The Hidizs AP30 Music Boy — Max GlenisterMax Glenister

11 Aug 20264000<br>The Hidizs AP30 Music Boy<br>#hardware#dap#review#kickstarter<br>I saw the Hidizs AP30 Music Boy on Reddit and got curious enough to reach out to Hidizs to see if they’d send me one to review. It’s a palm-sized DAP that launched on Kickstarter on 23 July 2026, and it’s pitching itself as a companion device rather than a standalone player, something to clip to a bag, hang round a neck, or snap to the back of a phone. I’ve had it for five weeks now, including a holiday where I used it out and about, long enough to have formed opinions beyond “this is a cute novelty.”<br>I should say upfront that this is a review unit, so the firmware I’m running may not reflect what eventually ships to backers. I’ll come back to that.<br>In the box<br>The box contains the player itself, various USB cables, screen protector, a manual, warranty card, protective case and a set of magnetic rings that gives the device MagSafe-style attachment. More in there than I expected.<br>Initial impressions<br>Out of the box, the AP30 looks like a tiny Game Boy. It’s smaller than the dimensions had prepared me for. At 68 x 53 x 17mm and 56 grams, most earphone cases I own weigh more. It’s pocket-sized on its own, but that 17mm of thickness makes itself known once it’s stuck to the back of a phone.<br>The face buttons felt immediately familiar (d-pad, A, B, Start, Select), and I’ve held enough Game Boys to know. All very clicky, and easy to hit accurately even given the tiny footprint. The ALPS wheel on the side controls power and volume. The rocker is satisfying, rotates endlessly with a good amount of resistance, and clicks in nicely as a power button.<br>On the back is a whale. Hidizs’ website says:<br>inspired by the ocean, AP30 goes beyond sound. Through our collaboration with WDC, Hidizs highlights the beauty and importance of marine life. The whale design reflects our shared respect and responsibility for the ocean.

WDC or Whale and Dolphin Conservation is the leading charity dedicated to the protection of whales and dolphins, and a portion of AP30 revenue is apparently going towards the charity, which is a nice touch even if nothing on the packaging itself explains any of it. There’s a “Whale Jam” initiative mentioned alongside it too. It looks nice either way.<br>Build quality is solid. The plastic has the textured, matte finish of any games console out of China, without feeling too cheap.<br>Specs<br>Chip RKNanoDDAC Cirrus Logic CS43198Amp RT6863Display 2.0” IPS, 296x240Outputs 3.5mm SE (61mW+61mW @32Ohm), 4.4mm balanced (137mW+137mW @32Ohm)Connectivity Bluetooth 5.3 (SBC only), USB-C (charging + DAC mode)Storage microSD up to 256GB, 210MB internal storageBattery 1200mAh, roughly 10 to 12hr SE, 8 to 10hr balanced, 6 to 8hr wireless, 60 days standbyDimensions 68x53x17mm, 56gOS HidizsOSHidizsOS<br>No Android here. For some that may be a selling point, though anyone after app support on a DAP will read it as a dealbreaker. Boot time is around three seconds.<br>The main menu has six items (Media Library, the Tetris clone, an Ebook Reader, File Explorer, Bluetooth, and Settings) and the less said about the ebook reader the better, it does text files and that’s it. It’s navigated with the d-pad and A/B buttons, and the ALPS wheel handles volume and screen wake/sleep/power.<br>The now-playing screen features an A/B loop function. Press A to mark the start of a section, play on to the end point, press A again, and it loops that section on repeat. Not something I used much, but it’s a rare inclusion on a DAP at any price.<br>The media library is where I spent most of my time, and where most of the rough edges live. Folders and albums look identical in both the library and file explorer (no bolding, no icons). Album art barely works either. Anything above roughly 300x300 pixels won’t load, so most of my modern rips just show a blank square.<br>Adding music to the SD card triggers a full rescan that takes over five minutes, with no incremental option and no way to skip it. Other reviewers have reported the rescan simply never finishing on a second boot, though I haven’t hit that myself. Long lists page six items at a time, so a big artist or genre list means a lot of paging, and a lot of repeated d-pad presses to get there. Tracks inside a folder aren’t reliably sorted either, and albums can play out of order without warning.<br>Favouriting is the one that annoyed me most. You can’t do it from the now-playing screen at all, only from the library, and doing so stops playback, requiring a manual resume. There’s no gapless playback and no M3U playlist support, so anything mixed or DJ-set shaped has gaps punched through it.<br>The battery indicator is a 5-state icon rather than a percentage, which is fine until you actually want to know whether the battery will last all the way home. And the auto power-off timer caps out at 120 minutes with no way to extend it, so leaving it idle overnight isn’t really an option.<br>None of these are...