Astell&Kern AK70 MKII Portable Player Review

The AK70 MKII is somewhat of a pricey device, but it is also a very complete device. It feels reliable and dependant and when you hold and use the device you get a real sense of it being a quality-designed and constructed device
Pros
  • Gorgeous design
  • Feels premium
  • Very good sound
  • Great UI
Cons
  • Volume dial is a little wobbly
  • Practically no accessories included
  • On the pricey side compared to the competition
  • Not a lot of power
Final Rating
calcRating
Rating Details
Bottom Line
The AK70 MKII is somewhat of a pricey device, but it is also a very complete device. It feels reliable and dependant and when you hold and use the device you get a real sense of it being a quality-designed and constructed device
Table of Contents

Specs

  • DAC Chip(s) : 2 x Cirrus Logic CS4398
  • SNR : 118dB unbalanced / 119dB balanced
  • Crosstalk : 136dB unbalanced / 138dB balanced
  • THD : 0.0005%
  • Clock Jitter : 45ps
  • Battery : 2500mAh

What’s in the box?

  • Astell&Kern AK70 MarkII
  • 2x front and rear protectors
  • Micro-USB data / charging cable
  • Warranty and user guide leaflets

Accessories

ak70-ii-box-contents

It seems quite odd, at this price-point, to see the AK70 MKII being shipped out with less included accessories than what you get with the FiiO X7 Mark II, X5 3rd Gen, or even the X1 2nd Gen for that matter. There’s no leatherette or even a silicone case included. All we get here are 2 sets of protectors for the front and rear glass panels, a micro-USB charging/data cable, and the usual warranty and user guide literature.

Design

ak70-ii-front

OK, so people who haven’t really shown any interest in this little portable audio world are unlikely to recognize the Astel&Kern name. But, if you’ve been in this for even just a few short months, I’m pretty confident that you’ll be quite familiar with it.
Astell&Kern make some of the most interesting-looking devices out there. They’ve always got some strange design-element such as sharp angle or offset displays. But, even though the designs are incredibly unconventional, somehow Astell&Kern always manage to pull off like absolute pros.

Their designs are so iconic that even manufacturers like FiiO have, not really stolen per se, but rather borrowed some of the designs. We can really see this on the X5 3rd Gen and X7 Mark II. Those extra edges and sharp angles serve absolutely no purpose other than an aesthetic one, and that’s pretty much what Astell&Kern’s devices are so famous for.

In the case of the AK70 MKII, we get a much more conservative design compared to their higher-priced products. It’s still an unconventional look with that off-centre display, but it’s not quite as intriguing as, say for example the AK240 or AK300-series.

ak70-ii-right

For the most part, the AK70 MKII is almost identical to the original AK70, with the only differences being in the design of the knurling on the volume dial, a-colour scheme change, and the body is also 2.5mm wider and 2.2mm thicker. It has also picked up a little bit of weight, coming in at 150g vs the 132g of the original. But overall, they’re pretty much the same device in terms of the design.

ak70-mk-ii-volume

On the right-hand side of the device we get a rather large digital volume control dial. At first glance you might mistake this for being a slightly stiff analogue volume pot, but instead it does have some distinct clicks when turning it. Compared to what I remember form the original AK70, these clicks don’t feel as loose and plasticky on the MarkII. But, unfortunately there is still some play with this part just like I experienced with the original. It’s a shame really, as the entire device looks and feels so solid and as though it’s got the tolerances of a Swiss watch. I won’t say that it feels like a weak-point that will give in on you in just a few months, but at this price I expect a better build quality.

ak70-ii-left

Along the bottom is where we find the micro-USB charging and data port. And yes, this device does support both being used as an external sound card for your MAC or PC, as well as being able to output the digital audio through the micro-USB port to an external DAC device. There is also support for external storage devices over OTG.

On the left hand side is a single micro-SD card slot and towards the upper portion are the skip and play/pause buttons.

ak70-ii-top

The top edge houses the 3.5mm unbalanced output and 2.5mm balanced output, as well as the power-button.

ak70-ii-rear

As you might expect, the rear doesn’t have anything that serves a particular function, but we do get another taste of Astell&Kern’s design language in the form of this interesting pattern on a dark bluish-grey colour accompanied with a mirror silver Astell&Kern logo, all of which is underneath a layer of glass.

Overall it’s still an interesting design and something that is quite different from the majority of portable players out there, even if that design is very conservative by Astell&Kern’s standards.

Under the hood lies a pair of Cirrus Logic 4398 DAC chips whereas the original AK70 had to make do with only a single chip of what appears to be the same model. This improved circuitry has, in part, resulted in a roughly 3% better signal-to-noise ratio, a 4% improvement in crosstalk, and the total harmonic distortion figures are also down to 0.0005% from 0.0008%. Clock jitter has also been improved which now sits at 45 pico-seconds as opposed to the 50 pico-seconds jitter of the original AK70.

User interface

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ak70-ii-playing

The UI is something that absolutely must be mentioned here. Of all the portable players that I’ve used or reviewed (except maybe the Apple iPod Touch), Astell&Kern’s software and UI are as close to perfection as I’ve ever experienced. They haven’t really gone for anything over-the-top or otherwise fancy, but with reference to the design and layout – there’s just an inherent beauty to the minimalist simplicity of the UI. Even though the device is running some sort of Android, it doesn’t look anything like Android.
There’s no bloat or anything otherwise that would be unnecessary. This is a dedicated music player, and the software gives you exactly that, nothing that’s not related to a music player.Starting from the home screen we can immediately start browsing through our music via artists and album tags, genres or playlists, as well as directly browsing through the internal and external storage via a file browser. There’s also the option to go to the Astell&Kern store, which isn’t anything more really than where you’d get access to some streaming services such as Tidal. That’s something else to mention actually – the AK70 MKII does have built-in WiFi. Of course you wouldn’t be able to utilise any streaming services if you didn’t have access to the internet. But, because the software is such an extremely slimmed and trimmed version of Android, you can’t just go ahead and install any 3rd party apps that you’d like. Here you’re entirely at the mercy of what Astell&Kern provides on their little store and your choices aren’t much.If we look at the UI of the actual music player app, we again see this very minimalist but refined design. Again, there’s nothing more than what you’d need, and it’s all laid out in a very intuitive and friendly manner.

When I reviewed the Fiio M7 a few weeks back I mentioned that I felt that the UI on it followed a very similar design principal as what I found on Astell&Kern players, and now being able to review another Astell&Kern product I can confirm that this is still true. FiiO still has a bit of a way to go, but they’ve done a great job so far.

In the case of the AK70 MKII, I can only comment on two flaws that I noticed in the UI.
The first looks more to be a bug really. When pulling down on the notification drawer there is a persistent notification to say that the SD card has been safely removed. Well, the issue here is that the card wasn’t ejected, and for some reason this notification appears pretty much as soon as you insert a card…and then it just stays there. This doesn’t affect the functionality of the card in any way whatsoever though, and everything still works otherwise the way you’d expect it to. Perhaps this bug is actually just somewhat of a mis-translation of sorts. If we look towards the right edge of the notification we can see that there is an eject icon. Tapping on this icon does indeed eject the SD card from the software. So, perhaps what the notification should say is something along the lines of “tap to safely eject SD card”, rather than suggesting that the card already has apparently been ejected.
Then the second flaw would be with the animation speed of the UI. I noticed the same minor issue with the original AK70 where the transition animation just tends to make the device feel a little sluggish. There aren’t any stutters here though, the animation is wonderfully smooth, but it does take a bit of time for the animation to actually happen. Unfortunately, there is no way to change this as we can’t enable developer options like you would on a more regular Android device (or even the FiiO M7), so you’re stuck with those slightly sluggish transitions.

For whatever reason, Astell&Kern don’t seem to publish any sort of battery-life figures for their devices. Of course, the battery-life does depend on numerous things such as volume-level, file type, sampling-rate, screen-on-time, and a couple of other factors, but at least just some indication would be useful. So I went ahead and did my usual battery-life test which I do for every device and the AK70 MKII managed to play the 96khz/24-bit album into the Pinnacle P1 for almost exactly 9 hours non-stop. That’s pretty much on par with competing devices.

Sound

Sound is another area where Astell&Kern do very well, as they should, given these types of products. But the fact is that you do pay a lot more for these products compared to offerings from the likes of FiiO and Shanling, for example.
Overall I would describe the sound signature as pretty neutral, with a touch of warmth. The AK70 MKII is more than capable of retrieving the finer details and presenting them to you in a very enjoyable manner. On it’s own, as a stand-alone player, it’s a very competent device, and it’s easy to see how this could very well be a person’s go-to device of choice in terms of portability.
But I find it’s always useful to directly compare the sound of a product to something that I know is an excellent performer, and so I pull out my trusty iDSD Black Label for this.

I’ve got to say, Astell&Kern did a great job with the AK70 MKII. When directly comparing it to the iDSD, I definitely can appreciate the additional refinement in the sound of the iFi, but it’s still surprising to see how well the AK70 MKII can handle itself against a dedicated DAC device.
Let’s start off with the bass region, and in particular how strong drum beats are presented. The iFi shows more authority here, giving you more of a presence and punch. In contrast, the AK70 has more of a snap to the actual hit of the drums which makes those sounds come across as less engaging.

What I’m hearing here is that the Astell&Kern lacks just a bit of smoothness and finesse. It just feels as though the AK is trying harder, whereas the iDSD has this effortlessly smooth character. That effortlessness is, in my opinion, what I would describe as being indicative of a device’s refinement in audio presentation.
So how does that relate more directly to actual instrument sounds? Well, I’d say that it comes down to a sense of realism. As I mentioned, the AK doesn’t quite have the ability to portray that punchiness of the drums, and likewise with acoustic guitars you don’t quite get that same portrayal of the resonance that emanates from the guitar body.
There is one area where I found myself drawn a bit more to the sound of the AK70, and that’s with certain piano notes. Every now and then there was just this certain crispness to the notes that I enjoyed. How that translates into the objective accuracy of the note is not something I could answer, but it was a little detail that stood out to me.

But again, as a stand-alone device, the AK70 MKII is a really good performer.

Value

Now, when we start to consider the outright value packed into the AK70 MKII, what do we get?
Relatively speaking, it’s a fairly compact device, at least more so than the X5 3rd Gen and X7 MKII from FiiO. Then there’s also the software to consider, and this is a major point for me personally. I can’t stand shoddy software, especially when bugs are blatantly obvious. When such bugs exist, that says to me that the manufacturer is lazy and takes very little pride in what they create. With Astell&Kern I’ve never felt that way. Things are polished and refined. But perhaps more importantly, and this may initially seem like a bit of a weird thing to say, but things just work the way they are advertised to. If you’re at all familiar with the likes of FiiO, then I’m sure you know what I’m talking about. Often they’ll advertise features or functionality for their devices, and then only afterwards do you realise that particular feature or function is only intended to be included in subsequent firmware upgrades. This is becoming less of an issue with them, but it still creeps up from time to time.
With Astell&Kern you don’t have that issue to worry about. And that is, in part, what you’re paying for. Unfortunately, we don’t get extras such as an optical output or dual card slots – and at this price those are the features that I feel really should be included – but it all comes down to compromises. For roughly the same price (especially now that the SR15 is replacing the AK70 MKII) you could either get the AK70, or the flagship FiiO X7 MKII. The FiiO gives you way more features, but at the same time you’d have to deal with FiiO’s software. As far as the sound quality is concerned, I don’t honestly know if there is such a relatively big gap between the 2 devices. But I’d have to compare them directly in order to really say anything more concrete in that regard.
In conclusion, the AK70 MKII is somewhat of a pricey device, but it is also a very complete device. It feels reliable and dependant and when you hold and use the device you get a real sense of it being a quality-designed and constructed device. And therein lies the true value.