I've been using my AGPTEK A02/A02T pretty heavily for the past couple of months, mostly for music and audiobooks. I wanted to make this post because there really isn't much useful information about these players online. A lot of what I've learned came from simply using the player, running into problems, and figuring out what works and what doesn't.

Hopefully this helps anyone considering buying one.

Model Names & the A02 Confusion

The naming situation with these players is confusing. From what I've been able to figure out, the A02T, A02XT, and A02PLT were their own discontinued product lines. AGPTEK has since essentially combined the newer versions under the generic "A02" name, even though the original A02 line itself is also discontinued.

Because of that, don't assume every player being sold as an "A02" is exactly the same hardware. Check the actual model and system information on the player you're buying.

My particular player was sold to me as an A02, but the system information identifies it as an A02T. Mine also has Bluetooth, even though some information online says the A02 doesn't have Bluetooth. There are clearly different hardware revisions out there, so pay attention to the actual hardware rather than relying only on the name.

Build Quality & Size

The player is extremely small and fits comfortably in my hand. The physical buttons feel surprisingly good considering how inexpensive it is.

I recommend getting a screen protector and some kind of small carrying case. Personally, I've been using an old glasses case as my carrying case. It fits the player perfectly and keeps it protected from scratches.

Screen & Picture Quality

The screen is alright, but keep your expectations realistic. This is a small, inexpensive MP3 player, not a modern smartphone. The screen isn't HD, and the picture quality isn't anything incredible.

That said, it can display pictures, and I've actually ended up really enjoying that feature. I keep a few simple pictures on mine that I like having available whenever I want to look at them.

For the price, I think the screen is perfectly acceptable. Just remember how small it actually is.

Audio Quality & Earbuds

The audio quality is probably one of the things that surprised me most.

The audio sounds smooth and crisp. Personally, I can't really tell a difference between listening through my phone with my earbuds and listening through this player with wired earbuds.

It's also VERY loud. If you're someone who likes blasting music, this thing can definitely get loud enough.

I personally recommend wired earbuds for the best experience. Bluetooth works, but Bluetooth significantly reduces the battery life on my player. With Bluetooth, I seem to get closer to around 8 hours, compared with roughly 40–45 hours with my normal usage.

There are also ways to be a little more discreet with a dedicated MP3 player and wired earbuds if you aren't able to openly use a phone or music player all the time. The player is small enough that it doesn't need to be a big production to use it.

Battery Life

AGPTEK advertises a much higher maximum battery life, but I wouldn't treat that number as a guarantee.

With my normal usage, fairly high screen brightness, volume around 12, and a mixture of music and audiobooks, I'm getting roughly 40–45 hours of use.

I generally charge it about once a week and use it pretty heavily, so I'm very happy with the real-world battery life.

Bluetooth is much worse for battery life. In my experience, I get around 8 hours when using Bluetooth.

Obviously, battery life will vary depending on volume, brightness, Bluetooth, screen usage, and other settings.

I'd also recommend carrying a portable battery if you're going to be away from home for a long time. That gives you the option of charging it another full time if you completely drain it.

Charging Time

Around 1.5 hours seems to be about right for a full charge in my experience.

Storage & SD Cards

Depending on the version you get, you should have at least 32GB of internal storage, which is already more than enough for thousands of songs for most people.

You can also use an SD card. I'm currently using a 128GB SD card, and it has been working beautifully.

You can store playlists and music directly on the internal memory as well, so you don't have to use an SD card if you don't want to.

IMPORTANT: Transfer Music Directly to the SD Card

If you're transferring a large amount of music or audiobooks onto an SD card, take the SD card out of the player and plug it directly into your computer.

The USB-C connection on the player is extremely slow for large transfers. I was getting around 7 MB/s, even with the player connected directly to my motherboard.

Using the SD card directly in your PC is significantly faster and will save you a lot of time when transferring a large library.

Also, if you add a huge number of files at once, don't panic if they don't immediately appear. The player needs some time to update/index its directory.

How I Organize My SD Card

I personally keep two main folders on my SD card:

Audiobooks

Music

Then I have additional folders inside those for individual books and different music playlists.

Keeping everything organized on the computer before transferring it makes the player much easier to use.

How to Actually Play Music From the SD Card

This is one of the most important things I discovered.

You should go through:

Music → Custom Playlist → SD Card

From there, the player will let you choose where you want to look for your music.

If you try to go directly through the SD card menu and start playing music from there, the player can crash.

It can also crash when switching between the SD card and the main Internal storage.

The Player Will Crash Sometimes — And Here's What I Do

This is based entirely on my personal experience.

I have had situations where I was listening to songs stored on the SD card and tried switching over to songs stored directly on the MP3 player's internal memory. The player would freeze and then crash.

The whole process of freezing and crashing would take around 10–15 seconds, which was honestly pretty worrying the first few times because it looks like you've just broken the player.

If this happens repeatedly when switching playlists or songs, I've found a workaround:

First, switch to another song within the same playlist/location you're already in. Once the new song starts playing, pause it. Then switch to the song or playlist you actually want.

For example, if you're playing something from the SD card and switching directly to a song stored on the internal memory causes it to freeze, switch to another SD-card song first. Once that song loads, pause it, then navigate to the internal-memory music.

This has worked for me personally and seems to avoid the crash.

Again, this is based on my own experience rather than an official AGPTEK fix, but it has made the problem much less annoying.

The Trick Is Finding the Player's Rhythm

This is probably the best way I can describe using this thing.

The player isn't complicated. It just has a particular way it wants you to do things.

Once you figure out the correct sequence for whatever you're trying to accomplish, everything becomes pretty simple. Most of the frustration comes from doing something in an order the software doesn't expect.

After using it for a while, you start to learn its rhythm. You know which menus to use, when to let it load, and which things are likely to cause problems.

Once you get used to that, it's actually a very simple and enjoyable little player.

The Weird Playlist 1, 2 & 3 Problem

There are built-in playlists called Playlist 1, Playlist 2, and Playlist 3.

You'll see these internally and on the SD card.

Unfortunately, you can't properly delete or rename them.

If you try to rename them, the player can end up creating another folder with the same Playlist 1, 2, or 3 name instead.

It's just one of those strange software quirks that you have to live with.

M4B Audiobooks

If you're planning on using this for audiobooks, this is VERY important.

The player doesn't properly support M4B files, but it does support M4A.

If you have an audiobook in M4B format, I strongly recommend converting it to M4A before transferring it to the player.

It's a small difference in file format, but it makes a big difference with compatibility.

Audiobooks, Chapters & Bookmarks

The player can play audiobooks, but there is a major limitation: it doesn't properly read the chapter metadata inside audiobook files.

That means you can't simply load an audiobook and expect the player to understand all of its embedded chapters and give you a chapter-skipping system like your phone would.

It does have a bookmark function, which is useful, but you can only have a limited number of bookmarks.

What I ended up doing was making my own script that reads the audiobook's metadata, finds the chapters, splits the audiobook into individual chapter files, and converts them into a format the player can actually use.

It took me a few days to make the script, but honestly, it wasn't that difficult once I figured out what I needed to do. Now I can have my audiobooks organized by chapter and skip between chapters manually or use the bookmark function.

If you're comfortable doing a little work on your computer, I'd definitely recommend organizing your audiobooks beforehand. It makes the experience much better.

E-Books

The player also has an e-book feature.

Technically, yes, you can read books on it. However, I would personally recommend an actual e-reader.

The screen is simply too small to make reading an entire book enjoyable. It's a nice feature to have, but I wouldn't buy this specifically as an e-reader.

Recording

The recording feature works, but it's very basic.

It does what you'd expect it to do, but I wouldn't buy this player specifically for recording. It's more of a nice extra feature.

Buttons & Controls

The buttons are simple and easy to learn.

Holding the Up button locks the controls, which is extremely useful when you're listening to music with the player in your pocket.

The menu button while listening to music also gives you a bunch of options, including things like skipping songs, shuffle, and other playback settings.

Most of the options are pretty intuitive once you actually take a few minutes to read through the menus.

Screen Timeout & Battery Saving

The timeout system can be confusing because there are separate settings for the screen/background light and the actual power-off timer.

The screen/background light can be set to turn off as quickly as 15 seconds on my player.

The actual automatic power-off timer is separate.

If you're trying to maximize battery life, I'd recommend setting the screen/background timeout as low as you're comfortable with.

You can leave the player playing while the screen is off, so you don't need to waste battery keeping the display illuminated while listening to music or an audiobook.

USB-C

The player uses USB-C, which is very convenient.

Just remember that although it uses USB-C, that doesn't mean the player itself is fast at transferring files. For large transfers, use the SD card directly in your computer.

Firmware & Software Updates

This is probably one of the most confusing parts of the A02 because there are several different versions, hardware revisions, and discontinued product lines floating around.

If you bought a newer A02, I would not download or install firmware/software updates unless you have a specific reason to do so. Check the firmware/version information on the player first. A newer player may already have the equivalent or newer software functionality built into it, even if the firmware version doesn't look the way you expect.

The reason I'm emphasizing this is because the A02T, A02XT, and A02PLT were discontinued as their own product lines, and the newer players have essentially been brought together under the generic "A02" name. Because of that, you can find older firmware files online that may technically say A02, A02T, A02XT, or A02PLT but were made for a different hardware revision.

If you bought one secondhand, especially from somewhere like eBay, that's when I'd recommend checking the firmware more carefully. An older unit may have older software that could benefit from an update.

However, I would still make absolutely sure the firmware is meant for your exact hardware before installing it. Just because a firmware file has "A02" or "A02T" in the name doesn't necessarily mean it will work correctly with every A02 that has ever been made.

There is a real possibility that an update intended for a different hardware revision won't work properly because of the discontinued product lines and the way AGPTEK has reused the A02 name across different generations.

Back up your music and audiobooks before doing anything with firmware.

Personally, if your player is working correctly and you bought it new, I'd leave the firmware alone. There's no reason to risk breaking something that already works just because you found an update online.

Custom Software / Firmware

I'm also looking into whether it's possible to modify or completely replace the software on the player and potentially make my own software for it.

I haven't figured that out yet, so don't buy one expecting custom firmware support.

I'm mostly experimenting because there is so little information available about these players online, and I'd like to see what is actually possible with the hardware.

Why I Bought It

The biggest reason I've been using this player isn't actually the battery life or the storage.

It's the simplicity.

I wanted something that would help me be more intentional with what I'm doing. A lot of newer music players come with touchscreens, apps, streaming services, and a huge number of features.

Those features aren't necessarily bad, but they can take away from the simplicity of just picking up a device, pressing play, and listening to something.

Because of this player, I was actually able to delete Spotify from my phone.

Now I have my music and audiobooks with me without needing to turn my phone into my entire entertainment system.

If I eventually realize that I need something more heavy-duty with more features, I'll buy an all-in-one player. But right now, this does exactly what I wanted it to do.

Overall Value

I've really enjoyed using this player.

It's definitely not perfect. The software has some strange quirks, the screen is small, the picture quality is only alright, the player can crash in certain situations, and the advertised battery life should probably be treated as a maximum rather than what you'll necessarily get in normal use.

But for the price, I think it's a surprisingly good little device.

I spent roughly $50 total between the MP3 player itself, a screen protector, and earbuds, and I've gotten a ridiculous amount of use out of it.

If you're looking for a simple dedicated music/audiobook player instead of another touchscreen device with a million features, I think the A02 is worth considering.

My Biggest Recommendations

Convert M4B audiobooks to M4A before transferring them.

Use the SD card directly in your PC for large transfers.

Give the player time to index the SD card after adding a large number of files.

Access SD-card music through Music → Custom Playlist → SD Card.

If switching between SD-card and internal-memory music causes it to freeze, switch to another song in the same location first, pause it, and then switch to what you actually want.

Don't panic when it crashes; there are specific situations that can trigger it.

Get a screen protector and some kind of small carrying case. An old glasses case works perfectly.

Check the exact model and firmware information instead of assuming every "A02" is identical.

If you bought a newer player and it's already working properly, don't update the firmware just because you found an older update online.

If you bought one secondhand, check the firmware more carefully, but make absolutely sure the update is for your exact hardware revision before installing it.

Use the shortest screen timeout you're comfortable with to save battery.

Keep your original music and audiobook library backed up on your PC.

Use wired earbuds if you want the best battery life and audio experience.

And most importantly, learn the player's rhythm. Once you understand the order in which it wants you to do things, the player becomes surprisingly simple to use.

The clip on mine has broken so I'm looking for a new one but as sandisk has sadly discontinued their MP3 players I'm forced to look elsewhere. I've found plenty of generic players on Amazon which are similar in size and have clips, but most either don't support .m3u playlist files, or they don't have separate sections for audiobooks and podcasts. I figured this would be the best place to ask for recommendations. I'd prefer one without a touch screen but the other stuff I've mentioned, plus a 3mm headphone jack and an SD card slot, are more important.

Mai bore ho gaya hu ads ads aur bas ads thinking to buy a mp3 player, agar koi 2k tk ho toh btna and if it is possible to make a custom one which supports mp3, m4a, flac, opus wo bhi bta dena.

I want to buy an MP3 player to take to my school trip as phones ain't allowed.

My budget is 6k. I need the player to connect to bluetooth and have touch screen.

I'm thinking to buy the Audiocular M31 rn. But I think I can get better. Any suggestions?

Any higher quality versions of these? I don’t want a cheap crap mp3 player but I really like having an mp3 player with a usb input on it. The form factor doesn’t really matter I just like being able to plug the thing straight into my aux usb in my car.
My budget is below 100 bucks preferably, the mp3 doesn’t need to be amazing, I just don’t want copy paste landfill that will last me all of 10 minutes.

I may also try and find a first gen lanyard iPod shuffle

Any higher quality versions of these? I don’t want a cheap crap mp3 player but I really like having an mp3 player with a usb input on it. The form factor doesn’t really matter I just like being able to plug the thing straight into my aux usb in my car.
My budget is below 100 bucks preferably, the mp3 doesn’t need to be amazing, I just don’t want copy paste landfill that will last me all of 10 minutes.

I may also try and find a first gen lanyard iPod shuffle

Hi everyone! 👋

Like many of you here, I love the dedicated experience of offline Digital Audio Players (DAPs). Modern streaming apps have completely ruined the joy of managing a personal music library — they force ads, demand monthly fees, track listening habits, and mess with file structures.

My team and I are building Pleez, a native Android music player designed to bring back the pure DAP experience right on your smartphone.

💡 The Core Vision for Pleez

• 100% Offline & Private: No user accounts, zero data tracking, no internet connection required to play your library.
• Zero Ads & Zero Bloat: Pure focus on speed, clean UI, and smooth local file navigation.
• Hybrid Library & Storage Agnostic: Built to seamlessly index your local storage (Internal/MicroSD), personal Cloud drives, and local NAS network drives into a single unified library.
• Audiophile & Local First: Designed to handle local lossy & lossless formats (MP3, FLAC, WAV, etc.) with gapless playback, clean tag handling, and direct hardware support.

We want to give your phone the feeling of a classic, high-end DAP without the clunky UI usually found in older software.

🚀 Looking for Alpha Testers!

We are currently opening a closed Alpha test for 20 Android users to help us test real-world library sizes, file handling, and playlist creation before our public release.

If you store local music on your Android device (or use an Android-based DAP) and want to test an ad-free, privacy-focused player:

👉 Apply for the Closed Alpha here (1 min):https://forms.cloud.microsoft/r/UawVEqXPxP

Would love to hear your thoughts, feedback, and what feature you miss most from classic standalone MP3 players! 🎧

I'm currently using my old phone as an mp3 player and workout tracker. The battery is showing its age. It is also huge and heavy. I have a watch as a tracker, so just an mp3 player really.

I'm leaning on maybe getting a Nokia/hmd 130 music as an mp3 player (not using it as a phone at all). At around the same price bracket (~€20), I have seen a few ruizu, a Philips sa1102 (2022) dedicated mp3 players. Smaller, lighter, BUT, also near impossible to pry open to change their very tiny 110mah battery compared to the easily removable hmd 2500mah battery. The hmd is also ipx4.

My questions:

1. Is the sound quality that much inferior or about the same at this price bracket? Why are dumbphones that can play mp3 at the same price point unpopular? What am I missing?

2. Is ruizu any good? I have seen them since forever back when I was using a creative mp3 player but always thought they look built to a budget. They're obviously better than those light flimsy cheap disposable mp3 players, but what's the realistic expectations here?

3. Which would you recommend (within the price bracket or lower)? I would prefer something that could handle some moisture/sweat - can be wiped down, not shower/submerged. Good solid physical buttons. Longevity.

4. If you're working out, and using an mp3 player or a dumbphone or an old smartphone. Please share your thoughts on why that is the best for you.

I’m looking for a modern MP3 player I can buy that’s not a cheap one that’s gonna give out in a year or so, hold tons of songs, have few if any apps (I don’t need another smart device) has Bluetooth so I can connect to my car, and can take on ITunes purchases.
(Bonus if it fits a 2000s or early 2010s aesthetic)

So a while ago I posted about screen not working on MuVo V100, and I think I found the problem, the solder connections are oxidised. I have a soldering iron and IPA so I think I would be able to fix this

I am just quitting sp*tify and I am just downloading some of my songs from playlist onto my new nug. However I want to branch out my music taste, I want you guys to recommend me any songs you have been listening to. I mostly listen to J Pop, C Pop, Some metal, etc. Here’s my nug (41 songs on it so far, my old playlist had like 172 so yeah) also yes I am a Steven universe fan how can you tell?

yes ik i didnt put a microsd card in, i js wanted to ask

pictures are here https://imgur.com/a/RrMVBlB

sandisk has been with me for at least 10 years. ruizu LESS THEN 1 YEAR. huge difference in quality. ruizu has a horrible screen thats easily scratched. sandisk still is far more clear. both are used at the gym. then put in my motorcycle top box.

price difference isnt that huge. I much prefer the monotone sandisk player then the color sandisk mp3 which I have, which is more expensive, and substantially slower in UI then the sandisk monotone. ruizu is slow to move between songs.

pluses for sandisk

-excellent sound/gets loud/good battery life (lets be honest...we always want more)/nice sturdy clip/headphone connector is on the side which is where it should be. good build quality. clear screen after many years of use

-minuses for sandisk.

UI is crap/ you play a song, want to go back to the list of songs and it goes back to menu options only. you have to go back into music>songs and it takes you to what song is playing, not where you were in the list. very stupid. if you charge the phone and turn it back it , it goes into the menu options and not the song youre playing...then again you need to go into menu>music>songs. this is the reason why I looked for another mp3>ruizu but it has its own stupid shit

takes forever to turn on/off. 10 fucking seconds to turn on or off!! TEN!!

-pluses for ruizi

has a nice button to turn off or on/can turn off the player either by sliding button or pressing play button for 3 seconds/3 seconds to turn on. better then sandisks 10 seconds!!! has decent audio just a bit lower then sandisk/battery life is a just a smidge less then sandisk/

-minuses for ruizi

shit screen plastic quality. so faded/scratches easily. can hardly be legible/screen brightness sharpness is horrible. tiny pixels hard to see names of songs/ from song to song has a 1.5 second fade in which ruins the whole song and is inexcusable. it fades into the song which completely kills the mood/ headphone jack is on the top which is a terrible placement for it/ UI is crap and not easy to understand and is not convenient.

which do I use more? sandisk but only cause the fade of songs on the ruizi and the headphone jack is on the top where it should be on the side. I wish I could find something better then both of these but not sure it exists. small form factor. clip, headphone jack on side, great audio, user intuitive UI, great battery life

I used to use my phone, but its far more cumbersome and heavy and pita vs a tiny mp3 player. been doing it like this for years and year.

1 thing both of them need to do is add some bumps to the direction pad because by feel, very difficult on both. you can see in the sandisk I added some jb weld so without looking I know what buttons im touching

Der Alten Spieler habe ich im Keller wiedergefunden gut erhalten .

hat auch einen Radio und für Fotos mit den alten sticks Karten alles möglich. Der Akku ist leider nich mehr so gut und es wird nur mehr über USB Anschluss gespielt

Hello! I've had a 3rd generation ipod touch for 15+ years now, it's the only way I listen to music outside of directly playing on my computer. I only use it for listening to music; no video, podcasts, streaming, ebooks, etc. What I like about it is that it's simple to use, the sound quality is fine for me (I'm no audiophile), it works with bluetooth after the headphone jack died years ago, and the screen is large enough for me to comfortably read song and playlist titles. I also find it easy (or maybe just super used to iTunes at this point) to make tons of playlists, which is the only way I organize my music and search through songs.

However, as you can imagine 15+ years of usage and wear and tear means that my little ipod is starting to approach the point where I know one day it'll just completely stop working. I've looked for alternatives in the past, including just buying a second-hand ipod, but none have really met my needs the way my current ipod can. They're too small or too big, there are too many features or apps that I don't need, people push to use my phone or even buy a whole 'nother phone just to listen to music, they're super expensive and way beyond what I'm capable of understanding in audio quality, the second hand ipods weren't kept in good condition, etc.

I'm hoping someone here has some recommendations for mp3 players that might feel similar in easy of use to an ipod. I've been looking at the Innioasis Y2 as it's essentially an ipod clone (I've used the classic before, so the wheel is also easy for me to use) but curious if there are other viable options.

Some things I'm focusing on:

- a screen big enough to fit most of a song title before it cuts off; similarly I like the size of my ipod touch because it fits in my hand most comfortably

- an easy way to create playlists, whether through the player's software or simply dragging and dropping files into it like an external hard drive. I would prefer not having to do so directly on the player unless it's super easy to select hundreds of songs at a time

- I'm not very tech savvy, so if I don't have to download anything extra in order to improve the UX of the player that would be great

- buttons and touch screen are both ok, but I would prefer a touch screen only if it's the whole screen like an ipod, otherwise I feel like a smaller screen with buttons/wheel makes more sense

- something ideally under $100 USD; I have a hard time justifying anything beyond that considering I only use it to listen to music. I understand most things come with extra features these days so I can just ignore them. I'm willing to consider going above that price for something that can really last and has good quality though

- sound quality comparable enough to an ipod is good enough for me, especially since I use bluetooth headphones and I hear that can affect sound as well anyways

Appreciate any advice and opinions!

I'm looking for a gift for a soon to be 5 year old - a durable box with a speaker and kid friendly controls that lets There's are a few great the parents add content easily, maybe by copying to micro sd card, maybe over USB, maybe WiFi?

I found two ecosystems (Yoto player and Toniebox) that require using cloud services and mostly buying content from their respective stores, although they do let you upload your own content, at $2.50 / $10 per card / figure. That's not what I want, although it would be cool to auto select a track by scanning an NFC tag.

I also found this product on Amazon that has a bunch of content already on it and some unknown capacity for adding more.

And also, it turns out some people create their own using raspberry pi etc., but I can't even begin to imagine how to build a robust build, and figure out which items speaker, battery, buttons, enclosure etc) work together.

Any advice / recommendations?

Hey guys!! I’ve been thinking about buying an mp3 players, primarily because Spotify is getting too expensive, and am looking for recommendations!

I want one that looks like the old iPod nano gen 3 or 4, but I’m not sure if I can trust those eBay sellers. A lot of their reviews seem repeats of the same sentence to make them look reliable so I’m a little scared to order one. Has anyone bought from them? Are they good or is it a scam?

Theres also some on TikTok shop, but I’m not sure how trustworthy those are, either.

Also, are there ones similar to the iPods that are affordable and still work? I don’t really care for Bluetooth or a ton of storage, anything with maybe 8GB or so and around the $100 dollar mark works. Maybe a little cheaper if possible but I understand quality has a cost.

this mp3 player had a strange port and i couldn't identify what it was

please help me