HiBy Digital M500 X Audio Player Review Hatsune Miku: Virtual Pop Star Plays Your Favorite Music

This artist has performed at Coachella, and is currently appearing “live” in a city near you. Japanese pop idol Hatsune Miku. You might not have heard of Miku, but (I’m not comfortable calling her “she”) she’s popular in all things music, games and more. For fans, HiBy M500 x Hatsune Miku is a hit digital audio player with the same bright colors and overall beauty. The interactions are more than colorful, with Miku animating and occasionally having a voice that provides some cute and unique flair.

Thankfully, for people who don’t really know Hatsune Miku’s work, the M500 is also a solid mid-range audio player, with Cirrus Logic DACs, decent amp power and enough processor to make it work well. Running a modified version of Android 14, you can even install all your streaming music and other apps. The kawaii aesthetic is probably not for everyone, but HiBy did a great job with the collaboration/license with this well-functioning and colorful media player.

Perhaps we should start with who, or what, Hatsune Miku is. Despite being a self-proclaimed web (and I’m fully aware that’s a pejorative), this wasn’t the place of weebdom I was used to. Miku is the “visual idol” and the “voice.” Using software pioneered by Yamaha, Japan’s Crypton Future Media developed Miku as the “face” of what is essentially a voice synthesizer that can also sing. Although it appears to be an animated mascot, Miku has a “life” of her own, with concerts (via “hologram”), musical collaborations, and more. “And” he also performed on David Letterman and the band Bighead.

Miku is not an AI, although there are some similarities, and there may be an AI version. Instead, the brand is surprisingly widespread and popular, all featuring teal pigtailed Miku. Given HiBy’s excellent work with the Evangelion license (Okay, now we’re back in my neighborhood…weeborhood?) R4 x EvangelionI was curious about this pairing.

Using Android 14 as a base, HiBy created custom icons and created a custom wallpaper for Miku with 10 other options available in the photo gallery. The M500’s most adorable feature is the animated chibi-style Miku with a little bird friend wearing a HiBy necklace. These pairs sit on a layer above the back, so you can move them around if they get in the way. The passive animation of the image simply blinks and explodes. Leave them alone, and they will sleep, move their arms / wings for attention etc. By tapping on them in different places, you can get them to do a little forward roll, headbang, wave, stomp and more. Even by Miku standards, this one is kawaii (very cute).

Miku will talk to you. When it starts it says “Welcome to HiBy music, the show starts now!” When you plug in headphones it will say “Headphones connected!” Take it out and it says “Speakers are working!” You’ll find Miko hiding in random places throughout the OS, just like HiBy did with R4 x Evangelion. Thankfully, Miku is not a tamagotchi and doesn’t seem to mind if you don’t interact with it. You can also disable Miku’s voice lines separately if you don’t want to comment.

The overall look of the M500, as you can see from the pictures, is definitely similar to the Miku aesthetic: a teal/cyan frame especially with pink buttons. The color scheme continues on the back where there is a drawing of Miku on a black background. Even the included wrist strap and USB-C cable are the same color. If Miku is your vibe, I feel like this is crushing it. Unlike most DAPs, this device has a camera. It’s not as good, definitely as what you’d get on a low-end Android phone, but if you’re trying to unlock multiple phones this at least offers a bit of camera performance.

The M500 is a hardware step down compared to the R4, but it’s still a solid media player. Using the Snapdragon 680 SoC feels fast and smooth to use. It’s not top-notch phone speed, but it doesn’t feel sluggish. There are two Cirrus Logic CS43198 DACs running though what HiBy describes as “low noise, high performance” op-amps. The 5 inch LCD has a resolution of 1,280×720 which is sharp enough for this size screen. My review sample was the Wi-Fi version, but there is also a version with 4G-LTE connectivity (bring your nano-SIM card).

Usability

When you turn on the M500, Miku will say hello. During the launch there is a line drawing of Miku in the background with fully rendered eyes, so it’s like a ghost is looking at you. I don’t think this was intentionally spooky.

Physical buttons are one of the best reasons to buy a dedicated media player, and with the M500 there’s normal play, previous and next, and there’s also a textured volume wheel. With the latter, there’s a visible portion of curved teal lines running out from the bottom of the device. Mini-Miku is standing up with her bird chilling with headphones. If you turn down the volume too fast, the floor falls out from under the pair and Miku has to catch “her” balance. When you turn up the volume, Miku finally expresses some concern: “Be careful, the volume is too high!” It’s lovely.

I was able to get plenty of volume out of the M500, even with similarly power-hungry magnetic headphones HiFiMan Sundaras and Isvarna. It was loud, but not deafening. It’s louder than you should be listening to for any length of time, and that was with headphones that were hard to drive. If you have earbuds or headphones that are easy to drive, you should be able to get plenty of volume. I listen to a wide variety of music, including indie J-pop/rock Haku, the crazy style of Electric Callboy, the deep bass of Blue Man Group’s. The soundWeezer impersonating Toto and cello variety from Bach. Everything was lossless from 16/44.1 to 24/96 and everything sounded clean and accurate. The M500 (or Apple) didn’t like 24/192 with Apple Music but played 24/192 FLAC tracks without a problem. Bluetooth headphones connect well, as you would expect from a modern portable device.

Kawaii

In a world of endless black, gray, black and gray, gray and black and the occasional stark white machine, something as colorful and playful as the M500 x Hatsune Miku deserves a closer look. Like the previous R4, the M500 is well thought out and does justice to its IP license. I’ve certainly seen plenty of product “combinations” that are little more than a color change, a logo and a questionable price premium. At least here there are some fun Easter eggs, and an original design with an animated mini-Miku, some artwork and voice commands.

At its core, and like the R4, the M500 is a solid portable media player. I mean it’s Android 14 in full and there is a 4G version so the line between this and a real phone is very blurred. Colors and animations add character but are not the only reason the M500 exists. That’s an important difference, I think. Obviously, the M500 x Hatsune Miku isn’t for everyone, but I can imagine someone who loves kawaii art in general, or Miku specifically, finding the M500 exactly what they would want in a media player.