HiBy M500 x Hatsune Miku

Pros

• Great overall design
• A little anime friend
• Volume wheel

Cons

• Not for you if you're not into the kawaii aesthetic
• No way to lock the buttons/volume
• Are you cute enough for this? (Miku would say yes)

This artist has played at Coachella, and is currently appearing "live" in a town near you. It's virtual Japanese pop idol Hatsune Miku. You might not have heard of Miku, but it (I'm just not comfortable calling it "she") is popular across music, games and more. For the fans, the $319 HiBy M500 x Hatsune Miku is a digital audio player with the same bright colors and overall aesthetic. The collaboration goes to more than colors, with an animated and occasionally vocal Miku offering some adorable and unique flair.

For people who aren't necessarily familiar with Hatsune Miku's work, the M500 is also a solid mid-level audio player, with Cirrus Logic DACs, decent amp power and a fast-enough processor that makes it work smoothly. 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 good job with the collab/license with this well-performing and beautifully colorful media player. 

Perhaps we should start with who, or what, Hatsune Miku is. Despite being a self-professed weeb (and fully aware that's a pejorative), this was not an area of weebdom I was familiar with. Miku is a "virtual idol" and "vocaloid." Using software originally developed by Yamaha, Japan's Crypton Future Media developed Miku as the "face" of what's basically a voice synthesizer that can also sing. While ostensibly an animated mascot, Miku has a "life" of its own, with concerts (via "hologram"), music collaborations, and more. "She" also performed on David Letterman with the band Bighead.

Miku is not AI, though there are some similarities, and there certainly could be an AI version. Instead, it's a surprisingly widespread and popular brand, all featuring the teal pigtailed Miku. Given HiBy's excellent job with the Evangelion license (Ok, now we're back in my weeb neighborhood… weeborhood?) with the R4 x Evangelion, I was certainly curious about this pairing.

Using Android 14 as a base, HiBy created custom icons and commissioned a custom Miku wallpaper with 10 other options available in the photo gallery. The most adorable aspect of the M500 is a little animated chibi-style Miku that has a little bird friend wearing a HiBy necklace. This pair sits on a layer above the background, so you can move them around if they get in the way. The idol's idle animation sort of just blinks and bops a little. Leave them be for a bit, and they'll go to sleep, wave their arms/wings for attention and so on. By tapping on them in different places, you can get them to do a little forward roll, headbang, wave, stamp their feet and more. Even by Miku standards, this is very kawaii (cute). 

Miku will even talk to you. On startup, it says, "Welcome to HiBy music, the show starts now!" If you connect headphones, it will say "Headphones connected!" Unplug them, and it's "Speakers are working!" You'll find Miko hiding in random places throughout the OS, much like the tweaks HiBy did with the R4 x Evangelion. Miku is not a tamagotchi and doesn't seem bothered if you don't interact with it. You can also disable Miku's voice lines separately if you don't want the commentary.

The overall look of the M500, as you can see in the photos, definitely matches the Miku aesthetic: a mostly teal/cyan frame and pinkish-red buttons. The color scheme continues on the back, where there's a drawing of Miku on a black background. Even the included wrist strap and USB-C cable have the same colors. If Miku is your vibe, I feel like this nails it. Unlike most DAPs, this device has a camera. It's not great, definitely like what you'd find on a low-end Android phone, but if you're trying to go more phone-free, this at least gives a bit of camera practicality. 

The M500 is a step down in hardware compared to the R4, but it's still a solid media player. Running a Snapdragon 680 SoC it feels fast and smooth to use. Not quite high-end phone speeds, but it never feels sluggish. There are dual Cirrus Logic CS43198 DACs that run through what HiBy describes as "low-noise, high-performance" op-amps. The 5-inch LCD has a resolution of 1,280x720 pixels, which is sharp enough for this size screen. My review sample was the Wi-Fi version, but there's also a version with 4G-LTE connectivity (bring your own nano-SIM card).

Usability

When you turn on the M500, Miku will say hello. During boot-up, there's a line drawing of Miku in the background with fully rendered eyes, so it's sort of like a ghost watching you. I don't think this was meant to be spooky.

Physical buttons are one of the best reasons to buy a dedicated media player, and with the M500, there's the typical play, previous and next, and there's also a textured volume wheel. With the latter, there's a visual component of curved teal lines that radiate out from the bottom of the device. The mini-Miku stands on top, her bird chilling with headphones. If you turn the volume down too fast, the floor drops from under the pair, and Miku has to catch her balance. If you turn the volume up, eventually Miku voices some concern: "Careful, volume is too high!" Adorable.

I was able to get plenty of volume from the M500, even with power-hungry planar magnetic headphones like HiFiMan Sundaras and Isvarna. It was plenty loud, but not ear-splitting loud. Louder than you should listen to for any length of time, and that was with headphones that were pretty difficult to drive. If you have earbuds or easier-to-drive headphones, you should be able to get plenty of volume. I listened to a variety of music, including indie J-pop/rock Haku, the genre madness of Electric Callboy, the deep bass of Blue Man Group's Audio, Weezer pretending to be Toto, plus some various organ and cello music from Bach. All were lossless, ranging from 16/44.1 to 24/96, and all sounded clean and accurate. The M500 (or Apple) didn't like 24/192 via Apple Music but played 24/192 FLAC tracks with no issue. Bluetooth headphones connected fine, as you'd hope from a modern portable device.

Kawaii 

In a world of endless black, gray, black and gray, gray and black and the occasional solid white devices, 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 its IP license justice. I've certainly seen countless brand "collabs" that are little more than a color change, a logo and a dubious price premium. At least here there are some delightful Easter eggs, plus some actual design with the animated mini-Miku, other artwork and voice prompts. 

At its core, also like the R4, the M500 is a solid portable media player. I mean, it's fully Android 14, and there's a 4G version, so the line between this and an actual phone is pretty blurred. The colors and animations add character, but aren't the sole reason the M500 exists. That's an important distinction, I think. Obviously, the M500 x Hatsune Miku is not for everyone, but I can imagine someone who's into the kawaii aesthetic in general, or Miku specifically, finding the M500 exactly what they'd want in a media player.