The $180 iPod dupe that’s not $180

Innioasis Y1

Ads popped up for The Classic MP3 Player (128GB) that tries to be a dupe of the OG Apple iPods. (No idea how close it comes, haven’t played with one personally.) The price as I type this is $179.99 $99.90 (and I suspect it never actually sells for $179.99), but I think it was a bit more when I looked at it the first time. Just expensive enough to put it out of “impulse buy” territory for me (especially when I have a tragically underutilized Sony Walkman, and recently sold a Shanling M1s on eBay because I wasn’t using it enough.)

Out of curiosity, I did a reverse image search and it’s apparently (also sold as?) the Innioasis Y1, and a bit cheaper on Amazon (which also has an even cheaper 64GB option, if you just want to try it out).

It has a standard USB C port, doesn’t have a ton of storage but it’s not seriously hurting there (even using FLAC, 128GB will fit thousands of songs and hundreds of albums), claims 25 hours of music playback on a battery, and with decent IEMs or the Sennheiser HD 25s, I don’t always need a balanced output. I may yet pick one up to play around with. Take it places I wouldn’t necessarily take my Walkman or vintage iPod mini. Would be nice to have a click wheel again on a modern device that can play FLAC without having to boot into RockBox.