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Your smartphone can play music just fine, so why would you want another device cluttering up your life? The HiBy R3Pro II at $199 USD makes a pretty convincing argument. This compact digital audio player packs dual CS43198 DACs and four OPA1622 headphone amplifiers into a colorful aluminum body that weighs just 160 grams.

Along with that, you get both 3.5mm SE and 4.4mm Balanced outputs, USB-C connectivity, WiFi for music syncing and streaming via Tidal and Qobuz, and Bluetooth 5.1 support. When looking at the form factor and specs, and really the intended use case, one cannot help but remember the iPod, offering so much flexibility and options. In fact, that is how I have come to experience the R3Pro II, comparing it to how I would use an iPod.

So does this pocket-sized player earn the “modern iPod” comparison? Let’s find out how it handles everything from design choices to real-world performance with different headphones and music genres.

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In the Box

• HiBy R3Pro II
• Screen protector (pre-applied)
• Silicone case
• Lanyard
• USB-A to USB-C cable
• Manual

I really, really appreciate that a silicone case is included with the R3Pro II. It’s a nice touch that shows some thought and care by HiBy. You also get a spare screen protector on top of the pre-applied one. Very nice additions, HiBy!

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Pick up the HiBy R3Pro II, and the first thing you notice is how solid it feels for something this compact. The aluminum alloy frame gives it a premium weight that doesn’t scream “budget player”, though this depends on whether you consider $199 USD budget or not. For this review, I do.

What really sets the R3Pro II apart are the backplate and color options. The Green and Orange variants use this high-end Ultrasuede material from Toray Japan that feels almost luxurious against your palm. It’s temperature-resistant too, so no shocking cold metal against your fingers during winter weather. The Black and Silver models go with a matte glass backplate instead (Ultrasuede versions are becoming available, though), which is more elegant and potentially durable.

It’s nice to see a company actually give you material choices rather than just color variations.

At 86.9 x 60.6 x 21.6mm and weighing just 160g, this thing disappears in your pocket, though you may notice the thickness. The curved edges make it comfortable to hold, and the size is just right to fit in the palm of your hand. It strikes that sweet spot where it’s substantial enough to operate without fumbling, yet compact enough for daily carry.

The power button sits on the right side with an embedded RGB LED that changes color depending on what format you’re playing. Below that is the previous track button, play/pause button, and next track button. On the left side is a lanyard hole, volume up and down buttons, and a microSD card slot with a rubber cover. All of the buttons have solid tactile feedback and don’t feel loose or cheap. On the very bottom of the device, you get both 3.5mm single-ended and 4.4mm balanced outputs, and in between them is the USB-C port used for charging and data.

The button placement overall feels natural after a day or two of use, though I wish the next track and play/pause buttons would be physically separate instead of right beside each other. It feels like an odd choice of placement, in my opinion. I would much rather have the next and previous track buttons together, with the play/pause button separate from them. It’s fine after you learn the muscle memory, but annoying when you first start using it.

The 3.3-inch IPS touchscreen (720×480 pixels) delivers vibrant colors and excellent viewing angles. It gets very decently bright, enough to be used outdoors in direct sunlight. HiBy even includes a screen protector pre-installed.

HiByOS runs on a Linux foundation, which means it boots in about 5 seconds and, generally, feels responsive thanks to an X1600E processor. What I appreciate most is how it stays out of your way, with no bloated Android nonsense here, just a music player that knows its job.

When you tap a song, it starts playing immediately without jumping to a now-playing screen (though you can configure it to do that). You stay right in your song list, which makes skipping around an album much faster. Navigation is gesture-based. Swipe left to see the Now Playing screen (screenshot below) with the album art and the progress bar, or pull down from the top for quick settings like brightness and connectivity.

It’s not the prettiest interface I’ve seen, but it gets the job done. You also can’t customize anything except for the interface color. And even then, I think the default color scheme looks the best.

The R3Pro II includes HiBy’s MSEB tuning system, which gives you intuitive sliders for things like “warmth” and “vocal presence”. It’s like having someone who knows audio translate the technical stuff into plain English. It’s great for someone who doesn’t want to get into the details of EQ bands.

There is also a 10-band EQ available. I found myself using MSEB more often since it’s just easier to get good results without overthinking it, and it is genuinely fun to play around with.

The main screen has your basic “apps” and options. You cannot install anything else on this device, and you cannot customize or move around the icons.

The Music section consists of the following views:

• All: This lists every song on your device.
• Files: File browser for browsing the inserted microSD card if you prefer the very old school folder/file-based approach. It also has an OTG option to see external storage devices when connected via USB-C.
• Albums: Lists all the albums alphabetically with album art displayed. Kind of like Apple’s Cover Flow but without the cool scrolling effect. Selecting an album will show all of the album’s tracks in the correct order.
• Artists: Lists all artists alphabetically. Utilizes the “Artist” metadata field of your audio files. When you select an artist, it will list all albums alphabetically (without album art). Going into an album gives you the album’s tracks listed in the correct order.
• Genres: If you have the genres metadata field populated, they will display here. Selecting a genre will show you all albums with that genre, then selecting the album will show you the album’s tracks.
• Album Artist: Lists all artists alphabetically. Utilizes the “Album Artist” metadata field of your audio files. When you select an artist, it will show you all tracks for that artist, grouped by album. There is no way to display by album like in the Artist view.

The Folder with a star and the Gear icon on the top right gives you access to playlists and music settings:

The Stream Media section gives you three options: Tidal, Qobuz, and Custom Radio. For Tidal and Qobuz, if you have your R3Pro II connected to WiFi, you can log into your account by scanning a QR code on your smartphone, and then stream music from those services. The Custom Radio utilizes a text file pointing to internet radio stations.

The Wireless section gives you the following options:

• Bluetooth: Enable/disable Bluetooth from here. You also have options to select the codec, enable the Bluetooth audio input, volume sync, manage paired devices, and connect to new devices.
• Wi-Fi: Enable/disable Wi-Fi, and set custom DNS settings
• HiBy Link: Enabling this allows you to remotely control the R3Pro II using the HiBy Music app on Android and iOS. This works with either Wi-Fi or Bluetooth.
• Import Music: Allows you to transfer files to the device over Wi-Fi through a web browser. It actually works really well.
• DLNA: Enabling this allows you to stream music from an Android device using a DLNA app like BubbleUPnP or USB Audio Player Pro (UAPP). I could only get it to work with UAPP.
• AirPlay: With this enabled, you are able to cast audio from an iOS device via AirPlay to the R3Pro II.

Next is the Books section. From the little info I can find (why is there no documentation, HiBy?) you are able to read text files in .txt format on the R3Pro II. I’ll be blunt in my opinion here. This is a useless feature. It would be better served to implement audiobook support instead. I see no reason or use case for reading test files on a DAP this small.

The USB DAC section allows you to use the R3Pro II as a USB DAC. It even gives you the option to allow charging when connected or not, which is nice since you may not want to use the device you’ve plugged it into (like a smartphone) to charge it while using it.

Lastly, the Settings section contains all the various settings, which I have in screenshots below:

Bluetooth 5.1 handles both sending and receiving audio, with solid codec support including SBC, AAC, aptX, LDAC, and UAT. I do not have any UAT devices, so I cannot test the UAT performance. AAC and aptX work great. LDAC works very well as long as you do not set it for Audio Quality (990kbps). I’d recommend Standard or Prefer LDAC Connection (Auto) if you want a stutter-free and consistent listening experience. None of the headphones I used was able to be stutter-free at 990kbps.

The latest firmware update for the R3Pro II also added the ability to use the playback controls built into Bluetooth headphones and TWS earbuds.  And yes, this device works just fine with AirPods. I was able to pair and use my AirPods 4 ANC without issue.

The 2.4GHz Wi-Fi is very stable, and I didn’t find the lack of 5GHz support noticeable. Transferring files over Wi-Fi was fairly quick, and I had no issues streaming Tidal.

One thing to note, though, is, when no audio is playing and the device’s screen is off, after a short time, the Bluetooth and WI-Fi radios will disconnect to save battery life. This makes reconnecting  Bluetooth headphones a bit of a hassle.

HiBy says the R3Pro II has 21 hours of playback time and 900 hours (37 days) of standby time. These have been accurate in my experience. I’ve been using the R3Pro II for almost 2 months now, and the battery is very hard to drain, even when using the 4.4mm balanced connection. On average,e I am getting 19-21 hours with the 3.5mm connection, and 14-16 hours with the 4.4mm balanced. For Bluetooth, I’ve gone beyond 21 hours so far, closer to 25 hours. The battery really does last a long time, and due to the very good standby performance, I almost never power the device off.

I use MusicBee to manage my music library as it is able to see devices connected to my computer and sync to them. Typically, I like to use a microSD card reader as it’s faster than a USB connection to a DAP. Regardless of what method you use to sync music to the HiBy R3Pro II, you need to create a Music folder on the root of the microSD card and place your music files there. Put the microSD card back into the player, go to the Music section, press the gear icon on the top right, and select “Update database”.

For playlists, create a folder on the root of the microSD card called “playlist_data”. The R3Pro II can recognize M3U playlist files, but the file paths of the music files need to be relative, not absolute. So it would look like this:

..\Music\Led Zeppelin\IV (HD Remastered Deluxe Edition)\04. Stairway to Heaven.flac

HiByOs devices also support this format:

a:\Music\Led Zeppelin\IV (HD Remastered Deluxe Edition)\04. Stairway to Heaven.flac

If you’ve already updated the music database with the M3U files present, the playlists should show up already. Access the playlists by going to the Music section and selecting the folder with the Star on the top right of the screen. Then Playlists. If they do not appear, select “Load playlist” from the same screen, and it will search for them.

This is where everything I just detailed to you until now culminates. All of the details above may sound great in theory, but it really doesn’t matter if the device is terrible to use in practice. If you want the tl;dr, skip ahead to it instead of reading my very long-winded adventure.

When I first received the R3Pro II, I already had a 256GB microSD card loaded up with music (95% FLAC, 5% MP3s). I put it in, allowed it to scan the files and make the database, and then was met with the absolutely slowest, most painful UI experience possible. The interface would slow to a crawl, especially when browsing artists. Honestly, this thing was pretty unusable. After some research, I found that like other HiBy OS devices (the R1, R32 II, etc), using smaller album artwork is ideal. So I set MusicBee to convert album artwork to 350×350, then synced my music to the microSD card. After scanning the roughly 4700 files (which takes about 7 minutes) the device was much happier. Using the UI and swiping between sections was no longer a slow or painful experience.

I still encountered other issues, such as the device rebooting randomly, Bluetooth connection issues, and general lag and unresponsiveness. At least I could play music, though. Finally, HiBy released the v1.2 firmware update for it, and honestly, that made a night-and-day difference. Overall performance was way better, the device was snappier and more fluid, and I almost never have any random reboots anymore. It’s like a who different device than when I originally received it.

I popped in my 512GB microSD card, which has about 10,900 files (mostly FLAC, some MP3s), and it was able to scan it in about 15 minutes. For this card, I have the original album art for files, which range from 600×600 to 1000×1000. Even then, performance was much, much better than before the firmware update.

So with all that being said, playing music has been great. Except, I did encounter one other issue that is almost a deal breaker for me. For context, I like to organize my music library according to the Artist and Album Artist metadata tags. I use MP3tag to do this, and all my music files have their metadata meticulously populated. Album Artist means the band or musician whose album it is. Artists means the main or featured artists for a track. So if you have an album like Nine Inch Nails’ Y34RZ3R0R3M1X3D, every track has a different contributing artist, but the album is still a Nine Inch Nails album.

With that context in mind, on the R3Pro II, when you go to the Artists section and select Nine Inch Nails, this album is missing. Instead, it creates an artist entry for every featured artist. Ok, that’s fine, this is what the Artist field is for. There is an Album Artist section in the Music Menu, so surely this is all ok. At first, it looks fine. I go into the Album Artist section, and all the artists are listed correctly. When you select an artist, though, you are greeted with every single track from every single album for that artist. They are grouped by album, but if you have to scroll through dozens of tracks, what’s the point here? And no, there is no way to make the device show by album in the Album Artist view. That is only reserved for the Artist view, apparently.

This completely breaks my listening workflow, as that is how I listen to music. I go select the Album Artist, then an album, and then I start listening. And there’s no way to do that on HiBy OS devices. What I ended up doing is, for just the music on this microSD card, is have Mp3tag automatically populate the Artist field with what is in the Album Artist field. So that solves my problem, but it also removes that metadata that, as a music collector, I like to have. The iPod also had this problem, so it is nothing new, but it’s also 2025, not 2005.

Tl;dr

So, anyway, all of that being said, the HiBy R3Pro II ended up playing music quite well and actually allows me to carry my entire music library with me, and after the latest firmware update, it performs very well.

I did happen to see a post on Reddit with someone not able to use their 50,000 track library with it. Non-Android DAPs typically have a 50,000-track soft cap (meaning up to 50,000 files will show up in the music library). This means that if you have more than 50,000 audio files, you will need to browse and play these files using the Files section on the DAP, which is simply a file browser on the device. I agree with that Reddit user that companies should also post these details for their devices, regardless of how niche it is to have that many music files. I mean, I’m just over halfway to the soft cap, and I don’t plan on stopping my music collection habits anytime soon.

Aside from the Wi-Fi and Bluetooth disconnecting when there’s not activity (which I mentioned earlier), one last annoyance I’ve found is that, if you pause a track and the screen is off, after a few minutes the device goes into a sort of sleep mode, where pressing the play button does nothing, forcing you to press the power button to turn on the screen, and then you can press play the button to resume the track. It’s little things like this that detract from the overall enjoyment, yet are not quite deal breakers.

Most IEMs paired beautifully with the HiBy R3Pro II. I noticed particularly good synergy with the Simgot EA1000, Juzear x Z Reviews Defiant, TINHIFI T7, and 7Hz Timeless II. Whether I used the 3.5mm SE or 4.4mm balanced connections, there was no background noise, and I only ever needed low-gain mode with them.

For headphones, I ended up really liking the synergy with the Sennheiser HD 620S and Meze 105 AER. The R3Pro II gives them more than enough power (though they are not hard to drive), and they just sound fantastic. The HIFIMAN Sundara is another headphone I ended up really liking, and the player was also able to drive it without issue.

The R3Pro II has a slightly warm, analog-smooth presentation that immediately sets it apart from clinical competitors in this price range. This isn’t the kind of warmth that muddies details, but it creates a natural, engaging sound that avoids the digital harshness. Long listening sessions become genuinely enjoyable rather than fatiguing.

There’s also an indistinguishable quality to the sound that just makes it sound…..amazing. I really can’t put my finger on it, but I really enjoy listening to this device. It gives such a clean sound and is, overall, rather transparent. I don’t want to get too much into the details other than what I have already said, as I have found more and more that most DAPs sound rather similar, and I don’t trust my extremely short-term listening memory to discern and compare the details between them.

There is something special about this one, though; it makes me want to listen to it. It’s rare for me to have that kind of pull towards an audio product.

The HiBy R3Pro II is far from perfect. In fact, it had so many issues at first, I almost decided not to review it. Thankfully, it was saved by a recent firmware update, and once I sorted out its quirks, it became quite usable and really blew me away with its sound quality. This is kind of like my experience with the iPod, where I had to deal with the various quirks (such as using iTunes) and sort of adjust myself to the behaviour and workflow of the device. It really has brought me back to that time, as, essentially, this is an offline playback device. Yes, you can stream Tidal and Qobuz if needed, but really, it’s meant for your offline music library.

The biggest issue is HiBy’s software. Not only did it have rather large issues before being patched, but the software and UI itself are archaic and in need of a modern refresh. It’s not easy to build a mobile OS, I’m sure, but if you’re going to keep selling devices like this, I think some investment is needed on the part of HiBy. Either that, or open-source the OS so that power users can fix these things themselves.

At $199 USD, the HiBy R3Pro II hits a sweet spot that’s hard to argue with. It’s not trying to replace your phone or become a Swiss Army knife. Instead, it focuses on being one thing: a portable music player. For anyone who values pure listening enjoyment over multi-purpose functionality, this pocket-sized player is definitely worth considering. As long as you are alright with its quirks.

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I’m not always able to cover all the details of a product, both hardware and software, in our reviews. If you have any specific questions about this product, please feel free to leave a comment or contact me directly.

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