President Donald Trump ordered the entire federal government to stop using products from the AI company Anthropic on Friday to stop what he called a “radical left, woke company” from encroaching on the military’s decision-making.
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Galaxy S26 vs. iPhone 17: Which entry-level flagship is right for you?
For 2026, the comparison between baseline iPhone and Android flagships comes down to two phones that are closer than they’ve ever been — the Galaxy S26 at $899 and the iPhone 17 at $799. Same form factor, same screen size, very different philosophies.
We’ve broken down everything that actually moves the needle — design, display, performance, cameras, battery, and software — because the right phone isn’t the one with the longer spec sheet. It’s the one that fits how you actually use it.
Price and availability
The iPhone 17 kicks off at $799 with 256GB baked in from the start — no arguing with that. The Galaxy S26 lands at $899 for 256GB. Last year’s S25 was $859, so Samsung snuck in a $40 increase, and the ongoing memory shortage got the blame.
So there’s a $100 gap sitting between these two phones right out the gate. Whether the S26 justifies it over the iPhone 17 — or whether Apple’s just quietly winning on value before the comparison even starts — is what the rest of this piece is for.
Design
Pick up the S26 and the iPhone 17 back-to-back and the first thing you think is: did these two companies share a blueprint? Heights are dead-even at 149.6mm. Width differs by 0.2mm — which doesn’t make a different in real life.
Apple’s phone is thicker at 7.95 mm versus Samsung’s 7.2 mm, and heavier too, tipping the scales at 177 grams against the S26’s 167 grams. What gives away Samsung’s entry-level flagship is its boxy corners, which are immediately recognizable against the rounded corners on the iPhone 17.
Both phones use aluminum frames, so nobody’s winning a materials fight there. The glass is where they split — Gorilla Glass Victus 2 front and back on the S26, and Apple’s Ceramic Shield 2 on the iPhone 17’s front, which Apple says scratches three times less easily than regular glass.
Dunking either one is fine either way; IP68 on both. The S26 comes in Black, Cobalt Violet, Sky Blue, and White — pick one and people will notice. The iPhone 17 gives you Black, White (my personal favorite), Mist Blue, Sage, and Lavender — tones quiet enough that your phone practically whispers.
Display
Both screens measure 6.3 inches, so that argument ends before it starts. Where things get interesting is everything underneath that number.
The iPhone 17 sports a 2622 x 1206 pixel OLED panel at 460 ppi, sharper than the Galaxy S26’s panel, which maxes out at FHD+ with 2340 x 1080 pixels (411 ppi). The S26’s display is fine, looks good, and frankly most people won’t lose sleep over it. Side-by-side though, the difference shows (I hope Samsung sees it as well).
The S26 peaks at 2,600 nits outdoors, which handles most sunny days well enough. The iPhone 17 pushes to 3,000 nits — and upon using it side by side with the Galaxy S25 (which shares its peak brightness with the S26), I found the iPhone to be noticeably brighter, especially under direct sunlight.
Both do 1-120Hz adaptive refresh rates, so scrolling feels equally fluid on either one. Then there’s always-on display — both phones keep your notifications visible without fully waking the screen, which sounds minor until you’ve used it for a week and then picked up a phone without it.
While I’ve grown accustomed to the Dynamic Island on the iPhone 17, you might not like it in the first glance, especially if you’re upgrading from an Android phone with a punch-hole camera — that’s something to keep in mind as well.
Performance
Specs-wise, Samsung shows up with more — Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, 3nm, 12GB RAM. Apple brings the A19 and 8GB. On a spec sheet that reads as a clean Samsung win, but phones aren’t spec sheets.
Benchmarks tell a messier story. The S26 pulls ahead when multiple cores are working together, which is relevant for heavy multitasking. The scores are almost similar in the single-core test, which is what your phone actually leans on for most things — launching apps, typing, switching between tasks. All-in-all, both phones offer similar (read excellent) day-to-day performance.
The RAM gap is where it gets more practical. Twelve gigabytes means more apps stay open in the background without reloading. If your phone use involves juggling a lot at once, the S26 has more headroom. And yes, both are perfectly capable of handing the most demanding games at high frame rates, it’s just the matter of whether the developer has included support for it or not.
I’ve been using the iPhone 17 for about six months now, and I haven’t, for once, felt that the phone doesn’t offer enough CPU or GPU performance, especially when needed. That’s the thing with top-tier mobile chipsets; they’ve got more horsepower than most people can use upfront, but it helps maintaining the performance in the long-term.
Operating System
The S26 runs One UI 8.5 on Android 16 — the most put-together version of Samsung’s skin yet. Rounder, cleaner, and stuffed with settings you’ll spend a Sunday afternoon exploring.
Galaxy AI actually pulls weight now: Now Nudge suggests replies by reading your screen context, Call Screening stops unknown callers before your phone buzzes, and Audio Eraser finally works inside YouTube and Instagram, not just Samsung’s own apps. Bixby gets Perplexity as backup for the questions it used to fumble.
iOS 26 got a full face-lift with Liquid Glass — translucent menus and icons that split opinion pretty cleanly between “stunning” and “bit much.” Apple Intelligence handles real-time translation across calls, Messages, and FaceTime, though it’s not as useful as Galaxy AI. The ecosystem perks, however, are still superior.
Samsung commits to seven years of operating system and security updates, while Apple usually provides around five to six years of software support.
Cameras
The S26 has a 50MP main, 12MP ultrawide, and a dedicated 10MP 3x telephoto. The iPhone 17 runs a 48MP main at f/1.6, a 48MP ultrawide, and a 2x “zoom” that’s just the main sensor being cropped — not a real telephoto lens.
Daylight shots on both look great, full stop. Where they differ is taste. Samsung cranks up the saturation and contrast — your photos come out looking like they’ve already been edited, ready to post. Apple mostly shows you what was there, i.e., the camera reproduces natural, neutral colors.
After dark, the iPhone quietly holds its own. Apple’s Night Mode has been one of the best in the business for years (along with the f/1.6 aperture). Zoom goes the other way. A real 3x optical lens on the S26 versus Apple’s cropped 2x is a clear hardware win for Samsung.
The most unique thing about the iPhone 17’s camera system is its selfie shooter — an 18MP (f/1.9) square-shaped camera sensor that can capture super wide selfies in multiple aspect ratios. Apple surely needs to bump up the resolution for the visual area the sensor covers, but even so, Samsung’s 12MP sensor is no match for it.
Video on both is strong at 4K/60fps with good stabilization. Apple’s color science gives it a slight edge in footage quality, plus the sensor-shift stabilization works like a charm, but the S26 shoots 8K if that’s something you need. Most people don’t, but the option exists.
Battery
The S26 has a bigger tank — 4,300mAh versus the iPhone 17’s 3,692mAh — and Samsung claims 31 hours of video playback to Apple’s 30. One hour in it, with a notably smaller cell on Apple’s side. That gap says more about the A19’s efficiency than it does about the S26’s battery.
Charging is where iPhone pulls ahead. With 40W wired charging, the handset reaches 50% in roughly 25 minutes. The S26 still sits at 25W — same as its last two predecessors. Wireless is where the gap reopens. The iPhone 17 does 25W via MagSafe; the S26 base model caps at 15W standard wireless.
Conclusion
The S26 makes a stronger case on paper. More RAM, a bigger battery, a real telephoto lens, 8K video, and One UI 8.5 giving you enough customization to keep a hobbyist busy for weeks. It’s the better phone for power users, Android loyalists, and anyone who shoots a lot of zoom photos or wants their phone to last the full day.
The iPhone 17 wins on the things that are harder to put in a spec sheet. Faster charging, better low-light photography, smoother sustained performance under load, the refreshing iOS 26 experience, and an ecosystem so tightly integrated it borders on a lifestyle choice. If you own a Mac, iPad, or AirPods, the iPhone 17 doesn’t just work well — it works together in a way the S26 can’t replicate.
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The public feud between the Pentagon and Anthropic which resulted in the firm’s blacklisting has become effectively a proxy for the larger battle over the future governance of AI.
The coverage has focused on Anthropic’s refusal to budge off its two “red lines” — using its product in mass domestic surveillance or to power fully autonomous weapons — and whether Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s Pentagon can be trusted to use powerful software with a looser requirement to only use it in a “lawful” manner, as the administration demands.
But, according to reports this week, the confrontation that sparked the feud actually focused on a different but related issue: how AI might be used in the event of a nuclear attack on the United States.
Semafor and the Washington Post have reported that in early December, Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering Emil Michael asked Anthropic’s Dario Amodei whether, in a scenario where nuclear missiles were flying toward the US, the company would “refuse to help its country due to Anthropic’s prohibition on using its tech in conjunction with autonomous weapons.” Administration sources say Michael was infuriated when Amodei said the Pentagon should reach out and check with Anthropic. Anthropic denies the story and says it was willing to create a carve-out for missile defense, but either way, the conversation poisoned relations between the two institutions. (Disclosure: Vox’s Future Perfect is funded in part by the BEMC Foundation, whose major funder was also an early investor in Anthropic; they don’t have any editorial input into our content.)
As I reported for Vox in November, there’s an active and ongoing debate over whether and how artificial intelligence should be integrated into nuclear command and control systems. We don’t know to what extent it already is, but we do know that the US military is actively looking at ways AI and machine learning can be used “to enable and accelerate human decision-making.”
Discussions around nuclear weapons and AI tend to focus on whether machines would ever be given control of the ability to launch nuclear weapons, and the imperative to keep a “human in the loop” for discussions of the use of humanity’s deadly weapons. But many experts and officials say that debate is the low-hanging fruit: Neither the US, nor any other country, is likely to ever hand over decisions on whether to order a nuclear strike to AI.
A much trickier question is the degree to which AI should be relied on for functions like “strategic warning” — synthesizing the massive amount of data collected by satellites, radar, and other sensor systems to detect potential threats as soon as possible.
This is the sort of hypothetical use case that it sounds like Michael was proposing to Amodei. If the system is only being used to give us a better chance of shooting down an incoming missile, it might seem like a no-brainer.
But in a scenario where the US was under attack by ballistic missiles, the president would immediately be faced with a decision — which would have to be made in only minutes — about whether to retaliate, potentially setting off a full-blown nuclear war.
The lives of millions of people might rely on the system getting it right — and there are plenty of examples from the history of nuclear weapons of detection systems leading to near-misses that were only averted by human intuition.
The technology to do that kind of threat detection likely doesn’t exist yet, which, given the stakes, may have been one reason Amodei was reluctant to commit to this scenario.
Retired Lt. Gen. Jack Shanahan, who flew nuclear missions in the Air Force and was later the head of the Pentagon’s Joint Artificial Intelligence Center, told Vox that if nuclear threat detection and response were turned over to artificial intelligence agents, “I don’t want to say it’s certain that there’s going to be a catastrophe, but I think you’re heading down that path.”
He pointed to a widely-reported study released this week from a researcher at King’s College London which found that AI models including Claude, ChatGPT, and Google Gemini were far more likely than human participants to recommend nuclear options in simulated war games. In this scenario, an AI might not be launching a weapon, but a president would have to overrule a panicked-sounding multibillion-dollar system’s prescription under extreme pressure.
One factor that makes military use of AI different from previous technologies with obvious national security uses is that in this case, much of the cutting edge research was done by private firms that initially had an eye on the commercial market, rather than companies responding to demand from the military. (An example of the latter case would be the internet, which evolved from Defense Department and academic projects long before companies found commercial uses for it.)
The new dynamic is bound to lead to culture clashes, particularly between a company like Anthropic that, though it has been happy until now to let its product be used by the Pentagon, has built its public image around its concerns about AI safety, and Pete Hegseth’s “anti-woke” Pentagon.
“Boeing would never object to building anything the government would ask them to build,” said Shanahan, who led the Pentagon’s controversial 2018 partnership with Google, Project Maven, a previous DC-Silicon Valley culture clash. “It’s a defense-industrial base company. [AI is] being born in a very different world with a group of people who don’t see things the way employees of Lockheed may have seen the Cold War. It’s Mars-Venus to an extent.”
How the clash plays out, and whether other companies are willing to let their models be deployed with fewer questions asked, may go a long way toward determining what role AI might play in a hypothetical nuclear war.
This story was produced in partnership with Outrider Foundation and Journalism Funding Partners.
The snow is melting, the days are getting longer, and I can almost smell the springtime ahead. Soon, we’ll be cruising around town on ebikes and electric scooters instead of burning fossil fuels. For now, the weather hasn’t quite caught up, which is great for markdowns. Many of the best electric scooters are still seeing significant discounts. If you’ve been thinking about buying one, now’s the best time: prices are low, and sunny commuting days are just ahead.
Gear editor Julian Chokkattu has spent five years testing more than 45 electric scooters. These are his top picks that are also on sale right now.
Apollo Go for $849 ($450 Off)
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Photograph: Julian Chokkattu
This is Gear editor Julian Chokkattu’s favorite scooter. The riding experience is powerful and smooth, thanks to its dual 350-watt motors and solid front and rear suspensions. The speed maxes out at 28 miles per hour (mph), which doesn’t make it the fastest scooter on the market, but it has a good range. (Chokkattu is a very tall man and was able to travel 15 miles on a single charge at 15 mph.) Other Apollo features he appreciates: turn signals, a dot display, a bell, along with a headlight and an LED strip for extra visibility.
Apollo Phantom 2.0 for $2099 ($900 Off)
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Photograph: Julian Chokkattu
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Photograph: Julian Chokkattu
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Photograph: Julian Chokkattu
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The Apollo Phantom 2.0 maxes out at 44 mph, with plenty of power from its dual 1,750-watt motors. It’s a gorgeous scooter, designed with 11-inch self-healing tubeless tires and a dual-spring suspension system for a smooth riding experience. But with great power comes great weight. At 102 pounds, the Phantom 2.0 is the heaviest electric scooter Chokkattu has tested, so I would only recommend this purchase if you don’t live in a walkup and/or have a garage.
More Discounted Electric Scooters
Traveling typically necessitates traveling light, so a mouse that adds bulk or requires constant charging can be a real hassle. Logitech’s G309 Lightspeed, priced at $49.99 (was $90), avoids these concerns by clever engineering, allowing it to function for hours on a single AA battery while being heavy enough to feel substantial in your hands.
You can even remove the battery entirely and use Logitech’s PowerPlay charging mat, which costs a little more but reduces the weight to 68g. That’s the type of lightness that a few dedicated gamers seek, without losing usability.
Battery concerns vanish in both setups, as one AA provides a whopping 300 hours of continuous wireless use in the rapid Lightspeed mode, or over 600 hours in the slower but still adequate Bluetooth mode. Most people won’t have to alter it in months, whether they play games every day or merely browse. If you’re travelling, you may either bring an extra AA battery or utilize Bluetooth and store the wireless receiver neatly inside the mouse to avoid losing it in transit.
The performance is also strong, as the HERO 25K sensor tracks your movements well even at high speeds of up to 25,600 DPI, and it does so without any fancy (and obnoxious) smoothing or acceleration. Clicks are nice and sharp with the optical Lightforce switches, a bit of a blend of the best of both worlds, so whether you’re gaming or performing precise work, you’ll get a rapid and solid reaction. There are also six customizable buttons for creating shortcuts or simplifying tasks, and the symmetrical design fits well in a variety of hands.
It’s also built tough, with the mouse being approximately 4.7 x 2.5 inches, and the design is simply utilitarian enough to get the job done. At around $49.99, it’s a really robust wireless gaming mouse without the expensive price tag.
Sony’s latest audio release, the WF-1000XM6, are flagship earbuds with improved active noise cancellation. Here’s how Sony’s flagship personal audio accessories compare against the AirPods Pro 3.
AirPods Pro 3 vs Sony XM6 earbuds
February saw Sony bring out an update to its upper-tier earbuds. After a three-year wait, the WF-1000XM6 are the electronic company’s new best option for in-ear audio.
The WF-1000XM6, not to be confused with the similarly-named WH-1000XM6 headphones, lean on the firm’s heritage of audio quality, with improvements to noise cancellation also thrown in for good measure.
Continue Reading on AppleInsider | Discuss on our Forums
President Donald Trump has ordered all U.S. federal agencies to “immediately cease” using Anthropic’s AI technology, escalating a standoff after the company sought limits on Pentagon use of its models. CNBC reports: The company, which in July signed a $200 million contract with Pentagon, wants assurances that the Defense Department will not use its AI models will not be used for fully autonomous weapons or mass domestic surveillance of Americans. The Pentagon had set a deadline of 5:01 p.m. ET Friday for Anthropic to agree to its demands to allow the Pentagon to use the technology for all lawful purposes. If Anthropic did not meet that deadline, Pete Hegseth threatened to label the company a “supply chain risk” or force it to comply by invoking the Defense Production Act.
“The Leftwing nut jobs at Anthropic have made a DISASTROUS MISTAKE trying to STRONG-ARM the Department of War, and force them to obey their Terms of Service instead of our Constitution,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social. “Their selfishness is putting AMERICAN LIVES at risk, our Troops in danger, and our National Security in JEOPARDY.”
“Therefore, I am directing EVERY Federal Agency in the United States Government to IMMEDIATELY CEASE all use of Anthropic’s technology,” Trump wrote. “We don’t need it, we don’t want it, and will not do business with them again! There will be a Six Month phase out period for Agencies like the Department of War who are using Anthropic’s products, at various levels,” Trump said. On Friday, OpenAI said it would also draw the same red lines as Anthropic: no AI for mass surveillance or autonomous lethal weapons.
Recently the Myrient game video archive announced that they’re shutting down on March 31st of this year, for a couple of reasons, but primarily the skyrocketing financial costs of hosting the archive. One advantage of Myrient over e.g. Archive.org is that – per the FAQ – every game on the site is curated and checked against a checksum of a known good copy. The site also focuses on fast downloads, making it a good resource if you’re trying to find ROMs of some more obscure old gaming system.
Amidst the mourning it seems also pertinent to address the reasons behind this shutdown. Although finances are the main reason for this hobby project to be shut down, it’s due to (paywalled) download managers that have recently appeared, and which completely bypass the donation requests and similar on the website. Despite use of Myrient for commercial, for-profit purposes having always been explicitly forbidden, this has been ignored to the point where the owner of Myrient had to shell out over $6,000 per month to cover the difference after donations.
Along with the rising costs of hosting due to rising storage and RAM prices courtesy of AI datacenter buildouts, this has meant that a hobby archive like this has become completely unsustainable. Barring good ways to block illegal traffic like these download tools and/or a surge in donations, it would seem that all archives like this are at risk of shutting down, along with other sites that contain commercially interesting content.
Tim Cook made us want to skip the weekend and get straight to the new launches Apple has for us starting on Monday. That might include a low-cost MacBook, but then further ahead there’s a hint of a touch-screen MacBook Pro later this year, all on the AppleInsider Podcast.
If a MacBook is announced in March, it won’t be a MacBook Pro — but a touch-screen one is expected later in 2026
What we actually know about next week is that there will be launches. Tim Cook doesn’t hint if there’s nothing much to say, but he also tagged his post #AppleLaunch.
So we know something is coming, and if you listen to the leaks, actually everything is coming. If you’ve ever heard it rumored, it’s all due out next week for sure.
Continue Reading on AppleInsider | Discuss on our Forums
Code fragments found in the latest iOS 24.6 beta are being taken by some to mean that there will soon be two new models of the Studio Display, with one adding more ports and better speakers.
Apple’s current Studio Display, which has not been updated since its launch in 2022
Back in 2022 when the Apple Studio Display was first launched, it was seen as very good but very expensive. The monitor has not been updated since, but from practically the moment it was launched, there have been rumors of better versions to come.
Now according to Macworld, references in the code of the iOS 26 developer betas appear to be proof an update is finally coming. The references are to models with code names J427 and J527, which is a strong sign that there will be two versions of the display.
Rumor Score: 🤔 Possible
Continue Reading on AppleInsider | Discuss on our Forums
Astell&Kern’s PD20 arrives as the clearest signal yet that the Korean manufacturer still sets the standard in the high end DAP category. For more than a decade, Astell&Kern has defined what a reference portable player should look like, feel like, and most importantly, sound like. With the PD20, the company is not chasing trends. It is extending its lead.
What makes the PD20 different is its integrated Personal Sound system developed with Audiodo, allowing the player to create a listening profile based on the user’s individual hearing characteristics. Personalized audio is not new. Wireless headphones have offered hearing compensation for years. But bringing true left and right ear analysis and correction to a dedicated digital audio player is new territory. Instead of delivering a fixed house sound, the PD20 reshapes the presentation around the listener, raising the bar for what a flagship DAP can do.
Personal Sound System Brings True Hearing Calibration
The PD20 features a Personal Sound system developed in collaboration with Audiodo. The player analyzes the listener’s hearing characteristics and applies independent compensation for the left and right ears, creating a personalized listening profile based on measurable data rather than preset EQ curves.
To enable accurate calibration, Astell&Kern includes dedicated earphones with the PD20 that work in tandem with an integrated hearing test. The process evaluates sensitivity across frequencies and builds a correction profile tailored to the individual user. The result is a sound signature optimized specifically for that listener’s hearing response.
For additional control, the PD20 incorporates a Sound Master Wheel that provides 160 step adjustment from -8.0 dB to +8.0 dB across Bass, Mid, and Treble bands. This allows for precise real time tonal refinement without interrupting playback, giving users both automated personalization and manual tuning flexibility.
Advanced Amplification Architecture
The PD20 features a Triple AMP architecture with real time switching between three distinct amplification modes Class A, Class A/B, and Hybrid, allowing users to select the presentation that best matches their headphones and listening preferences. Each mode alters bias operation and output behavior to prioritize tonal richness, efficiency, or a balance of both, as outlined in the accompanying image.
- Class A Mode: Delivers a rich, high density presentation with minimal distortion, emphasizing tonal weight and a smooth, analog like character.
- Class A/B Mode: Prioritizes balance and efficiency, offering strong dynamic stability with clean, articulate detail across the frequency range.
- Hybrid Mode: Blends the tonal refinement of Class A with the efficiency and output capability of Class A/B, aiming for a balanced presentation that combines texture, control, and usable power.
Precision Bias Control for Class A and Hybrid Amplification Modes
A dedicated physical slide switch allows instant mode changes without diving into menus. In Class A and Hybrid modes, users can further adjust amplifier current across three selectable levels to better match headphone load and listening preference.
High: Maximizes output current for greater headroom and dynamic impact. This setting is designed to better control high impedance headphones, delivering a broader soundstage with strong drive and stability.
Mid: Strikes a balance between current output and efficiency, maintaining tonal density while preserving clarity and resolution. It is positioned as the most versatile setting for a wide range of full size headphones.
Low: Reduces output current to lower the noise floor and improve control with high sensitivity earphones. This setting is optimized for IEMs, helping reveal low level detail without introducing unwanted background noise.
Sound Lab Control
The PD20 is conceived as a true sound lab. Built around what Astell&Kern calls Sound Lab Control, the player draws inspiration from professional studio gear in both layout and operation. Dual top mounted wheels separate sound tuning from volume control, while dedicated slide switches manage amplifier mode and current selection. LED lighting provides real time indication of track bit depth and active operating modes, offering clear visual feedback during playback.
DAC: The PD20 is built around the ESS ES9027PRO in a Quad DAC configuration, with four DACs operating independently to reduce inter channel interference and improve signal separation. This architecture is designed to maximize channel balance, resolution, and overall dynamic performance. The PD20 can also function as a USB DAC when connected to a Mac or Windows based PC, extending its use beyond portable playback.
ESA Enhanced Signal Alignment: The PD20 incorporates Astell&Kern’s proprietary ESA technology, which focuses on minimizing group delay by precisely aligning frequency signals across the spectrum. The goal is lower distortion and improved clarity through more accurate time domain performance.
Advanced DAR: Astell&Kern’s second-generation Digital Audio Remaster technology, first introduced on the flagship SP4000, is engineered to produce a more natural and refined presentation. Instead of routing the signal directly to the DAR engine, audio first passes through VSE (Virtual Sound Extender), where missing harmonics are algorithmically reconstructed to enhance tonal completeness. After this stage, DAR processing applies up-sampling for more comprehensive signal refinement. The combined process is designed to improve depth and immersion while preserving the integrity of the original recording.
Atmosphere Technology: The PD20 incorporates Atmosphere processing that expands beyond traditional 2-channel stereo. It creates a virtual 3-dimensional sound field from standard stereo content and offers four selectable presets: Subtle, Balanced, Immersive, and Echoic. Depending on the material and listener preference, users can tailor spatial presentation for music, orchestral works, or audio/video content.
Memory and Networking: The PD20 includes 256GB of internal storage and supports microSD cards up to 2TB. Connectivity features include dual-band 2.4GHz/5GHz Wi-Fi (a/b/g/n/ac), DLNA networking, USB digital-audio output, and USB-C for data transfer and charging.
PCM and DSD: The PD20 supports native playback of high-res PCM music up to 32-bit, 768kHz, and DSD512.
ReplayGain and AK File Drop: Replay Gain keeps playback levels consistent across tracks, while AK File Drop enables seamless, wireless file transfers from devices on the same network with no cables required.
Bluetooth Support: The PD20 incorporates Bluetooth with support for aptX HD, LDAC, and BT Sink mode. BT Sink allows the PD20 to receive audio from an external device over Bluetooth and operate as a Bluetooth DAC. This enables music streamed from a smartphone, tablet, or other source to benefit from the PD20’s internal DAC architecture and amplification stage.
Analog Outputs: The PD20 provides both 3.5mm single ended and 4.4mm balanced headphone outputs, ensuring compatibility with a wide range of headphones, earphones, and in-ear monitors.
Fast Charging: USB PD 3.0 fast-charging support allows the PD20 to reach a full charge in approximately 3.5 hours when used with its included charging cradle and a compatible USB-C power adapter.
Crossfeed: In headphone listening, where left and right channels are fully isolated, long sessions can increase listening fatigue. The PD20’s Crossfeed function blends a controlled portion of each channel into the other with a slight time delay, helping to center the sound image and simulate a more speaker-like presentation. Adjustable parameters include Shelf Cutoff, Shelf Gain, and Mixer Level, allowing users to fine tune the degree of crossfeed to match their listening preferences.
Display: The PD20 features a 6-inch FHD+ display that presents playback status and operational controls with clear visibility and responsive touch interaction.
Pro Tip: The PD20 will be Roon Ready, pending Roon testing and certification.
The Bottom Line
The Astell&Kern PD20 strengthens the brand’s position at the top of the DAP category by introducing something genuinely new for dedicated players: integrated hearing based personalization. While custom sound profiles have existed in wireless headphones, bringing left and right ear analysis into a Quad DAC, multi mode amplification platform is a first for a reference grade DAP.
Add selectable Class A, Class A/B, and Hybrid amplification, adjustable bias current, second generation DAR processing, and extensive manual tuning, and the PD20 becomes a highly configurable portable source built for serious listening.
Priced just under $2000, it undercuts the SP4000 while offering a feature the flagship does not. The PD20 is for experienced headphone users who want reference performance with flexibility and control, and who understand that hearing is not universal. If the idea of a DAP that adapts to you makes sense, the PD20 is one of the most forward thinking players currently available.
For those wondering about the fate of the PD10, the PD20 is not a replacement. The PD10 remains a current model and continues in production alongside the new player.
The key difference between the two centers on DAC architecture. The PD10 is built around dual AKM4191EQ modulators paired with four AKM4498EX DAC chips in a dual DAC configuration, reflecting AKM’s separated digital and analog design philosophy. The PD20, by contrast, adopts four ESS ES9027PRO DACs in a Quad DAC layout, representing a different technical approach within the lineup rather than a generational shift.
Price & Availability
The Astell&Kern PD20 DAP will be available in late March 2026 through Astell & Kern Authorized Dealers, with a suggested retail price of $1,970 (£1799).
For more information: astellnkern.com
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