the Hiby R1

[pawpaw]

Hey everyone! This is my first post here. Never really participated in a proper forum before so i'm very excited!!! Sorry if I ramble on too much, or my formatting sucks, please yell at me kindly.

TL;DR: I recommend the Hiby R1 if you're in the market for a brand-new music player. Their support is kind, and their products have been invaluably faithful to me.

I'm a musician, and a bit of a novice audiophile. I had always been into music, and been musically inclined, so listening to music was always fairly regular for me. I had always been a fan of downloading everything, as, on occasion i just wouldnt have wifi, but this came at the cost of storage space on my poor old IPhone. I reluctantly accommodated the storage issue, as I valued music more than whatever crappy memes I was hogging. However, one day, I wanted to listen to an album by a band I enjoyed at the time, but most of their discography was greyed out on Apple music. This only lasted a day or two, but I was furious and felt helpless, so I decided to go to the next extreme, and decide to circumvent my IPhone, and apple music entirely. I did about a week's worth of research, and spoke to a friend who was into music players long before I was, and with some savings and birthday money, I decided to buy the Hiby R3 Pro Sabre, for some $200. Not uncharacteristic of a high school student either, in my irresponsibility I actually ended up breaking the screen around the first 3 days of me owning it, but it was still useable, and they give you some screen protectors and a case for it, which is awesome ^^. I bought a 1 TB micro-SD card on recommendation from a friend, and begun my journey of downloading everything I listened to in the highest resolution I could find it in. This went extremely well! My phone breathed a sigh of relief as the music was phased out of it, and I was overjoyed at the ~22 hours of battery life that the R3 bragged about, which, I found to be fairly accurate, much to my surprise, as I didnt really expect much from this random chineese audio gear company. Everything went great until i actually FULLY and PROPERLY broke the screen while hanging out with a friend, maybe due to irresponsibility, but I chalk it up to a general roughness and carelessness that I happen to embody. It is for this reason that I don't own many things with screens that DONT also have an accompanying, oversized/built case for them (My previous phone's case was not clipped onto itself, it was screwed on. A waterproof, aluminum case for a waterproof phone. I lost it in a lake. I suspect that if it was found, it would work).

It was here that I turned back to the great Hiby, who had done me very well. In talks with their support, they actually were fully willing and able to replace the screen, and it didnt seem like it would be too expensive to do, however you can't ship something with an old battery overseas, and as tech savy as I was I simply didnt care to remove the back case and snip the wire. Maybe I will another day. Their lineup kinda sucked at this time so I resorted to an old phone that a friend gave me for free, and despite some inconveniences, the whole process wasnt too cumbersome; swap out a micro-SD card, install VLC, that God for the 3.5mm jack, and go about my day. Eventually I found that Hiby started making the R 1. Nearly identical to the R3, under half the price of the R3, all the features that I never used on the R3 removed. It was perfect. I still daily drive it, I bought it in the orange cover. Charging it is an afterthought. The plastic case is a little disappointing, coming from a product of theirs with a more premium aluminum case, aswell as not having a glass screen protector, though, I went from a 200 dollar product to an 85 dollar product, so I couldn't be too picky. It does what I want, and it does it well. I'm super happy about it, and, if you're into big filesizes and whatnot, I highly recommend the R1. You can choose to opt for a much cheaper 512 gb micro SD card, I'm sort of wishing i did (though it's nice to have the flexibility), but if you're looking for a new product that simply plays music, this is where I would steer you.