo CT10 Best overall Not yet rated SanDisk Clip Sport Best fitness MP3 player Not yet rated Apple iPod Touch Best Apple iPod Not yet rated LG V50 ThinQ Best smartphone for music lovers 3 out of 5

Activo CT10

The best

Why you should buy this: It’s small, affordable, and sounds fantastic.

Who it’s for: Those who want the highest quality sound on the go, but have an iPod-level budget.

Why we chose the Activo CT10:

If you are really serious about sound quality but you don’t have the budget of a corporate bigwig, the Activo CT10 may just be the perfect portable music player for you. Created by Groovers Japan in partnership with Astell & Kern parent company iRiver, this tiny touchscreen player offers fantastic sound and 16GB of onboard storage, which is expandable via a built-in SD card slot. It also has a Wi-Fi connection, allowing you to listen to Tidal and other hi-fi music-streaming services. It can handle virtually any hi-res file format including WAV, FLAC, AIFF, ALAC, and DSD at up to 24-bit/192kHz.

A beautiful 3.4-inch touchscreen allows you to easily pick between media and adjust settings like EQ, and an easy-to-use volume knob on the upper-right side lets you pick how loud you want things to be. The CT10 has a simple 3.5mm connection on the top, allowing you to plug in your favorite pair of headphones with ease. It’s also got Bluetooth and aptX HD support, so you can listen wirelessly in very high quality as well.

The CT10 is charged via a Micro USB port, and offers up to 10 hours of playing time on the go. The sound is fantastic, easily besting the similarly priced iPod in terms of fidelity. Everything sounds open and true from the tiny little player, making it a favorite listening device when we’re out and about. If you’re after something that sounds great, is hyper-portable, and won’t break the piggy bank, we highly recommend you check out this little player.

SanDisk Clip Sport

The best fitness MP3 player

Why you should buy this: It’s lightweight, durable, and built for exercise, with reasonable storage capacity and excellent battery life.

Who it’s for: Anyone looking to listen to music while they work out.

Why we chose the Sandisk Clip Sport:

Using your smartphone to listen to music while exercising is nearly always a hassle. If you’re running, the phone is probably bouncing uncomfortably in your pocket, or you’re forced to hold it with a vice grip because you wore shorts without pockets (stop forgetting the shorts with pockets!).

Thankfully, MP3 players with clips — like the SanDisk Clip Sport — were built specifically to resolve that issue. What the Clip Sport lacks in audio quality, it more than makes up for with several useful features and rock-solid 25-hour battery life.

Apart from the eponymous clip, SanDisk equipped this workout buddy with an FM radio tuner so you can listen to your favorite morning talk show as you take your brisk pre-breakfast stroll. The player features an LCD screen so you don’t need to rely on the “shuffle” function. The Clip Sport includes 8GB of onboard flash storage, as well as an SD card slot that allows for more storage space to be added in later. Capable of handling most non-hi-res 16-bit audio file types (including FLAC files), this little guy is perfectly equipped for a marathon or a Tough Mudder. Plus, its low-risk price tag means you won’t need to panic if it somehow falls into a puddle.

iPod Touch

The best Apple iPod

Why you should buy this: You’re an Apple devotee and you prefer the iPod family.

Who it’s for: Casual listeners, intentional users of non-smart phones.

Why we chose the iPod Touch:

Despite the iPod’s iconic nature, the rise of the iPhone has taken most of the shine off the gadget that reinvented the way we listen to music. Apple no longer rolls out new editions of each iPod every year, and some unfortunate limitations keep the player from reaching its true potential. Still, the ever-friendly user interface and the sleek beauty of the experience (and of the iPod itself) earn the sixth-generation iPod Touch a spot on our list.

With the ability to store up to 128 gigabytes of your favorite tunes, plus smartphone-like functionality including Bluetooth and Wi-Fi connectivity and access to the Apple App Store, there is no better iPod for casual listeners and those who don’t want to carry a smartphone or drain its battery.

The iPod Touch is small and light and comes wrapped in cool metal finishes, with a gorgeous retina display that makes browsing between albums easy. It even has both forward and rear-facing cameras for snapping the odd picture on the go. There’s also up to 40 hours of battery life, enough for a full work week of listening. The latest model still enjoys regular updates, too, with Apple having recently bumped it up to iOS 13.

LG V50 ThinQ 5G

The best smartphone for music lovers

Why you should buy this: Loud, “Boombox” speaker, a stand-alone quad DAC, DTS.X 3D support … oh, and it doubles as a phone.

Who it’s for: Music lovers who would rather just use their phone.

Why we chose the LG V50 ThinQ 5G :

Most smartphones’ music capabilities are extremely limited. Having access to streaming platforms like Spotify and Apple Music is important, but not everyone is willing to sacrifice sound quality and functionality for a bigger library of music.

Thankfully, with the LG V50 ThinQ 5G, you don’t have to choose. LG continues its quest to preserve the sanctity of your audio, bringing full hi-res support and pristine audio quality to anything you plug into the phone’s 3.5 mm audio jack. The V50 ThinQ also supports DTS:X 3D surround sound, a technology similar to Dolby Atmos. Add up to 1TB of storage to the 128GB you get as standard, and you won’t have to worry about moving tracks in and out of the rotation.

Also returning is its unique “Boombox” speaker, which is a single, bottom-firing mono speaker that uses the phone’s entire body as a resonance chamber. It may seem like a gimmick on paper, but we found the speaker to be extremely rich and loud, offering some of the best fidelity we’ve ever heard from the sometimes-tinny smartphone segment. It’s good enough to lessen the need for a Bluetooth speaker in intimate listening environments.

Ultimately, the LG V50 ThinQ is worth a buy if you’re in need of both a smartphone and a hi-res music player. It’s not the king of either category, necessarily, but there are few — if any — phones that can match the quality of its audio output. The V50 ThinQ is a fully capable smartphone from a brand with a lot of trusted skin in the game. Plus, it’s ready for a 5G future that brings even more speed to handle data-intensive streaming services like Tidal.

Our full LG V50 ThinQ 5G review

What is hi-res audio?

High-resolution audio uses a higher sampling rate and a higher bit rate than regular audio files. A typical hi-res audio file is sampled at 96kHz/24bit, which means that the audio is “sampled” more frequently each second than a typical MP3 file, which loses around 90% of its information during the compression process.

Hi-res files (like 24/96 FLAC files) process information more than 20 times faster than MP3 files, which means that those little details in the music — such as the attack and decay of a single guitar pluck — can be heard more clearly by the human ear. MP3 files (especially low bitrate files) are often quick and dirty representations of actual songs that have been compressed in order to save storage space. High-resolution audio, on the other hand, is compressed in such a way that those little details are preserved, or not compressed at all.

Most digital music stores and streaming services don’t advertise their hi-res offerings (if they even sell those tracks at all), but there are plenty of options for finding more crisp tunes. Tidal is there for those who prefer new-age music delivery, but many other quality hi-res music sources exist for those not averse to storing and managing their own libraries.

How we test

You might be wondering how, exactly, we came to these conclusions. As the market for MP3 players has thinned, devices must fit snugly into a niche — or be left out in the cold. For hi-res options like the Activo CT10, there’s only one way to test: With variety.

We tested the CT10 with several different genres of music across several different file codecs, with several different pairs of headphones. When it performed admirably across the gamut of variables, we knew we had our pick. We also do extensive phone reviewing, and picked other MP3 music players based on their ease of use or usefulness in a particular situation.

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