AGPTEK 64GB USB C MP3 Player A55PL 2 in 1 Type-C USB Stick Music Player Supports Replaceable AAA

First let me start off by saying that I have read a lot of the Amazon reviews for this product and several reviewers have stated that the lack of an integrated lithium battery in 2026 is a downside. These people are WRONG. The fact that this takes AAA batteries is its key and most unique feature. I have spent countless hours scouring the internet for players, voice recorders, literally anything that was AA or AAA powered and could store more than 32 GB of music. This is literally the only thing on the market. To all the people who criticized this device for taking AAA batteries in 2026, it’s perfectly fine that this product isn’t for you. But that doesn’t necessarily make the product worse. With that out of the way… The main reason I became interested in a AAA battery powered player is because I wanted something that could keep me entertained in an extended power outage. Lithium based batteries, contrary to what tech manufacturers want you to believe, have a shelf life. Charge it and discharge it a few too many times and your battery life is a fraction of what you used to have. Forget about it in a drawer for several years without cycling the charge? Same thing. Lithium based batteries are a marvel of modern technology, but one thing they don’t do is last forever and they don’t make it easy to replace them either. If I chuck this player in a drawer for 10 years, I could literally pop in a fresh battery that I could pick up at any store and it’s as good as the day I got it. And for those who scoff at the idea of using alkaline batteries, you have clearly been living under a rock cause modern rechargeable batteries like eneloops are REALLY good. Plus you don’t have to sit tethered to a wall to charge it. Simply swap the battery and you have an instant full charge while the old battery sits on a wall. This isn’t my first product from Agptek. In this review I will be comparing this product to the Agptek U3, the predecessor to the Agptek A55PL, which appears to be (hopefully) discontinued. The U3 was trash. It got the job done as the previous “only modern AAA powered player”, but the A55PL is better in every conceivable way. The U3 had a lot of problems. Like a lot of super low end players, there was no sorting of your music. It would list folders and files in the order that they appear in the internal filesystem table (the order they were added to the card). There are tools to get around this like YAFS and fatsort and frankly the A55PL will need these tools too but that one was workable. The next problem was an arbitrary limit to the number of folders you could have. If you had more than 100 album folders in a single folder, songs from folders 101+ would simply not play. It would try to play them but then crash to the first song of the first folder and play that. I was able to get around this by sorting albums into alphabetical folders to cut down on the number of folders in a single location, but the A55PL has no issue whatsoever handling my library. The most egregious problem of the U3 however were the controls. Buttons would need to be held at least half a second if you wanted to have more than a 20% chance of the button registering. Even then, it was 50/50 on whether the button you pressed would even be the one the device would register. Trying to go into the menu by pressing up? Sucks for you, we registered a down press so let’s adjust the volume. I even got a second U3 and it wasn’t much better. The A55PL on the other hand? Flawless button recognition. Buttons register instantly and correctly. I actually want to use this one instead of throwing it in a drawer for a rainy day. Now the A55PL isn’t flawless. As I mentioned earlier, you still need to use external tools to sort the filesystem. Also music mode is straight up failing to detect half my albums. I get down to P in my album list and nothing. Folders mode, which lets you access your music in a file browser, works flawlessly but you are stuck with however the files are organized in the filesystem. There are a ton of extremely thoughtful improvements over the U3. Whoever designed this clearly had intimate knowledge of the U3’s pain points (probably cause they are like me and really wanted this niche product). First, they have added dedicated buttons for power, volume up, and volume down. This not only makes those buttons more accessible (especially the volume), but also frees up previously existing controls to do more useful things. For instance on the U3 power on/off used to be that you held the play/pause button. Now holding play/pause will bring you back to the now playing screen from anywhere in the player. Pressing down used to be how entered volume adjustment mode, now it’s a dedicated back button. You no longer need to go into the menu, and select which storage device (internal or SD) you wish to navigate to. Now from the now playing screen, pressing back brings you straight back to where you were in the folders navigation. They also got rid of the internal storage in favor of an included 64 GB microSD card which not only simplifies the interface, but is also the only storage most people would have used on the U3 anyway so it’s nice that it’s just included. Granted it’s the cheapest, slowest, most generic microSD imaginable, but as long as it holds my data, I’m glad they didn’t waste money on the one part I could replace myself. The physical shell of the player has also seen some improvements too. The battery cover of the U3 used to have small protruding hook tabs that looked like they would break (and in fact did break in shipping on the one I got second hand on the used market). The A55PL’s cover is simplified into the least likely to break way possible. Rather than small hook shaped tabs, both tabs sit flush with the bottom of the cover and are wide and without bends. The cap has also been upgraded. Before with the U3, the cap was friction fit, held on only by the extremely precise tolerances between the cap and the USB A connector. This cap was GOOD, like really satisfying. But it was and still is the only thing keeping you from accidentally losing the battery cover. The A55PL’s cap now snaps on which, while significantly less satisfying, is significantly more secure. Battery life on the A55PL is really good. To test it, I set the volume to 20 (where it warns you about excessive volume leading to hearing damage) and put a fresh off the charger eneloop, put it in “Play in order” mode, and started the first song of the first album on my card. I let it run uninterrupted with the screen off until it died and calculated the total runtime of all the songs it was able to play through. The A55PL lasted 16 hours, 39 minutes, and 24 seconds for a total of 445 songs before it died. Realistically I wouldn’t even want it to be that loud. I personally prefer it at 18. The user manual claims 20 hours of screen off playtime, and at default settings I could easily see that as being possible, though given that a battery isn’t included it will likely depend on what battery you put in it. Even if you don’t run at default settings, you should get more than enough battery life out of this though. If you somehow don’t? Just carry a spare and you are good to go! Now there is one more thing I feel is worth mentioning. I posted a review of this player to Reddit almost a week ago and a few people have mentioned purchasing one as a result. One user seemed to have issues getting their library which consists of around 200 GB of FLAC songs. They were not able to determine the cause. According to them it would play for a few minutes and then repeatedly fail to read the file. I’m not sure if the issue is with the size of the card, how the card is formatted, with the fact the songs are in FLAC, or if they just got a bad unit. I have personally had no issues with my around 44 GB library on my 64 GB card, but for thoroughness I thought I’d mention it. Ultimately this is a great device. It has a few flaws, but hopefully ones that can be fixed in a firmware update down the road. As of the writing of this review, this device is still extremely new, so I’m hoping that means it has at least a few years of support where these issues can be resolved. If you have some extra money lying around and want to support cool and unique products, I definitely recommend picking one of these up. Even if you don’t end up using it much, you can easily chuck it in a drawer for the occasional power outage. I’m definitely already planning on buying a couple more of these as spares / gifts if this ever goes on sale! Read more

First of all, the price was more than right for this little guy! And the fact that it uses AAA batteries (this unit is NOT rechargeable) is a plus for most. The sound quality is really good (it even has a little 4-band equalizer), and the fact that it doesn't have either wifi or bluetooth is more than OK for me. The 64GB microSD card is also a nice touch. Basically everything about this little guy works really well, plus it is very simple to operate. The only caveat for me with this little unit, is just that - it is small, very small. The controls are too small for an old guy like me to be able to handle with a lot of clumsiness on my part (with my short, stubby fingers), and the display is far too small for these ol' eyes of mine to see very well. But, those ARE NOT THE FAULT OF THE PRODUCT, OR THE MANUFACTURER. I simply chose a player that was inappropriate for my needs and abilities. It is better suited for younger eyes with more nimble fingers than mine. If you are looking for a small device to use in your car's stereo system, this will be a good choice for you. As for me and my fat fingers and bad eyes, I am going to try a bigger unit with larger buttons and controls. Read more

This is exactly what I was looking for. The delivery time was great. Read more

This is a very simple, compact music player that runs on a single AAA (LR03) battery rather than having a built-in rechargeable one. That could be seen as a downside, but I actually like it. I can just swap in another charged AAA from my supply instead of waiting for it to recharge. It is a fairly rugged build and I don't expect to have any durability issues with it. The headphone amp inside is MUCH stronger than I expected. It was able to easily drive my largest set of over-ear headphones without any issues. Navigation through the menus isn’t great, but once you set it up the way you want, you probably won’t need to interact with the menus very often anyway. The player itself is very compact; about 3.5 inches long and roughly 1.25 inches wide. Loading music onto it is very simple. Just plug it into your computer and drag-and-drop files onto it just like any other media drive. At about $32, it feels a little bit on the expensive side for what it is, but if it's ever on sale, then it's an even better value. It's a great option for long runs or workouts where you just want to listen to music and want something lightweight that can tuck into a waistband or pocket easily. Read more