ShanlingM6 Ultra MP3/MP4 Player,Portable Music Player,Hi-Res Bluetooth Audio Player,2.4G/5G WiFi|5.0in Screen|4+64GB|16X MQA|4X AK4493SEQ|Android10 Snapdragon 665|3.5&4.4mm|900mW@32Ω Output (Green)

Boy, did I fall in love with the Shanling sound: thick, buttery and detailed. Note: I tested with not only my IEMs (MEST MKll, Solaris 2020, Fiio FD7, et. al.), but also my Senn 6XX and Hifiman Sundara. The IEMs were delicious on low gain, the over ears same on medium gain - never had to go above 35 on volume. My music was primarily classical (Mahler symphonies, Mozart piano concerti, Schubert string quartets, etc.) and lots of R and B (from Aretha to Maxwell). All symphonic parts separated wonderfully, smoothly; and pop music slammed as needed. But....I bought this DAP, my first, simply to stream music. I've been using my iphone X and and decent DACs (IFI hip dac, IFI xDSD, Fiio Q3), but was tired of dongles and carrying around two pieces of equipment just to listen to music. So, after researching, I made the plunge for the Shanling M6 Ultra. The sound was noticeably more powerful, cleaner, and sweeter than from my phone/dacs. However, my main music streaming service, Amazon Music Unlimited HD was buggy: stopping a song for 17+ seconds if the screen went dark and I tapped to see what I was playing, and/or went to anywhere else within the app, or god forbid, another area of the player, like settings. Really annoying, but I was emailing back and forth with Shanling to resolve this.I uploaded new firmware. I even downloaded Tidal HiFi and Apple Music to determine if this was an Amazon Music-only issue. It was and wasn't: Tidal could not find the internet connection, so I couldn't play any of their music. Apple Music wouldn't work at all. I talked to AppleCare for about 30 minutes: sharing screens, etc.; we determined it's a Shanling device issue. I removed all the apps and reinstalled them (Amazon, Tidal, Apple). No good. Same glitch with Amazon, same non-performance with Tidal and Apple.Also, when the M6U does actually play music, the device gets super-hot. I mean so hot you need to take it out of your pocket. A case might help, but you have to buy that separately.Shanling customer service (email only) was very responsive for the first couple of days, but then they disappeared completely. I still don't know if this is a uniquely bad device or if these bugs are inherent to the M6 Ultra.So, as much as I hate giving up that beautiful Shanling tuning, the device is so glitchy it causes me stress rather than relaxation. I'm returning it to Amazon and going to try out the Fiio M15s. I'll let you know.

The Good: Great sound quality. It has a fast processor so the interface is very responsive. The design is very good - I like the green color and the buttons are laid out better than other DAPs I've owned.The Negative: It works great when I'm away from home, but at home I like to plug my DAP into a desktop DAC & headphone amp via USB. With my previous DAPs from HiBy & Fiio, I used a small USB hub with power delivery so I could use the external DAC and charge the audio player at the same time. Unfortunately, this does not work with the M6 Ultra. It will recognize an external DAC if it is plugged directly into the player, but I could not get it to work with a USB hub or OTG cable with power, so you can't use an external DAC and charge the player at the same time. My other complaint is that there does not appear to be a setting to allow the screen to rotate into landscape mode. Not a big deal, but it works better with my exercise equipment if I can set it down horizontally.Update: The seller contacted me to point out that the M6 Ultra is itself a high quality DAC, so they don't consider connecting an external DAC to be necessary. That is a fair point, but I would just like to have the option to use it as a streamer with my desktop equipment. I added an additional star to the original review, since this is probably not a very common use case.