SHANLING 2in1 MP3 Music Player Headphone DAC Amp Black-Orange

Revised--- My original experience with this device was less than perfect. Since, customer service reached out to help me resolve the issue (see last section). After very helpful feedback, and some back and forth troubleshooting, it seemed like the best course of action was to have it replaced. There was some concern that the headphones that I was using were not compatible with the device. I was using a set with a three-band, 3.5 jack. This was for playback control and a microphone for hands-free communication. We came to a conclusion that this might have had some effect on the performance of the device. I would recommend that you avoid this if possible. As far as my experience with the device; I love it. I know there are more expensive options, with more robust operating systems. There are some quirks with the OS for the M0 Pro, and I will explain those later. As far as my experience with sound quality, it works great. I have some experience with audio, having sold audio equipment for years, and the sound is great. It won't drive larger headphones, and I'll talk about that later as well. Pros: - Great sound - Lightweight, sturdy - Great storage - Built in DAC for phones, PC, etc. - Bluetooth receiver and transmitter Cons: - OS is a bit too responsive. I wish that scrolling through albums was a bit less responsive, since I can mistakenly scroll to the bottom of my album list by mistake. - Small screen is a bit difficult to manage - I wish it had a queue, and that I could add songs/albums to the queue - Even though I have a lot of experience with audio equipment, I have no experience with balanced output. More information about how this works, and perhaps input about types of headphones and adapters would be nice. Love the device, great sound, I recommend this for the money paid. Try it! Love this little guy, but low stars because whenever I switch headphones I have to do everything but stand on my head to get the thing to start playing again. Will play for hours, but the minute I unplug it from my stereo and plug in headphones, no output. Very frustrating! Tried rebooting, selecting different track/album, different volume settings (basically almost every setting in Setup and Playback). You might want to wait for some kind of firmware update before picking one up. Speaking of firmware, an “add to queue” would be nice…

I orderd a Fiio M11s and was completely disappointed. First of all, the device is quite literally, as big as a brick. It's basically worthless if you want a player you can take anywhere. If you regularly carry a phone and wallet in your pocket already, the M11s will not fit in your pocket along with those items, and if you put it in your other pocket, along with your keys, I hope you enjoy having your pants weighted down. On top of this, the sound quality was unimpressive for a $400 player: NO BASS, and had to turn the volume way up to get it to a listenable level, even with lower impedance headphones. It also skipped at the beginning of every track when listening to an album, and sometimes skipped randomly during tracks. Unacceptable for a $400 player. On top of all this, to add or delete music from this player, I had to remove the SD card, put it in an adapter, and plug it into the computer by itself, in order to add or remove songs from this device. If I plugged the player into my laptop with the SD card in it, the player would not load in my computer/would freeze up trying to load it in my computer. If i tried to eject the player, it wouldn't properly eject. If I tried to shutdown the laptop, it would stick on "logging off" and never shut down, unless I held down the power button. Also unacceptable for a $400 Player! Yes, I updated the firmware, yes the device driver installed correctly, and I did everything else I should have tried doing, but this dumb, clunky machine would freeze up Windows trying to load it as a drive. Enter the Shanling M0 Pro. I decided the M11s was not for me and to return it, and began looking for a different player. After realizing the current trend is these bigger players and that there aren't as many smaller options out there anymore, I found the M0 Pro (Previously chose the M11s over the M3 Ultra , but know now that the M3 Ultra would also have been too big for my uses). I am continually impressed by the sound quality of this little player. It has no problem driving Sennheiser HD 280 Pro, 380 Pro, 300 Pro, as well as Beyerdynamic DT 770 Pro 32 Ohm. The M11s didn't sound great on any of these headphones, and had no bass on any of them. The M0 Pro sounds great on all of these phones, and has plenty of bass. On top of that, it's tiny and ultra portable. If you don't care about streaming stuff and only want to listen to your own collection in the awesome quality, in an extremely portable package, get this player. I have a 1 TB SD card in this thing, and it runs fast and smooth with NO LAG. The Fiio M3K I replaced this with would lag heavily with a 1 TB card. This is smaller and sounds better too. Overall, I am just extremely impressed with the value and performance of this little player. It sounds better than the $400 Fiio M11s and has none of the aforementioned glitches that the Fiio had. It plays all tracks in crystal clear clarity and transitions from one track to the next without any skips or hiccups. If you want an all purpose, truly portable device, with audiophile sound/are looking for an upgrade from a Fiio M3K and/or are considering the Fiio M11s vs. The Shanling M3 Ultra, save yourself the money and the trouble and just buy the Shanling M0 Pro. If you aren't using headphones that are considerably more powerful than those I mentioned (Ohms wise), you will be more than pleased with this awesomely tiny device. PRO TIPS: IF you have difficulty reading the song titles, you can see the full titles on the "now playing" screen and use the skip back and forward buttons to skip to the song title you want. I would also recommend using the "folders" menu to find the artist and album you want to listen to rather than the "my music" menu.

I’ve used the Shanling M0 Pro daily at the gym for 30 days and have mixed feelings. Coming from a Sansa Clip, I appreciate the modern build quality, USB-C charging, and the solid 1-week battery life. Bluetooth connectivity with my Shokz earphones has been flawless even with the device in my pocket. However, the user experience is a major letdown for anyone exercising. The tiny screen relies heavily on swipe gestures that are poorly implemented—sideways swipes often fail to register, and vertical scrolling "flicks" too fast, making it nearly impossible to navigate folders accurately while moving. Speaking of folders, the UI doesn't scroll long names, so if your organization relies on folder names, they simply get cut off. The sound quality is decent but felt like a step down from my phone’s output; I found the default EQ better than any of the presets, which all sounded worse to my ears. Finally, the lack of physical playback buttons makes pausing or adjusting volume a chore compared to the tactile buttons of older clip-style players. If you need something for stationary listening, it’s a nice piece of hardware, but for the gym, the UI frustrations make it hard to recommend. I am returning this in favor of a less premium model. My thoughts: If one must suffer the flaws, at least one can do so spending considerably less.

Edit on 8 August 2024: The device has pretty much become unusable for most use cases. It appears that there are further issues with the battery. Unless the device is plugged into a power source, it will work for about 1-2 minutes before performs a hard shut down. If you turn the device back on, it will remember the track position and eventually start playing again, but only for a minute or two before repeating the process. Extremely disappointed, especially after doing a fair amount of research on this product. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Note: I used an iPod Nano to compare the user interaction. TL;DR: battery life falls off quickly, difficult to control, user interface (software and hardware) has to be accommodated for, rather than serving the user I’ve used the M0 Pro for about 2 months now, for reference on my level of experience with it. Pros: - Sound quality (headphone jack): the sound quality from the headphone jack seems pretty good. The output is powerful enough to power HD58Xs, with the volume level being at 65/100. I also purchased the 3.5mm to 4.4mm adapter – I honestly can’t tell any difference with the balanced output, so maybe save yourself the 20 bucks on that. But it works all the same. - Sound quality (Bluetooth): BT is good on this – modest range and there is an appreciable difference between BT headphone performance on Spotify on a smartphone and playing FLACs on the M0 Pro. However, when you change the volume on the device, it takes 1-2 seconds before the headphones respond. So you don’t crank the volume up if you think that the headphones didn’t respond properly – they’re probably just lagging. - Customizable: There are a lot in the settings menus – a lot to play with to be able to dial in the device to perform the way you want. This assumes that it works. Unfortunately, this is where the positive comments end. Cons: - Value: If this device was 50 USD, I would not even bother writing this review. But given the amount of money you have to put into this thing, as well as the amount of time you have to spend reading the mediocre documentation, I think that you would be better off spending more on a device that will support your needs for longer than 2 months. - Battery life: After 6 weeks of use, the battery life has tanked. I bought this device to use as a higher-audio-quality iPod. I assumed I could throw it in my bag and, over the course of a work week, I could pull it out and use whenever I wanted. Given this expectation, I was very disappointed to see that the battery barely holds a charge for 48 hours (and I mean in standby mode, not 48 hours of continuous use). I can use it for 1-2 hours, leave it overnight, and the battery is completely dead in the morning. The battery life completely undermines the utility of the device, unless you’re going to consistently use it near a power supply. - User interface / touch screen: This device, as others have said, has a very small screen (kind of the point right?) but navigating through the menus is difficult. If you are used to the smooth and slow scroll from an iPod, this is going to be difficult to adapt to. It is a lightning fast scroll, where you can easily get from A to Z in one swipe (see video). This makes casual scrolling very tedious (ie not casual). Besides that, some of the shortcuts don’t work as expected. The “quick adjustment” menu (swiping from the bottom of the screen) only works on non-vertical scrolling menu screens, which is just the main menu. Kind of defeats the purpose of “quick”. The “press-and-hold” feature which should return you to the main menu works, but not consistently. Also, I should mention that if you are planning on using this in your car, Bluetooth is pretty much the only way to use it. If you expect to plug the device into your vehicle via USB, the device is treated the same as a USB thumb drive – you cannot pick up playback from the song you were listening to before getting into the car, it pretty much acts as a blank slate. And if you do use Bluetooth in the car, make sure to turn it up all the way on the M0 Pro. But then, you have to remember to turn it back down to an acceptable level before using headphones – unless you like having your eardrums assaulted. I have tried to go through the setting menus and online documentation (which is not easy to find) and I can’t figure out a way to remedy this situation. Other nit-picks include: - Use the volume wheel lock and set a max volume limit (I would recommend under 30/100 if you are using IEMs). Otherwise, you’re run the risk of blasting music just by putting the device into your pocket unlocked (the volume wheel can freely move very easily). - Make sure the meta data on your music files is perfect – otherwise, it can be very difficult to find your music. Specifically, make sure each track has the “Album Artist” field filled. Luckily, you can use “Folder mode” to view the file directory of the SD card in the device.

If you’re old school and want to load up an SD card with high resolution music files and play them through a portable player, this is a great choice. Sound quality is excellent, the compact size makes it super portable, and the solid machined aluminum body offers excellent durability. Battery life is also great. One negative: every time you plug it into a USB cable, whether it’s just for charging or connected to a PC, the players boots into a routine where it refreshes the music library. This is frustrating because it happens even if there are no new music files on the SD card. It appears to be an automatic feature baked into the operating system that cannot be deactivated. So for example when you get in your car and plug the thing in to charge it up and play some music through your stereo, you need to wait 4-5 minutes for it to scan every music file before you can play anything. Aside from this annoying and unnecessary procedure, this is otherwise a great device. The price of around $100-125 is also very affordable for a legitimate audiophile grade portable music player that is solidly built and generally works very well.

For her birthday, my daughter requested a light and compact player for gym and morning jogging. Therefore, I ordered a Shanling M0 Pro. Unfortunately, instead of receiving a new unit, I got a used one with a torn and taped box, which is unacceptable for a gift. While the player is somewhat outdated, it remains a good option in the $100 range. On the positive side, I found the battery life to be relatively good. At a volume of 60 using a 3.5mm jack with TRUTHEAR x Crinacle ZERO in-ear monitors, it lasted 12.5 hours (with minimal screen interaction). In USB-C mode at volume 75 with Moondrop May headphones, it lasted about 10 hours, but I noticed that the controls on the headphones—both volume and track switching—did not work in this mode. The user interface is quite intuitive, convenient, and fast—much better than that of similar-sized Fiio players. However, there are several drawbacks: 1. A significant design flaw is that the USB-C and 3.5mm jacks are positioned too close to each other, requiring careful selection of cables when using it as a USB DAC. This can be seen in the attached photo, which shows the Tripovin Zonie 3.5mm jack and the stock USB-C cable from Master & Dynamics headphones. 2. To fully utilize the player, you’ll need to spend an additional $40 or more on accessories, including a case, a clip-on clip (made of thin plastic and may break easily), and a special adapter cable. The player has a 3.5mm PRO BALANCED jack, so if you own good headphones, it's worth purchasing the Shanling adapter cable (3.5mm Pro balanced male to 4.5mm balanced female). 3. This player has abysmal information support—the manual and the manufacturer's website are both look poorly made. It feels as if the product was developed in a low-tech environment rather than a high-tech one. Despite these issues, I like the device and have reordered it, hoping to receive a new unit this time.

Pros: 1. Balanced output. 2. Good sound quality. 3. Extensive Bluetooth support. 4. Could be used as a DAC. 5. Small. 6. Supports very large cards and large music collections (like mine). 7. Quite fast. 8. Reasonable price. Cons: 1. Interface. After a stroke, I am 3-5 times slower than a healthy person and have problems with exact movements. Alas, I cannot double click or ensure that my finger does not move when I click. There is no way to increase deration of "short" click or duration between clacks in a double click. It took me 2 (two) hours to install firmware updates. Dah! Which was kind of frustrating. 2. Interface. "Long 2 second click" to cancel the last change and return to a root menu (if menu entry allows multiple changes, only the last one will be rolled back) does not work if you press in the wrong place. To make everything more interesting, most places are wrong ones. 3. Interface. "Swipe to the tight" to ACK the changes and return to previous menu just does noy work. At least I could not make it work. Not even once. No kidding. 4. Interface. By default, the device uses Chinese. If you are not fluent in Mandarin, good luck. You will need it. On the good side, the player supports -- correctly, as far as I can tell, -- insane amount of languages. 5. Interface. Instruction manual is very laconic. In particular, it does not say a word how to change the language. You can read Chinese easily, do you? -- you will need that skill to navigate though menus. At least once. And what "Volume L" means is everyone's guess. 6. Interface. Only restart can get me out of the screen saver. Probably I should use non-existent "swipe right" feature? 7. Firmware. It came with version 1.3. The current one is 3.6 (!). 8. Battery life is 4-6 hours only (another side of being tiny, I guess). Conclusion: returning.

I got this little player to replace my trusty old iPod Nano, which has worked great but has a very limited 16gb onboard memory with no expansion slots. This little Shanling has just been superb as a workout music player. AND it works great as a Bluetooth streaming device for your phone if you’d rather listen to YouTube videos, podcasts, pandora, etc. The touch screen interface is snappy, simple, and easy to use. It’s well designed given the small display size. Scrolling through very long playlists is a breeze. It’s currently taking a 256gb micro SD card filled with .flac sized music files and the sound quality is noticeably better than the .mp3 files on the iPod. The volume knob is responsive and operational, but locked when the screen is turned off, though sometimes jostling in the pocket will reactivate the touchscreen and change the volume accidentally. Battery life is probably not quite as long as advertised, but it’s pretty good and quite adequate given the small size of the unit. I get several 2 hour workout sessions in between charges. It also charges pretty rapidly, though a full charge probably takes 30 mins or more. The usb interface is the new USB 2.0 type, not the old micro. Definitely a plus. This is the PERFECT music player for the gym. It’s even lighter weight than expected, and probably about the smallest modern music player you will currently find. It’s very easy and simple to use, exceptional for the price, and I’m very, very happy with it.

The Shanling M0 Pro is a decent little music player. It is smaller than the third generation iPod Nano (the square form iPod Nano), and a bit bigger than the iPod Shuffle. It has a touch screen that has input delay, which is due to the processor. It is around 1/5th of the size of my phone - a Samsung mid-range model at the time of purchase in 2023. For my purposes - storing music I have personally ripped from CDs or purchased through stores like Steam, GoG, Bandcamp, etc. to listen to in the car - it is near perfect because I don't require looking at it or interacting with it a part from plugging in the AUX cable. The car I have is a Toyota hybrid, and I cannot get the M0 Pro to speak to the car in a way that produces music, so if you want to use it like I do, ensure you have an AUX cable. It does connect via bluetooth, but it does not function as intended, which is frustrating. That said, the AUX cable causes us to either turn the M0 Pro to 100 and the car speaker 20 or 20-30 for the M0 Pro and max for the car - our preferred method because the passenger can easily and more quickly adjust the volume that the driver can. It does have to be plugged in using USB and the setting "in-vehicle mode" must be on, else the M0 Pro treats the car as a PC and becomes a storage device. If it is not plugged in, it will turn off when in-vehicle mode is on. If it is plugged in but in-vehicle mode is off, it will also turn off. Its small size too makes it easy to miss, and also to be assumed a non-valuable in the car. That said, the bright red colour makes it easy to spot when I take it out of the car for adding music. As a portable music player proper like the iPod of old, its form factor is great for small hands but terrible for larger hands. It is very easy with small, adult hands (women's hands) to misclick if you're looking for information on a song (what album the song is on for example) or favourite a song as the scroll function is at the bottom of the screen under the playback time, and has a smaller hit box than the aforementioned playback time. It has a feature where you can up the speed of the audio to 1.25x, 1.5x, 1.75x, and 2x speed, which I imagine would be good for individuals who download and listen to audiobooks, lectures, and podcasts, but I do not like this feature personally. It sets off an anxiety thing for me hearing music I know sped up or slowed down, but that does not make it a poor feature. Its bluetooth mode is great but has a caveat when used as a personal portable music player. You must not wear it close to your body else it has interference with crackling. I tested multiple headsets including Audio Technica mx50s (2013, 2017, and 2020 models), Bose QuietComfort SE (2023 model) and the upgraded QuietComforts (2025 model), and Sony WH-1000xM5, and each experienced this issue when using bluetooth mode and the M0 Pro was in my pant, dress, or jacket pocket, but the moment I moved the M0 Pro to my bag on all headsets, suddenly the problem disappeared. It also has a 1 second delay in audio when you skip or change a track in bluetooth mode. With the AUX cable, there were no issues. As a storage device for lots of music, its great that it can take a large, microSD card. The problem is updating its library takes a lot of time as it reindexes every single track every time you update your library. You can accidentally cancel out of indexing by pressing the side button, which is frustrating when you have 11,000+ songs. This all comes down to the processor being a bit weaker than I would like. This doesn't mean it doesn't recognise the tracks though; it only means that if you select "Open All" that the M0 Pro will only use the number of tracks it currently has indexed for its shuffle mode. If you want to listen to a song and you know what folder it is in and its not currently indexed, navigating to that folder will still let you play it. That being said, I am unsure if the M0 Pro is struggling with the number of songs or the size of the songs. I have a predominantly .flac library with a scattering of .wav an .mp3 files littered about. The .flacs and .wavs are quite large starting at 11MB in size and going as large as 40MBs, while the .mp3s are relatively small in file size, around 3-11MB at most. Someone with more time than me could experiment with the same number of files but in .mp3 only and .flac only to see how much of this is a problem because of size of files vs volume of files, but I do not have the time or patience to test converting all my files to .mp3s. Also, its a big thing in my opinion to be able to have a device that recognises all manner of file types. I've tested .wav, .flac, .mp3, .ape, and .alac and had no issues. That said, I personally prefer .flacs because that's what my CD ripper program produces the quickest and with the least amount of drama. On the topic of the microSD card, it is faster to load music onto the microSD than use the Shanling M0 Pro in USB mode because the processor is far slower than a microSD to USB adapter. The M0 Pro does not come with the microSD card, nor does it advertise it would, so be aware you need to purchase this seperately. The cover for the microSD slot is cheap, and has never closed properly since I originally inserted the microSD card as well, and that is a big disappointment. One more positive thing for the M0 Pro regarding the microSD card, I preloaded music onto the microSD card, and expected there would have been a headache as many portable music players I had growing up had issues requiring either proprietry software or having to plug the device into a PC and have folders named in a strict pathway. There is no concern with this, just drag and drop. That said, I'd recommend having your folders organised because of the above mentioned indexing problem. For battery life, as it lives permanently in the car bar me adding new files to it, I cannot say. I think it might be lower than advertised from my experience testing it with a range of headsets, but it could also be dependent on if you are using bluetooth mode or AUX mode whether yiou get the full advertised 10-14.5 hours. I don't have a good place to mention it, but the controls are easy with the non-touch screen through the scroll wheel. It is both a button and a scroll wheel. You can set what two presses in rapid succession and three presses in rapid succession do, which is nice. The scroll wheel itself acts as the volume up and down, and just feels fun to play with when its not on (like when you're loading music onto it). That said, don't press it while it is updating its library/indexing files as you will have to manually trigger the "Update music function" which can be time consuming. It does not keep time properly. I've had it gain 20 minutes vs the car and the phone and lose 7 minutes as well. When it arrived, I was surprised how large the box was, which wasn't huge but it was far bigger than it needed to be. I did appreciate that the M0 Pro came with a tempered glass screen-protector already installed and a spare tempered glass screen protector if you damage the original. Not many companies include these things, and I think it adds to the premium feel of the device. In summary: Positives - Compact size - Easy to load music onto - No proprietry software - Drag and drop to load files - Feels premium in your hand as its all metal in its build - Doesn't need music indexed to be able to play it - Can take pretty much all music file types - Has an AUX cable - USB-C - Tempered glass screen protector pre-installed and includes a spare - No subscription required Neutrals - Small touch screen - Vibrant red colour makes it easy to spot (red variant only) - Battery life (not tested enough) - Scroll wheel and button feature Negatives - Bluetooth mode doesn't work with cars - Bluetooth mode has issues when the Shanling M0 Pro is against your body - Large libraries (10,000 or more songs) take 10 minutes to index (i.e. its slow to index) - MicroSD slot is low quality - Has to be in-vehicle mode in the car **and** plugged in using USB else it will turn off - Not suitable for large hands (male hands) - Does not keep time properly - Does not play from Spotify or other streaming services (but if this is a deal breaker for you and you're looking at this review, you are not looking for a dedicated music player but instead a phone) Overall, I would recommend this product for people who want an iPod Shuffle with more freedom than being locked to proprietry software, those with small hands, and those who want an in-car music player that is internet/phone/subscription free. I would advise against using it with bluetooth mode if you are going to have it close to your body like on a walk or run, but I think it would be great for at home gyms where you can put it away from you with headphones or connect it to a bluetooth speaker. If you were chasing after something beefier or for larger hands, Shanling has bigger physical models that may be better. Otherwise there are definitely alternatives that are bigger that I have not personally tried like the Hiby r3 that also include the scroll wheel if you are really set on that as a feature.

Compacto, excelente sonido, funciona perfectamente como dac, llego un día antes de la fecha estimada y con el último firmware.

Excelente reproducción con gran calidad, pantalla pequeña de control no tan práctico sobretodo al deslizar para búsqueda de título. El botón de encendido y control de volumen es frágil. Debería incluir protector aunque SEA Silicon suave con reborde de protección al botón sin bloquear su uso.

El reproductor da muy buen sonido por el 3.5mm pero el adaptador de 3.5 a 4.4 es una maravilla, lo unico que me gustaría es que al actualizar la lista de canciones no se volviera a escanear desde 0. Tengo unas 20,000 canciones y se tarda entre 3 a 4 horas en actualizar.

Me encantó, buen producto y fácil de usar.