Astell&Kern Announces New SA700 Player

Astell&Kern produce what are arguably some of the most intriguing portable music players available, mainly due to their exceptionally unconventional design-queues. To some extent, we can think of them as being sort of like Lamborghini or Pagani in the sense of producing items that incorporate outlandish designs and with price-tags to match. The latest addition to A&K’s lineup is the SA700.

SA700 Details

Compared to the likes of the Kann, AK380, and SR15, the SA700 seems considerably more subdued in design given that it largely follows a traditional candy-bar design. The only obvious aspect that really gives it that typical A&K flair are those guard around the volume control. In fact, it looks rather reminiscent to the chunky crown-guards you’d find on dive watches.

The front features a 4.1-inch touch display which has a resolution of 1280 x 720, giving it a pixel density of 358 pixels-per-inch. This puts the display on par with that of the $2400 A&ultima SP1000M.
Under the hood lies a pair of AKM AK4492ECB DAC chips which allows the SA700 to decode up to DSD256 and up to 384kHz/32-bit for PCM formats.

In terms of audio performance, the SA700 is capable of achieving a signal-to-noise ratio of 120dB via its 3.5mm single-ended output, whereas the 2.5mm balanced output achieves an SNR of 123dB. Likewise, the THD+N figure is equally impressive at just 0.0006% for both the single-ended as well as the balanced output.
The SA700 also has a 128GB of internal storage, although available storage will be less due to some of it being taken up by the operating system and other required system files.

The rated battery-life is fairly average at just 8.5 hours, and unfortunately there’s no fast-charging functionality as the 3150mAh battery can require a total of 4.5 hours to fully recharge via a 5V/2A power-supply.

Pricing and Availability

The SA700 will apparently come with a price-tag of $1299, and should be available in North America by mid-December.