Good build quality - Easy software - Good price

Excelente

J’ai acheté cet appareil pour diffuser la musique d’ambiance dans une salle avec 120 personnes à travers la sono. Le résultat est impeccable et a complètement rempli mes attentes.Mon petit bémol, c’est l’équalisation personnalisée difficile à régler car il n’y a rien à ce sujet dans le mode d’emploi. Mais à force de persévérances, j’y suis arrivé et le résultat est impressionnant.

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Update #1: There is a Search function! While in the Category menu, select either Songs, Artist or Album etc then hold down the M button until an alphabetic menu appears at the bottom of the screeen where you can then scroll through each letter of the alphabet.Update #2: Went to go put on a screen protector today and noticed there's already one on the front glass! I'm not talking about the thin piece you have to pull off after receiving the H2, I removed that when I got it. So the manufacturer already put a protective screen on it and THAT is what is scratched up. I will leave that on and save my screen protectors for now. I also removed the plastic "packaging" covering off the back but that glass has NO protective screen cover. So we'll see how the back holds up for now and will update again later. PS if you buy the screen protectors (Lamshaw brand) on Amazon they only come with protectors for the front, not the back.Update #3, October 31, 2024: On a previous night I had the HiFi Walker connected to my Fluance speakers through Bluetooth. When I finished listening I powered off the speakers then the HiFi Walker. The next night I powered both on and connected once again through Bluetooth, only this time I just barely heard any music coming from the speakers and that was with turning the volume all the way up on both. This is going to be really weird so bear with me! I then connected with bluetooth to a cheap USB mini speaker, it worked fine, volume was normal. Connected it to a small JBL and the HiFi Walker again worked fine. I removed the card and reinserted, connected to Fluance speakers and nothing just a hiss and barely audible sound of music. I remembered I had added some songs in between so I thought I'd format the card and start over, just to try something different. It gets even weirder: Using Disk Utility on my MAC I had to select ExFAT as its format, and choose GUID Partition Map as its scheme. Once that was done I copied one of my music folders and its playlist back to the card, popped the card back into the HiFi Walker, powered it back on and nothing, no music to be found, no automatic update performed! Next step was to perform a format on the HiFi Walker itself by going into Settings > Reset > Format TF card. Began the process again of copying over some of my music just to test, disconnected it from my MAC and FINALLY saw that it started the automatic update of adding the songs which looked promising! Once that finished I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw the songs appear...connected it again to the Fluance speakers and was very happy to hear my music playing normally again! So one lesson learned: format using the format function on HiFi Walker itself if having the same trouble. I still have no idea why the music would sound normal on cheap/cheaper mini speakers but not on the Fluance or why I would have to format the card and start all over to get it to work properly again with them. Very strange!------------------ Start of Review -----------------After reading the reviews for the H2 HiFi Walker and a couple of other brands that were more expensive I settled on this one. I knew its shortcomings, one of them being there didn't seem to have an easier option to scroll through a huge selection of files to find whatever song, artist or album I was looking for. The iPod makes this less time consuming where you can select a letter of the alphabet for whatever artist, album or song you're looking for. The H2 also comes in a touch screen version....if I wanted to be able to search faster I would have gotten that one. Do I miss the touch screen...No, I don't! Do I miss the iPod search...No, not really, I can just make more playlists on the H2 ! Do I miss the ease of syncing with iTunes...oh heck yes! But my iPod only holds 32GB, the HiFi Walker ATLEAST 128GB (I haven't tried a larger capacity card yet). And since getting the Hifi Walker I've been using only it and haven't used my iPod since. Mainly because I love having the majority of my music on one device!Now for Playlists...You can create them with a free app called FooBar. Before getting started with FooBar though, I created folders for each decade (50's to 2020's) and put these in a main folder called Music on my desktop. Then started the very long process of going through and copying all those that I wanted to the corresponding folder. It helps to actually drag them from iTunes (Music) instead of right-click copy and paste...by dragging them you don't lose the album covers after they're dropped into the folders. The next step was to correct the volume for each song in the folders I created earlier. An awesome free app called MP3Gain Express made the volume correction a breeze except that I could only do batches of 50-60 songs each. Time consuming but well worth it! Next step involved creating playlists, mine were pretty simple. In Foobar I created playlists for each decade then had to highlight and drag the songs I wanted from each folder into their respective playlist in Foobar then saved each playlist (eg. name: 1960's Playlist) as an m3u file in the main Music folder. And the final step connecting the HiFi Walker to my computer where I could copy the contents of the main Music folder, including the playlist files to the root of the HiFi Walker. If you want to be greeted with an even tidier menu of song folders and playlists separated into their own folders as well, you'll have remember this when creating the folder structure so the paths won't change when you put them on the H2. If not you can use Microsoft's Visual Studio Code to change the path location but that would be even more time consuming. .....If you have tons of songs like I do it's so much better breaking them down into folders rather than dumping all the songs (without having them in folders) and playlists at the root. You can also add your most liked songs to the default My Favorite playlist already on the H2. To do this: Select/play a song you want to appear in this playlist then press the M button twice to add it, notice the heart icon to the right is then coloured. To remove a song, locate/play it and press the M button twice to remove it, the heart icon's colour is removed so you'll know it's been removed.For the HiFi Walker itself: The buttons, layout and menu were relatively easy to get used to. The screen is crystal clear, I have some small scratches on mine, the glass isn't as durable as on the iPod. I've ordered screen protectors and a case for it here on Amazon. There is also a plastic protective layer on the back that I wasn't aware of until it started peeling, I'm keeping that on to protect the back! The device has some heft to it and is heavier than the iPod. It looks to be well built, the scroll wheel is flush and moves easily, I've tormented the life out of it searching for a few songs that I missed putting on my playlists and it still works flawlessly! I haven't yet, after having this for a month or a little more, had to fully charge it except before the first use. It's been "topped" up each time when connected to the computer while transferring music. But I can say after using it pretty much every night for a couple of hours at a time that the battery should last for quite a few hours if not a full day of use. Oh, and the sound! It is awesome! I have the equalizer set to "Pop", it was the only setting I liked, and I have music from every genre. ....Finally, for what it does, how much music you can put on this using a micro SD card (and not being restricted like the iPod), how much cheaper it is than what an iPod cost when they were available I have no problem recommending it. Especially to anyone who doesn't mind putting in the extra work it may require. I can honestly say for me it was all worth it and it was fun learning a few new things!Though this device is quite different from an iPod I have no issues with the H2's menu system. It's no different than using Explorer (Windows) or Finder (Mac). The button functions are also easy to get used to once you've played around with them. The manual is useless!Also checked Bluetooth, connecting it with my Fluance bookshelf speakers and it connected no problem but I always have trouble with the Bluetooth connection on them: when I turn the volume up even on the iPod the connection breaks, so this is an issue with the speakers not the H2. The sound was also quite loud just before the sound skipped and stopped. I haven't been able to test yet with wireless headphones. For my use with wired headphones the H2 is great.

I am a music addict. Although I have gotten used to streaming music off my phone, I still like owning my own copies of records, CD's and downloads. I was an early user of iPods and loved my 128GB iPod Classic when it came out. The problem was that I did not like iTunes and preferred flac files over MP3 or other formats. I recently went on a long vacation where I did not expect to be able to stream music easily or cheaply, so I planned to bring by old iPod classic with me. However, when I bought a new portable speaker for the trip, I discovered that most such speakers are blue tooth only. They don't have input jacks at all. On a lark, I searched for "blue tooth MP3 players" and up came a whole host of products I never knew existed. After reading multiple reviews, I bought a HiFi Walker H2.I was impressed with the size and the quality of the build. It is small, but feels like is solidly built. After playing around with it for a bit, the controls became fairly intuitive. At first, I was disappointed that I had to scroll through all of my music alphabetically which took forever to get to groups at the end of the alphabet. Then I discovered that if you looking through your music in the "Category" menu, you can simply hit the "M" button and the alphabet will come up on the bottom of the screen. You can then go from A to Z to narrow your artist or album search to the specific letter in the alphabet.Initially, I downloaded my entire music library in MP3 format so it would all fit on a 256GB micro SD card. However, I really wanted to figure out a way to put all my music in flac format on the player. Unfortunately, despite my best efforts, I was not able to narrow my flac library down to fit on a 256GB card. On a lark, I bought a 512GB card and downloaded my flac library on to it (about 384GB total). I then popped the card in the player and let it update the library from the new card. Voila! It worked. I now have my entire flac library on the player with plenty of room to add more music.The sound quality is amazing on good headphones (B&W's), and I was blown away the first time I plugged the player into the jack in my car. Wow. It also sounds great on my Bose blue tooth portable speaker and worked great on my extended trip. It sounded okay on a cheap pair of blue tooth ear buds, but I blame that on the ear buds and the fact that I was listening to my MP3 library, not my flac library.The price can't be beat either. Who would have thought that you could buy a better quality, higher memory capacity and iTunes free music player for this price.Nice job. I am a very happy customer.UPDATE: Since loading the 512 GB micro SD Card, I realized something important. The player will recognize and play all of the music on the card in the "Explorer" mode. However, you cannot quickly scroll through the list of folders in this mode. All of the music cannot be seen or played in the "Category" mode. This is the mode that sorts the music by artist, album, song, etc. The Category mode apparently has a ceiling of 15,000 songs. This is the mode that allows you to quickly scroll through the music by letter if you push and hold the Menu ("M") button. I also discovered that when you disconnect the player form a computer, it re-analyzes the library for the Category mode and doesn't always discover and list the same albums. It seems also random which artists/albums it includes in the Category list. Nevertheless, it is still good to know that it will play an entire 512GB card even if it can't/won't categorize all of that music. In reviewing other players like the HiFi Walker touch and the Surfans, it appears they have the same limitations.

Amended/Edited Review, December 2022: after using the H2 for some time, almost all the original issues I identified in my initial review have been resolved with my unit, so I'm giving it an extra star. Metadata scanning just took a while to figure out between auto vs. manual, but works great now. The headphone jack issue (I believe) only seems to affect headphones containing an in-line mic (e.g. 3 level barrel plug); regular stereo headphones seem to work fine.I did a fair amount of research on competitive (2022) MP3 players, I really wanted to like the Hifi-Walker H2; I liked it ok, but for the price, I expected a lot more in terms of quality, stability/consistency, and ease-of-use.After receiving mine, I found a grab-bag of qualities-- some excellent, some merely confusing, some disappointing. First, the good news: the sound quality is extremely good. The build quality and metal case inspires confidence and is very good. OTG via USB C is a good feature, though clumsy in requiring a separate OTG cable not provided. The inclusion of a separate, truely "line-level" 1/8" phono jack output, in addition to the headphone 1/8" phone impedence jack is superlative (if only they worked simultaneously). Next, the "middle" points -- features that are ok but could really be improved: the user interface is 'interesting', with the circular selection wheel, but also very quirky -- e.g unlike any hierarchical scheme, there's no indication when you start rotating the selection/menu wheel, where its going to lead you, or where you'll end up. This is complicated by the mixed metaphor of a 'wheel' (suggesting a flat 1-D menu layout) vs. the "Back' button at lower right, suggesting at least a shallow menu hierarchy. The labelling of a separate "Setting" selection (which should be shown as Music Setting!) vs. System Setting is a bit odd. Oh well. Overall, for a MP3 Player with this cost, look & feel I would expect it to also have a FM radio. And WiFi to stream Spotify or others streaming services,. It does offer Bluetooth, but unfortunately I could almost never get the Bluetooth to actually pair with nearby common BT devices, particularly Sony bluetooth speakers, or any other bluetooth speakers. For the very few BT devices it would pair with, it's range was weak & excessively short ( I bought this H2 MP3 player mostly to attach as a "fixed, always ready" player (via bluetooth) into my studio Tascam Model 12 hybrid analog/digital mixing console that supports Bluetooth and it does minimally work for that. Luckily, the HiFi Walker H2 did manage to pair with my Tascam Model 12--if it hadn't done that I would have started the return process immediately. When I tested the H2 using its "Line Out" into the Tascam Model 12, I note that using the "Line Out" disables the headphone jack output -- ideally, it would nice to have it output to both the headphone and "Line Out" at the same time. Now for the flat out disappointing points: once I loaded a collection of 50-60 songs on a SanDisk Extreme SDHC 16Gb or 32Gb card, with my MP3's organized by album, artist, genre etc (via the full set of ID3v1,ID3v2 media metadata parameters), I expected the H2 to default to an Auto-Scan, to pick up the SDHC card contents by folder and re-build its indices. No such luck. Under the wheel option "Category" I definitely then expected to find an explicit SCAN NOW option or button. Surprisingly, there is no SCAN NOW option or button, despite the "Setting" option inferring there is one, e.g. allowing one to select "Manual" (whatever that means) vs. "Automatic" (whatever that means); neither setting appeared to work as intended, to perform an active scan of the SDHC media card (here labelled a TF card). Without a SCAN to build the index of a media card's contents by Album, Artist, etc. the wheel option "Category" merely returns "0's" for all the useful categories e.g Artist, Album, Genre, My Favorite, and even "Songs". Only the "Recently Played Songs" category reveals a positive number like 1,2,3 etc. indicating a song played only via manual folder browsing. There is obviously some way to FORCE a "re-scan" of the SDHC media card to re-index it, but I haven't discovered it yet. This is needed to populate the "Category" option's metadata fields like "Album","Artist". Offering an explicit SCAN button for SDHC media shouldn't be a puzzle, it should be clear, up-front, and easy, with the a default behavior that does it automatically like my old cheap Ruizo and every other MP3 player does. Next issue: the player symbology for the "Play" vs "Pause|Stop" seemed backwards to me; when you press the Play ">" symbol, the music player shows a ">" Play symbol when it is already playing a song. When a song is playing, I expected it to display a "||" symbol, since it is already in the act of playing a song, the only logical other action is to Pause the action, not press "Play" or ">" symbol which it is *already" doing. That's a minor logic bug you can get used to. Next: when a song is playing, a small set of vertically oriented sub-options appears on the right margin, and is obscured if an album cover image is underneath it. The interface offers really no indication at all how to navigate to or operate this tiny, vertical set of options. Experimenting reveals the tiny physical "M" button accesses these sub-options, sort of. Once you stumble onto the sub-menu items (Heart symbol for favorites, ">>", " OVERALL IMPRESSION: See updated review comments at top. Picking up the HiFi Walker H2, you feel its heft and quality and you will like it compared to most others. It has the potential to be a very good MP3 player with some refinements. The interface design could definitely use improvement, as noted above. In my opinion, without a more stable Bluetooth, FM radio, and lack of Wifi, I think its overpriced as it is now. I do enjoy its superlative sound quality.